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Last modified: 2013-04-05 by peter hans van den muijzenberg
Keywords: scotland | clans |
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Clan banners are the arms in flag form and are becoming very popular. Clan chiefs usually have their standard. It is difficult to find many clan banners on the web but here are some photos of them.
N.M., 21 October 2002
These are, of course, more correctly the chiefs' banners, since they are
banners of the chiefs' personal arms. Under Scottish armorial law, clans and
families don't have arms, individual members do. As N.M. says, the chiefs also
have their standards (long tapering flags with their arms, badges, mottoes,
etc., on them).
People do use these widely as if they were the flags of the clans themselves,
the same way they use the royal lion banner as if it were an alternative flag
of Scotland. You see the flags here in the United States at Highland games,
Scottish heritage parades, and such. But technically they aren't.
Joe McMillan, 22 October 2002
![[MacGregor clan banner]](../images/g/gb-s_mgr.jpg)
![[Morrison clan banner]](../images/g/gb-s_mor.jpg)
![[Munro clan banner]](../images/g/gb-s_mnr.jpg)
I came across this flag seller selling Scottish Standards:
http://www.the-flag-center.com/shop/index.cfm?category=17. As I understand
from the Scottish clans page, these are the standards
that the clans gather under.
Peter Hans van den Muijzenberg, 30 May
2010
These are indeed called "standards" and are modeled on English personal
heraldic standards of the late Middle Ages. British Royal Artillery regiments
also use these shape and style of standards, but I think that usage was
introduced after the Second World War.
That said, I have never seen such
Scottish standards in use. I live in central Colorado where there are at least
three annual Celtic festivals cum Highland games and clan gatherings. I usually
attend at least one per year, and the parades of clans have never featured such
standards. The vast majority of clan flags consist of
unadorned tartan cloth on a
pole. Some add the clan badge. A small number are true flags (not medieval
standards) unrelated to the tartan.
At least one of the festivals I
attend also includes a church service called the "kirking of the tartan" in
which the tartans on a pole are blessed by the presiding pastor. It may be for
this reason that most of the flags are actually tartan. According to popular
mythology, kirking (churching) of the tartan started as a secret ceremony in
Scottish churches after the 1746 Proscription of Highland dress wherein small
pieces of banned tartan were brought to church to be consecrated. There is
apparently no basis for this myth. The practice was, in fact, invented in the US
by Rev. Peter Marshall on 27 April 1941 at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church
in Washington, DC. Marshall was a Scottish immigrant who arrived in the U.S. in
1927 at age 24 and served as Chaplain of the U.S. Senate from 1947 until his
death in 1949. The practice has since spread to other expatriate Scottish
communities around the world such as Australia.
T.F. Mills, 30 May
2010
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