Postcrossing Blog

The writing prompts invite postcrossers to write about a different topic on their postcards’ messages every month. These are just suggestions though — if you already know what you want to write about, or the recipient gives you some pointers, that’s great too!

This is the writing prompt for March, so it seems only appropriate to pick a prompt suggested by Dax (alter3ch0) in the forum, suggesting members could talk about their country’s flag. I’ve been under no pains to hide where I come from in these posts, so if you’ve read a few you probably know that I’m Welsh… and 1st March is St David’s Day, usually observed in Wales by a celebration of all things Welsh: wearing daffodils and leeks, eating traditional Welsh food like cawl and bara brith, and donning traditional Welsh dress. I must confess that the most I usually do is wear a daffodil!

In any case, it seems like an excellent time to tell you about the Welsh flag—and talking about flags is our writing prompt for this month for everyone.

The Welsh flag is, of course, “Y Ddraig Goch” (the Red Dragon). In the terms of heraldry, it’s a red dragon passant on a green and white field. The green and white are technically the colours of the Tudor family, who were descended from a Welshman, Owen Tudor. The dragon is a symbol of Wales because of a story that’s linked to Arthurian legends (which are also Welsh in origin), in which a king called Vortigern (Gwrtheyrn, in Welsh) is trying to build a fort in a place called Dinas Emrys, but every night, every stone is shaken down and every day the building has to begin again. He’s told by a boy called Emrys (who would grow up to be Myrddin/Merlin) that the building is being toppled by two dragons trapped beneath the ground, who fight during the night and rest during the day. One is white and the other red—and the red one symbolises Wales.

The dragons come from an older story again, recorded now in a collection of old Welsh stories called The Mabinogion, in which the dragons are one of three “plagues” disrupting Britain. They get trapped and then buried in a stone chest by a king called Lludd… in Dinas Emrys! So that’s how they got there…

I always think the Welsh flag is one of the coolest, since we literally have a dragon, but I’m ready to be wrong! Do you have good stories about your own regional or country flag to share? You can post them in the comments here, or write about them if you’re not sure what to write on your postcards in March!