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Wales: History of Welsh Flags

Cymru

by K. J. Seefried III

History of Welsh Flags
13th Century

History of Welsh Flags

[Note: The following is excerpted from "A History of the Red Dragon" by Carl Lofmark, edited by G.A. Wells

The origins of the Welsh Dragon were undoubtedly the Roman "draconi" standards of the cohorts, which were far more numerous than the legions, particularly after the gradual withdrawal of the latter. "... the people who were left behind when the legions withdrew forever must most naturally have thought of the Dragon as the symbol of that Roman civilisation to which they belonged and which they were now defending against the ravages of the barbarian invaders. It is generally agreed that resistance to the Saxons was first organized by Romans, or Romanized Britons, presumably on Roman lines ... For their battle standard no emblem was more natural than the familiar Dragon of the Roman cohort."

"The Welsh, as a distinct people, may be said to date from about the seventh century, when the advance of the Saxons to the Bristol Channel and the Mersey isolated them from the rest of Celtic Britain. The 'Historia Brittonum,' of about 800 A.D. (traditionally ascribed to the scholar Nennius), which drew on earlier sources, described a Red Dragon as the symbol of the British people in their wars against the White Dragon of the Saxons. ... Early in the Welsh literary tradition, in the tale 'Lludd a Llefelys,' this Red Dragon is associated with Merlin, w