294 NOTES ON THE FLODDBN BANNER 



the above watchwords, peculiar to the period of the 

 Covenanters. 



These, then, are the grounds on which my family hold 

 to the tradition that we are the unique* possessors of a flag 

 that waved on Flodden Hill nearly 400 years ago. Of it a 

 modern bard has written : — 



" The Homes of old were warriors bold, 



As e'er auld Scotland ken'd, man ; 

 Their motto was Their Country's Cause, 



And 'true unto the end,' man. 

 This is the banner which they raised 



On Flodden's Battle Field, man ; 

 These noble men, their name be praised. 



They died ere they would yield, man." 



To stay further dilapidation the precious remnant has now 

 been, by the firm of Messrs Eoinanes & Patterson, placed 

 under glass, and framed like a picture, in bog oak, in 

 fashion precisely similar to its younger compeers in the 

 Antiquarian Museum, and so hangs in Wedderburn Castle, 

 a silent, yet telling, reminder of those days of stress and 

 storm, in which our Border ancestry lived and died. 



* It must not be overlooked that a bannerette or pennon, which 

 was also at Flodden, is to be seen over the entrance to the Advocate's 

 Library in the Parliament House, Edinburgh. The descriptive card 

 bears : — " Standard of The Earl Marishal of Scotland, carried at 

 the Battle of Flodden Field, 1513, by his Standard Bearer, ' Black ' 

 John Skirving of Plewland Hill." Skirving was taken prisoner, 

 having, however, previously concealed the banner about his person. 

 The relic, an heirloom of the family, was presented by Wm. Skirving, 

 Edinburgh, to the Faculty in the beginning of the present century. 

 The crest is that of the Keith family. Besides, it is recorded 

 that, at the meeting at Selkirk in 1876, " Mr James Brown, 

 manufacturer, exhibited a flag said to have been taken at Flodden 

 by a member of the Corporation of Weavers." (See Proceedings, 

 Vol. viii., p. 15.) 



