Assegai Flag North Fife

This flag now flies from the lay-by Newburgh North Fife yesterday occupied by The Black Earnside Tartan Army. I can only assume it's all about the World Football Cup just underway in South Africa.
Football, a formalised combat, actual weapons for Scotland in hostilities would have been the Claymore.
The average claymore ran about 140 cm (55") in overall length, with a 13" (33 cm) grip, 42" (107 cm) blade, and a weight of approximately 5.5 lb (2.5 kg). Ultimately, the longswords generally descend from the high medieval hand-and-half 'great swords', such as subtype XIIIa, using the Oakeshott typology. Fairly uniform in style, the sword was set with a wheel pommel often capped by a crescent-shaped nut and a guard with straight, down-sloping arms ending in quatrefoils and langets running down the center of the blade from the guard. Another common style of two-handed claymore (though lesser known today) was the "clamshell hilted" claymore. It had a crossguard that consisted of two downward-curving arms and two large, round, concave plates that protected the foregrip. It was so named because the round guards resembled an open clam.

For Africa, The Assegai was the close combat weapon.
The use of various types of the assegai was spread all over Africa and it was the most common weapon there. The Zulu and other Nguni tribes of South Africa were renowned for their use of the assegai. Shaka of the Zulu invented a shorter-style assegai which had a larger, broader blade. This weapon was known as the iklwa or ixwa – for the sound that was heard as it was withdrawn from the victim's wound – and was used as a stabbing weapon during mêlée attacks. The traditional assegai was not discarded but was used for a softening range attack on enemy formations before closing in for close quarters battle with the iklwa. This tactical combination originated during Shaka's military reforms.
How the pros and cons of the respective Scottish and African weapons would work out is hard to know. Better to kick a ball about.


It is 1913 and ex-soldier turned professional big game hunter, Leon Courtney, is in British East Africa guiding rich and powerful men from America and Europe on safaris in the Masai tribe territories. One of his clients, German industrialist Count Otto Von Meerbach, has a company which builds aircraft and vehicles for the Kaiser’s burgeoning army. But Leon had not bargained for falling passionately in love with Eva, the Count’s beautiful and enigmatic mistress.

Just prior to the outbreak of World War I, Leon is recruited by his uncle, Penrod Ballantyne, Commander of the British Forces in East Africa , to gather information from Von Meerbach. He stumbles on a plot against the British involving the disenchanted survivors of the Boer War, but it is only when Eva and Von Meerbach return to Africa that Leon finds out who and what is really behind the conspiracy.
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