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Glasgow Zoopark has always enjoyed hosting the King of beasts, and in doing so is maintaining an old Scottish custom. Visitors are still regaled with tales of the Lion's Den when touring Stirling Castle. This Lion's Den, a small square in which lions had been kept for the amusement of the royal family in times past. The apertures in the wall, allegedly, were the means by which food was supplied to them. [1 ]
The figure of a lion rampant surmounts each of the four corners of the structure; a design which may have been emblematical of the lions kept in the interior, or may have referred to the circumstances of William the Lion having made the castle a place of his frequent residence, or to that of the lion being an important charge in the armorial bearings of the kingdom. |
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Stair-Kerr [2 ] cites tradition as saying that the Lion's Den was where the royal animals were caged. The third and fourth Jameses certainly owned lions, and it is likely that their successor kept a specimen of the King of Beasts.
King James V of Scotland was given a lion in 1537 and is reputed to have had the animal exercised in the Lion's Den. Did the King take the cat walkies??? [3]
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The Lion was not only a charge in the arms of Scotland, but in those of England, the Conqueror having introduced the two lions of his Norman dukedom. Animals in heraldry are emblematical of their good qualities only; and hence the lion, as denoting courage, was an especial favourite in the earlier times when valour was accounted virtue. It was from his intrepidity that William of Scotland was surnamed the Lion, as from the same cause, Richard I was designated coeur de lon, lion-heart. The lion's den was an adjunct not uncommon to Scottish residences. In one of his despatches to Henry VIII, in 1543, Sir Ralph Saddler mentions, that the donjon of Dalkeith Castle was called a Lion's Den.
References:
1) Rogers, Charles. A Week at Bridge of Allan. Adam and Charles Black, Edinburgh, 1859. P. 85-86.
2) Stair-Kerr, Eric. Stirling Castle: Its Place in Scottish History. James Maclehose and Sons, Glasgow. 1913. P. 142.
3) Fawcett, Richard. Stirling Castle. HMSO,Edinburgh. p. 30.
William the Lion
Scotland of course has a long association with lions. William I, King of Scotland 1165-1214 AD was known as William the Lion as he it was who introduced the Lion on Scotland's Lion Rampant Flag.
Daniel in the Lions' Den
Opportunities to see exotic animals would have been fairly rare for the people of Scotland before the big touring animal displays of the 19th century. Visitors to Hamilton Palace from the 17th to the 19th century, however, would have seen there a fine painting of lions: Daniel in the Lions' Den by Rubens, a now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. The artist has clearly based his lions on real animals and it would be interesting to know where Rubens could have seen lions in c.1613. In the painting the lions all look similar, as do the lionesses, which suggests that Rubens may have constructed his painting from just one pair of animals.
click here to view painting
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