Flag of Wales

Flag ratio: 2:3

The Welsh Dragon

The national flag of Wales is The Red Dragon (Welsh: Y Ddraig Goch). It consists of a red dragon, passant, on a green and white field. As with any heraldic charge, the exact representation of the dragon is not standardised and many different interpretations exist.

The flag was granted official status in 1959, but the red dragon itself has been associated with Wales for centuries; indeed, the flag is sometimes claimed to be the oldest national flag still in use, though the origin of the adoption of the dragon symbol is now lost in history and myth. A plausible 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 borne by the Roman cavalry, but it could be even older. 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 recorded use of the dragon to symbolise Wales is from the Historia Brittonum, written around 830, but it is popularly supposed to have been the battle standard of Arthur and other ancient Celtic leaders. It is particularly associated in Welsh poetry with Cadwaladr king of Gwynedd from c.655 to 682.

Many legends are associated with the Welsh dragon. The most famous is the prophecy of Myrddin (or Merlin) of a long fight between a red dragon and a white dragon. According to the prophecy, the white dragon would at first dominate but eventually the red dragon would win, this eventual victory and recapturing of Lloegr would be, according to Welsh legend, brought about by Y Mab Darogan. This is believed to represent the conflict in the 5th and 6th centuries between the British Celts (who later became the Welsh) and the invading Saxons.

The Welsh Flag is the only flag of the constituent countries of the UK not to be used in the Union Jack. Wales had no explicit recognition in the flag because Wales had been annexed by Edward I of England in 1282, and since the Laws in Wales Acts 1535-1542 was considered to be a part of the Kingdom of England. There have since been proposals to include the Dragon or the flag of Saint David (itself a cross) on the Union Jack but these have never met with much support.

Wales and Bhutan are at present the only countries to have a dragon on their flag, though the Chinese flag also featured a dragon during the Qing Dynasty.

Opposition

In March 2007, the Rev George Hargreaves, the leader of the Welsh Christian Party, announced that his organisation would stand in the 2007 Welsh Assembly elections with the mandate of removing Y Ddraig Goch as the flag of Wales and replacing it with the St David's Cross. This is because, according to his party, the dragon is symbolic of Satanic beasts described in the Book of Revelation. A number of groups have debunked this theory.

See also

• List of British flags
• List of Welsh flags

External links

• HiJack, an article addressing the question of why Wales has no explicit symbolic representation on the Union Flag.
• Wales at Flags of the World