The Scotch Thistle
Many different species have been dignified with the name of Scotch Thistle. It is probable, say some authorities, that a common species, such as Carduus lanceolatus, is most deserving the name. Some have fixed on doubtful native species, such as Silybum Marianum and Onopordum Acanthium. Neither of these is, however, reconcilable with history. S. Marianum is appropriated by the Roman Catholic Church, who say the white marking on the foliage is commemorative of the milk of the Virgin Mary. O. Acanthium is not only, like the last, a doubtful original species to Scotland, but, like C. lanceolatus, of much too great a height; for one historian says that, after the landing of Queen Scota, she reviewed her troops; and, being fatigued, retired; and, on sitting down, was pricked by a thistle; from which circumstance she adopted it as the arms of her new country, with the motto, Nemo me impune laccssit. Another says, on the eve of an attack by the Danes, one of the enemy having trod on a thistle, cried out with pain, which gave intimation to the Scots of their near presence; and hence the thistle became dignified as the arms of the country. With these two exceptions, we meet with no other reference to a matter of equal importance, in an historical point of view, with that of the legends in connexion with the Coronation Stone, which all historians have treated on with great minuteness.
However, if any reliance may be placed on the authorities above given, it is quite clear that it must have been a low-growing species like Cnivus acaule; for, whether we take into consideration the accident to the Queen or the bare-footed Dane, or the configuration of the flower-head itself, it more closely resembles the representations we find on many of the sculptured stones than either of the others. Some have supposed it to be Carduus acanthoides; but this, as well as all the rest, is less formidably furnished with those strong spiny scales with which the receptacle of Silybum Marianum is so amply provided. This circumstance agrees with the sculptured representations found on the oldest parts of Stirling Castle, Linlithgow Palace, or Holyrood House, especially with one on the top of a garden doorway opposite the new fountain, in front of the entrance to the latter, which is more like the head of Cynara Scolymus, the globe artichoke, a native of the South of Europe, than any thistle in the world. Uncertain as the Scotch are regarding the species of their national emblem, or even of its being a native, they are no more so than the English are regarding the species of rose they have adopted. No double rose existed in Britain at the period it was introduced into the national escutcheon; therefore, it must have been borrowed from the French; who even, in their turn, cannot now tell what species of iris their fleur-de-lis is meant to represent. Nor are the Irish agreed as to whether their shamrock is derived from a series of Trifolium, or from Oxalis acetosella. The ancient Britons, as the Welsh call themselves, have adopted the leek, Allium porum, a native of Switzerland.—Scottish Farmer.