Saint Piran's Flag - Clues To Its Origin

Clues To Its Origin

• The Standard of the Army of the Breton Duchy.

• The Welsh Flag of Saint David

Saint Piran's flag has similarities to the old Breton flag and the Flag of Saint David. The cultural links between Brittany, Wales and Cornwall are well recorded. Saint Piran's Flag is the negative image of the old Breton Flag, a black cross on a white field. The Flag of Saint David shares a black background with Saint Piran's Flag, but is surmounted by a gold, rather than a white, cross.

It has also been suggested that it may have been based on the arms of the Earl of Cornwall, or the later Duchy of Cornwall; based on the arms of other Cornish families; or be linked with the black and white livery of the Knights of St John.

The flag is commonly understood to represent the white tin metal against the black tin ore; symbolically, however, the flag is said to represent the light of truth shining through the blackness/darkness of evil. Another theory of the black and white colours is that the white cross represents the igneous/metamorphic rocks of colour such as granite and schists mainly found in the southwest of Cornwall, while the black background represents the weathered Devonian slate and Carboniferous sandstone, both of which are mainly black-greyish in appearance, of the northern part of Cornwall.