Best Lion

Published on Friday 12 June 2009 19:07

LIONS DEN: Stirling Castle's 16th century palace is a Renaissance glory, designed round a central courtyard, the Lion's Den.

There the big cats of the royal menagerie provided models for sculptors to carve lions rampant; were fed the dismembered limbs of traitors; and pulled the gold chariots in which the royal children rode on feast-days. Well, they might have had there been any lions.

LION ROCK, ISLE OF CUMBRAE: Near Millport, it crouches, presenting its leonine rump to the mainland. There's a myth it results from an outcrop of tholeiitic andesite in the red sandstone being exposed by eons of erosion. In fact it's what remains after a toll-free bridge to the island built by benevolent elves was kicked down by goblins protecting their income from tolls from their own bridge.

UNA AND THE LION In Edmund Spenser's 16th century allegorical poem, Una sets out to free her royal parents from prison by a dragon. En route she meets a lion ("Bigge Roarie"), who finds her too beautiful to eat. In the painting by William Bell Scott (in the National Gallery of Scotland) Una rests her hand on the bristling mane of the captivated beast.

WILLIAM THE LION William was the red-haired Lion King who was to be the longest-reigning pre-Union king of Scotland (1165-1214). Early in his reign he fought Henry II of England for Northumberland and lost, resulting in English garrisons in key Scottish castles, paid for by taxes on the Scots. William founded Arbroath Abbey, where he was buried.

LIVINGSTONE AND THE LION In southern Africa in 1843, David Livingstone set out with some villagers to confront a cattle-killing pride of lions – one attacked and bit the explorer: "Growling horribly close to my ear, he shook me as a terrier dog does a rat." Luckily Livingstone had on a tartan jacket: "I believe it wiped all the virus from the teeth."