THISTLE. 
249 
“ ‘ Though rich be the soil where blossoms the rose, 
And barren the mountains and covered with snows 
Where blooms the red heather and thistle so green ' r 
Yet for friendship sincere, and for loyalty true, 
And for courage so bold which no foe could subdue, 
Unmatched is our country, unrivalled our swains, 
And lovely and true are the nymphs on our plains, 
Where rises the thistle, the thistle so green. 
“ ‘ Far-famed are our sires in the battles of yore, 
And many the cairnies that rise on our shore 
O’er the foes of the land of the thistle so green; 
And many a cairnie shall rise on our strand, 
Should the torrent of war ever burst on our land; 
Let foe come on foe, as wave comes on wave, 
We’ll give them a welcome, we’ll give them a grave 
Beneath the red heather and thistle so green. 
“ ‘ Oh, dear to our souls as the blessings of Heaven 
Is the freedom we boast, is the land that we live in, 
The land of red heather, and thistle so green ; 
For that land and that freedom our fathers have bled, 
And we swear by the blood that our fathers have shed, 
No foot of a foe shall e’er tread on their grave; 
But the thistle shall bloom on the bed of the brave, 
The thistle of Scotland, the thistle so green.’ 
11 There appears to be no proof of this sturdy flower 
having been adopted as the symbol of Scotland earlier 
than the middle of the fifteenth century, when a puritanic 
council held a solemn consultation within the walls of the 
old Council-house at Edinburgh as to the advisability of 
erasing the papistic figure of St. Giles—which for so many 
centuries had been triumphantly borne through the battle 
and the breeze—from the old standard: religious 
animosity gained the day, and the time-honoured figure of 
the saint was replaced by the thistle.” —J. Ingram. 
