I thought that people thought that we celebrated St. patricks day as well! Shows how wrong I am Thanks Warbird and Verity.
There are two reasons apparently why Andrew, who was one of the 12 Apostles and Peter's brother, was adopted as the patron saint of Scotland. One is that, in AD 345, when the Emperor, Constantine the Great, decided to translate Andrew's bones from Patras to Constantinople, St.Regulus a Greek monk, was instructed by an angel??? to take a large number of these relics to a place in the far northwest. He was told to stop at a site on the Fife coast of Scotland, where he founded the town of St.Andrews, where Prince William later went to uni!! The other explanation is that the seventh century Bishop of Hexham, St.Wilfrid brought back some of the saint's relics from a trip to Rome and they landed in the hands of the Scots King, Angus MacFergus, who installed them at St.Andrew's to enhance the prestige of the new bishopric. One legend concerning St. Andrew is that when the Pictish King Angus, faced with a large invading army, prayed for divine guidance, a saltire (the diagonal cross) appeared in the shape of a white cloud against the blue sky. Angus won a decisive victory and decreed that Andrew would be the patron saint of his country. It was not until after Robert Bruce's victory at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 however, that the Declaration of Arbroath named St. Andrew the patron saint of Scotland forever and the Saltire became the national flag in 1385.
