St Kilda Kilts & Scottish Gifts

During the reign of James I (1406-1437) the abbey of Holyrood first used the image of a stag with a cross between its antlers. The story behind this was recorded in the following century in Hector Boece and then John Bellenden. This relates how King David I (1124-1153) was persuaded by friends to go out hunting on a holy day in an extensive forest by Edinburgh called Drumselch, against the advice of his holy men. While out, David became separated from his friends, and on seeing a great stag, his horse spooked and threw the king, who wounded his thigh. Fortunately, the king had a piece of the true cross on his person held in a cross, a gift from his mother (Saint Margaret), which caused the animal to disappear. This miracle resulted in David founded the abbey on that spot. The symbol of the stag with cross between its antlers was later taken literally, with later versions of the tale say how a glowing cross appeared between the stag’s antlers.

It's not until 1742 and Nisbet’s System of Heraldry, that we have the alternative version of the story, that a Knight named Sir Gregan Crawford intervened, killed the beast and saved the king and thus took the stag’s head with cross as his crest.

What’s probably happening here is the cart being placed before the horse. It is likely that sometime in the later middle ages that the Crawford’s adopted the symbol of Holyrood Abbey for other reasons, perhaps through piety, or perhaps through their lands having some association with the abbey. Archibald Crawford,1450-1484 would be the candidtate for this. 

The earliest appearance of a stag on the arms of the Crawfords comes in 1562 in the ‘Workman’s Roll’. After the Protestant Reformation in 1560 any notion of the miraculous, or abbots, was suppressed and stories like the founding of the abbey would have been dismissed as blasphemous. The Crawfords, looking at their crest, having presumably forgotten exactly why they had it in the first place, could have imagined a narrative to explain it, taking the David-Stag tale, removing God and placing themselves in the resulting gap (quite a bold thing to do when you think about it!). No Sir Gregan is recorded in the reign of David, so he is most likely fictitious.

The Crawford motto ‘Tutum te robore reddam’, meaning ‘I will give you safety by strength’, which refers to keeping the king safe by being strong enough to kill a stag.

Miles Kerr-Peterson 30 June 2023