Quake3World

losCHUNK wrote:the flag in the 60s despite being the oldest in europe.

The standards were used in a number of forms after the Romans left Britain. The Welsh kings of Aberffraw used the emblem to symbolise their authority in the early fifth century. The name Pendragon, or Pen Draig, has its origins in these battle standards.

The flag was granted official status in 1959, but the red dragon itself has been associated with Wales for centuries, though the origin of the adoption of the dragon symbol is now lost in history and myth. A possible theory is that the Romans brought the emblem to what is now Wales during their occupation of Britain in the form of the Draco standards born by the Roman cavalry, itself inspired by the symbols of the Dacians or Parthians.[1] The green and white stripes of the flag were additions by the House of Tudor, the Welsh dynasty that held the English throne from 1485 to 1603. Green and white are also the colours of the leek, another national emblem of Wales.

The oldest known use of the dragon to represent Wales is from the Historia Brittonum,[2] written around 830; the text describes a struggle between two serpents deep underground, which prevents King Vortigern from building a stronghold. This story was later adapted into a prophecy made by the wizard Myrddin (or Merlin) of a long fight between a red dragon and a white dragon. According to the prophecy, the white dragon, representing the Saxons, would at first dominate but eventually the red dragon, symbolising the Celts, would be victorious and recapture Lloegr. According to the legend, this victory would be brought about by Y Mab Darogan. This is believed to represent the conflict in the 5th and 6th centuries between the British Celts and the invading Saxons. A version of the tale also appears as part of the poem 'Cyfranc Lludd a Llefelys' in the Mabinogion.[2] One twelfth century account of this is Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, where he states Merlin's prophecies.

The red dragon is popularly believed to have been the battle standard of Arthur[2] and other ancient Celtic/Romano-British leaders. There is considerable evidence to suggest that during this period the dragon was a symbol of the Romano-British monarchy and possibly Romano-British society more broadly, including some from Anglo-Saxon poetry.[3] The dragon is particularly associated in Welsh poetry with Cadwaladr king of Gwynedd from c.655 to 682. The Dragons of Arthur and Cadwaladr were possibly based on the draco standards carried by Roman cavalry units stationed in Britain. The Draco originated with the Sarmatians, a unit of whom were stationed in Ribchester from the 2nd to 4th centuries.[citation needed]

Doombrain wrote:Also http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyu ... o-IRB.html

ENGLAND deliberately lost the Six Nations to Wales as part of a plan to boost the smaller country’s morale, it has emerged. Wales’s victory caused an upsurge in national pride for a country embattled by unemployment, inhospitable weather and the literary trend for shit books about talking dragons.