The Scottish Thistle ~ Art By Red Dust

in #art7 years ago (edited)

A Coloring Book For Tulsa Scotfest Children's Glen

All rewards go towards the cost of printing Scottish symbols for the Children's Glen I am helping set up and run. This is a voluntary position that helps teach our young children about their Scottish heritage and shares the Scottish culture with our multicultural community here in Tulsa Oklahoma.

I am taking Celtic symbols and making doodle drawings. I think they will make a great coloring book for kids! This is my contribution to our annual Scottish festival. I figured I would take my hobby and the rewards I make from Steemit and give back to the community. I will mention Steemit and how I funded this project in my coloring book. I think that would be a great way to advertise the Steemit site and our awesome community.

Scottish clans come from all over the world to participate in the Highland games, the music festival, the meeting of the clans, and to have a fun time!

10 x 10 inches, mixed media paper, pen and ink

Where Did The Legend Of The Scottish Thistle Come From?

There are many legends that surround this plant. One comes from 13 century. The plant saved some unknown Scottish Clansman from a Viking invasion. The Nordic King Haakon tried to invade the western part of Scotlands coastal towns called Largs.





The vikings were quietly creeping up to a Scottish camp of clansmen barefooted. Why barefooted? I guess they needed to be stealthy, however one of the invaders stepped on a Scottish Thistle and cried out in pain. The noise alerted a sleeping clansman and the surprise attack was no longer a surprise. The hardy Scotsmen fought off the invasion and thanked the lowly thistle for winning the battle and this is how the thistle became Scotlands national symbol.

Another legend is about how the thistle appeared on silver coins in the 1470s when King James the lll, (1466-1488) by the 16th century the thistle had become part of Scotlands coat of arms.

By the 15th century the thistle had become the national emblem. King James the IV married Princess Margaret Tudor of England in 1503 and their union inspired a poem called, “The Thrissil and The Rois by Scottish poet William Dunbar. The thistle represents James and the rose represents Margaret.

Around the mid 1550s King James the V son of King James the IV founded, “The Order of The Thistle.” It was said to be one of the highest orders founded on Chivalry. Chivalry is a way a knight is supposed to conduct himself. He is polite, kind, and unselfish, especially regarding his behavior towards women.

The Order Of The Thistle motto is, “Nemo me immune lacessit,” which translates as, “No one provokes me with impunity, in the Scottish language, “Wha dour meddle wi’ me.” There are many historians that say this order is older, from the 9th century and he was establishing a set of codes that were ancient in their origins. The virtues and honor help establish a stable community and culture.

Now one can find the thistle symbolized on everything that is Scottish. The plant is biennial, it takes 2 years before it blooms. The Latin name is “Onopordum Acanthium, and is also known as the Cotton Thistle. After the plant blooms it dies. The seeds of the plant ride the wind after the bloom has gone, which makes the thistle very prolific, it’s seeds are scattered by the wind.

The thistle can grow up to 8 foot tall and 4 foot in width and it is covered in sharp spiky leaves. The flower is downy soft but the rest of the plant makes a formable opponent that protects it’s precious seeds. I went barefoot as a child in Oregon and we had thistle plants as well. I imagine stepping on this plant could make a grown barefooted viking cry like a baby.

As a young farm girl in Oregon I had to dig these type of plants up around our garden. If you didn’t get the root the plant would come back. Hence when digging out bad habits you must get root and all. The plant has a beautiful flower, it is hard to kill, you have to be careful when grabbing the plant and it grows best on neglected lands. I think this describes the Scottish people perfectly! They are beautiful, stubborn, hard to defeat but quiet prickly if challenged.

See those two guys that hold the whisky tasting part of the festival? Rubright and Dick are trouble makers and get in more trouble than Abbot and Costello!

Scotfest Home Page

My first knot doodle Scottish Unicorn

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amazing post my friend you are amazing artist and you said me once you don,t love to write big articles now this article is more then 1k.
and you use very tough English it,s very tough to understand heheh
thanks for sharing @reddust

I try and keep my English simple, plus I am a simple person. I'm sorry for the challenging read, I hope you can enjoy the pictures @wajahatsadar!

sorry for that i,m not good in English so it was tough for me to understand it easily . yes i enjoyed you art. what about your art galleries did you buyed then.

I drew the picture and inked it myself.

hehe okay. have a nice day my friend

what a creativity!!!!!!!! lol......all of your post is always so informative,so i regularly follow your blog. love to read it...........

Thank you @steemibu351, I have fun researching the subjects I draw. This is a fun way to learn new things as well.

that's great job. love u so much.....i am lucky to have such an exemplary one as you....

A good initiative to spread and engage in enlightenment.
Such initiatives are beautiful in this social site and transformed into social solidarity
Pay attention to children and share things you see in a festival that is interested in introducing the Scottish Literary.
I do not know much about the Scottish bulls and I do not know what you're looking for in Scotland
I liked very much that painting is carefully painted whether it is your own drawing or a printed picture

My father's mother's father came to America. That was back in the early 1800s ...can you believe that? Great Grandpa Waddell left Scotland because there was no way to make a living and raise a family when one comes from a poor family. Grandpa Waddell settled in the wilds of Idaho State and out of the wilderness built a farm and raised a healthy family. I don't want to forget where my Great Grandpa came from or why he came to America. I think people don't understand American's fierce independence and our love of freedom until they research the history of the world and realize America was an experiment giving freedom to live as one wish as a common person. We are now in the middle of fighting a war for the freedom of the common person again. I can carry a firearm as a woman to protect myself. Very few places in the world allow that kind of freedom for any common person let alone a woman!

I have seen a little of the history of America. Perhaps your grandfather came during the British colonial period to America and he and his family settled there
Security and security do not know their security value, they are sure to always hear about the cases of killing and slaughtering in America
Do the majority of people have licensed licensors will be a mess.
We are forbidden to carry weapons.
We live in security and safety

Safety given by authority can also be taken by authority...look up the word democide, the biggest mass murders in our time is the state...especially communist or socialist states....
II 128,168,000 VICTIMS: THE DEKA-MEGAMURDERERS

  1. 61,911,000 Murdered: The Soviet Gulag State

  2. 35,236,000 Murdered: The Communist Chinese Ant Hill

  3. 20,946,000 Murdered: The Nazi Genocide State

  4. 10,214,000 Murdered: The Depraved Nationalist Regime
    III 19,178,000 VICTIMS: THE LESSER MEGA-MURDERERS

  5. 5,964,000 Murdered: Japan's Savage Military

  6. 2,035,000 Murdered: The Khmer Rouge Hell State

  7. 1,883,000 Murdered: Turkey's Genocidal Purges

  8. 1,670,000 Murdered: The Vietnamese War State

  9. 1,585,000 Murdered: Poland's Ethnic Cleansing

  10. 1,503,000 Murdered: The Pakistani Cutthroat State

  11. 1,072,000 Murdered: Tito's Slaughterhouse
    IV 4,145,000 VICTIMS: SUSPECTED MEGAMURDERERS

  12. 1,663,000 Murdered? Orwellian North Korea

  13. 1,417,000 Murdered? Barbarous Mexico

  14. 1,066,000 Murdered? Feudal Russia
    https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM

America’s second amendment is for the right of the common people to protect their life, liberty, and property.....freedom is never given freely and a free people know there is no such thing as a government that provides safety without taking away people’s freedom.

America has contributed to the destruction, destruction and displacement of the peoples of the group of the most recent state of Iraq and Afghanistan to Afghanistan. Shoboub destroys the pretext of protecting the American people.
The ideal society and world peace is something that the Great Aqueduct brags to serve its interests only
All the nations are eager to achieve world peace and all the wars we have known have been for the sake of the unity and peace of the world, but all these wars and all the many peace agreements that have been signed since the beginning of history have all failed because peace can not be imposed from outside. Inside. That world peace begins with individual peace. The individual is the unity of society and when the individual enjoys internal peace, the world peace is automatic. The green forest is all green

I know of no government that wants peace nor do corporations, they all make their money off of people's suffering. All the worlds governments work for corporations and institutions that make their money from drug running, managing welfare and poverty, white slavery, arms sales, stealing labor and natural resources.

The American government has contributed as well as other governments including the governments and players within the states. Most American's want our military to come home and the money saved and rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. But America is not Afghanistan and that's what I was talking about, democide is a government killing its own people. Our second Amendment is there to protect the people from the government.

But you and I both know that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and other places have to do with oil and power and nothing to do with the common people who fight these wars, we are born and bred like cattle to be used and thrown away....

All the Americans I know don't want these proxy wars and no matter who we vote for they continue. Afghanistan has been at war with itself and all it's tribes forever ...

The countries ethnic groups have been fighting each other forever..... The Pashtuns are Afghanistan's traditional rulers make up around 52 % of the population. The Hazaras are 19 % of the population. The Tajiks up north make up 21 %; Uzbeks, up north, 5 %, 85 % of Afghans are Sunni Muslims, and about 15 % of the Hazaras are Shia Muslims.

I've studied a little bit about why all our taxes have been used for wars rather than staying here in America to work for its people.

For more than six decades, a faction in the US intelligence community used, and even trained, various Islamic political groups for their goal to extend an American hegemony in the world. The relationship between the CIA and certain specific groups of political Islamists began in the 1950s in postwar Munich and reached a new dimension in the 1980s, when the CIA, together with Saudi Arabian intelligence, brought a wealthy Saudi Islamist named Osama bin Laden to Pakistan to recruit Islamic Jihadists for a terrorist war against the Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan.

The success of the CIA’s Operation Cyclone, to arm and train Afghani and other Mujahideen Islamic combatants, led Washington to deploy the same tactic after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Veterans of the Afghan Mujahideen war, many of them Saudi and other Arab nationals recruited by bin Laden’s organization, Al Qaeda, were brought on CIA private air transports into Azerbaijan, where British and US oil companies had their eye on the petroleum riches of the Caspian Sea. The CIA brought them into Yugoslavia to fan the flames of war there, from Bosnia-Herzegovina to Kosovo. They smuggled them into Chechnya and Dagestan to sabotage Russian oil pipeline routes.

The Lost Hegemon by F. William Engdahl kindle edition, 2016

Frankly, the discussion with you is interesting and we benefit from it. This is the role that other social media did not play.
Thank you for your support, which I need
Manshuri These days devoted to some drawings and judgment and preaching about love .....

The people have the ability to overcome their conditioning from all the wars and poverty we have all suffered from for generations. Governments, corporations, institutions are soulless entities and cannot love or have empathy.

If you follow the money trail, all the big transnational corporations and banks, the governments and their NGO's all make money from our suffering and they will never stop sewing the seeds of poverty and reaping the rewards on their own.

Most Americans don't read and research, but over the last ten years I see more and more Americans and people around the world waking up. Most people believe everything their government and media tell them and get lost in the endless digital amusement park built to make us mindless zombies. Many of us don't use the internet for entertainment, we use the internet to gather information and learn, we don't become mindless zombies...

Hopefully places like steemit grow strong and stay free for all our different views and we can have civilized arguments and discussions. I am pretty sure most people around the world have more in common with each other than they do with their ruling class and governments.

This is great,@reddust, I like your wonderful way of working

Thank you @albert7, I am never bored...lolol

no not like that @reddust 😢😢😢

I understand 🌀🙏❤️

Hhhh welcome

@reddust,
I never heard about this history before! Wow that's fantastic! I like these histories and I will try my best to help you on this voluntary service! I know it's not huge, but it's my best! Have a great day ahead my dear friend!

Cheers~

All I need is your up vote and friendship, I will be giving some of my earnings here on Steemit back to my community @theguruasia. Give what you can afford, but I am happier with the gift of friendship.

@reddust,
You always earn my gift of friendship! And I am trying to do my best to all of my good friends! I will help my best to your community projects! That would be an excellent thought!

Cheers~

That kind of stories and initiatives for help to protect the culture and tradition of a place are interesting indeed. 😀

Because of globalization huge populations are on the move and the threat of losing our cultural identity is bigger than ever before. I hope to see a lot more festivals from cultures all over the world! Variety is the spice of life! lolol Every culture has their favorite foods and drinks, that's what I enjoy the most next to their crafts and art.

You are totally right. That difference makes the life interesting, every day you learn something new about someone on another part of this big rock. 😉

I first need to commend you on this initiative of giving back to your community courtesy of steemit
I have to dug up what thistle plant is all about after reading through (no knowledge is a waste)

According to wikipedia, "Thistle is the common name of a group of flowering plants characterised by leaves with sharp prickles on the margins, mostly in the family Asteraceae."
PhotoGrid_1517078576801.jpg

Comparing this with those characteristics of scottish you state above, it can be conclude that the gentleness of a scottish shouldn't be taken for stupidity.

They got a great history of craving out a symbol from the plant and also standing as a long life representation of whom they were.
kudos on the drawing. It's pretty cool.

Thank you @fadiji09, you can also eat the thistle, the root makes a good tonic for detoxing the liver. I didn't put that bit of data in, I like the legends around the Scottish thistle .

You have to dig down deep to get all the root, I put lots of hours into digging our tansy and thistle plants growing up and working on our farm.

The post is more loaded and some exempted info might not be seen.

Does this plant grow anywhere and under what weather condition will it blossom?

The thistle will grow just about anywhere from rich soils to poor, it is very hardy and the seeds have a downy umbrella that is used to ride the wind.

History will be repeated.....nice story! @reddust

I do love history, there are so many interesting stories and lessons to learn! Thank you @jerge

You are most welcome, just go ahead......waiting for your next level journey.....

Thanks for the Scottish history lesson. I always wondered what the thistle symbolized. My hermitage is Scottish. The MaCleans Of Duart Castle on the Isle Of Mull.

My clan's name is Waddell the clan's name has been around since the 5th century and the waddle name is taken from a valley near Edinburgh. I have a favorite whisky from one of the Scottish Islands, nice to meet you @stillwatersart.

i just googled it to see how it looks like..i mean the thistle plant..i didnt have a idea about it..as you said it is a beautiful one..but prickly :) however it is very interesting to know these stories from the past..though we do not know that what had happened exactly we still can build up the story based on the logic and evidences..and once we have felt for it,we do not want to stop it in the middle until we know the whole story :) great story to know :)

I should add a picture of the thistle @steemclaira, I will edit this article and add one. Thank you @steemclaira, I hope you have a lovely weekend!