The plant that saved a king
Thistles aren’t the sort of flower that people like to pick. They aren’t
very pretty and they have prickly leaves that hurt you if you touch
them. And thistles grow so quickly and thickly that they are pests to
farmers.
But the ugly, prickly thistle is an honored plant in Scotland. This is
because there is an old Scottish legend that tells how thistles once
saved a Scottish king from the Vikings.
Vikings were fierce warriors who came from the northern countries of
Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. The Vikings loved war and fighting. They
sailed to different parts of the world and attacked towns and castles.
They often killed all the people, stole all the riches, and burned
everything down.
An old story tells how some Vikings landed in Scotland more than a
thousand years ago. During the night they surrounded the Scottish king’s
castle. Everyone in the castle was asleep. They didn’t know the Vikings
were about to attack.
All around the castle there was a moat—a deep, wide pit. Moats were
usually filled with water, so the Vikings took off their sandals to wade
across the moat. But this moat wasn’t filled with water. It was dry, and
it was filled with thousands of prickly thistles!
When the first barefoot Vikings stepped on those thistles they howled
with pain! The noise woke the people in the castle, who were able to
defeat the Vikings and chase them away. Today, the thistle is the
national emblem of Scotland.
Scottish thistle
The thistle is the national flower of Scotland.
