Why is the Lion the symbol of Alnwick?
Along with the crescent it is one of the symbols of the Percy family (ie the Duke) but the town has nicked it. Now everyone has it as their logo (even me). It has its tail stuck out horizontally. This not, I think, because it is farting or because the tail has frozen in a Northumbrian winter. There’s supposedly an explanation about the sticking-outiness of the column lion which is that it is pointing to Scotland and the tail will wag when the last Scotsman returns to Scotland. But that doesn’t explain it really because the lion on the bridge pre-dates the column and doesn’t point to Scotland. And the border raids had pretty much ceased by 1773 and 1816 – the respective dates when the bridge and column were built. The other theory was that the sticking out tail was originally only found on statues (the bridge and the column) and they were made that way because it was easy to make. Not terribly convincing that one, I thought; there are lots of lion statues whose tails don’t stick out hor
