When you think of England, it might conjure a picture of rolling green hills, chocolate-box villages with cobbled streets, and fish and chips by the sea. Something that probably doesn’t feature heavily in that fantasy is a lion. Why, then, do England’s football players, currently carrying the hopes of the nation through Euro 2024, famously have three lions on their shirts? We make it our mission here at IFLScience to answer all your burning questions, be they big or small, so here goes nothing.
First off, let’s get one thing clear. Despite the persistent claims of sightings of big cats roaming the countryside, the British Isles are not known for their large wild felines. Don’t get us wrong – there’s plenty of fascinating, cuddly, and even troublesome wildlife to be found here, but the native cats tend to be on the smaller side.
Lions prefer the heat of the African savanna to the wet and windy climes of Northern Europe, and there’s certainly no evidence that these big cats ever roamed the “green and pleasant land” of England. Yet we see the image of the lion cropping up all over the place, and not just on the football shirts – there’s even one on the Royal coat of arms.
Lions and England first became intertwined back in the 12th century. Henry I took the throne in 1100, and his standard held the image of a lion – he was nicknamed the “lion of justice”, just to push the metaphor as far as it can possibly go. When he married, his wife’s family’s standard also bore a lion, so Henry added it to his own as a mark of respect. Two became three during the reign of Henry II on the occasion of his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose family also had a lion on their emblem.
Richard the Lionheart – presumably you can see where this is going – who reigned from 1189 to 1199, used the symbol of three golden lions on a red background to denote the English throne. Since then, the lion has stuck around, being present in the coat of arms of every subsequent monarch.
So that’s why you see lions on coins and emblazoned on the walls of public buildings in England – what about the football?
England’s national football team are also representatives of the Football Association (FA), the country’s footballing governing body dating back to 1863. For its emblem, the nascent FA adopted various versions of the Royal coat of arms (featuring the ubiquitous lion) for a while, until in 1949 it was granted its own coat of arms. As David Llewelyn Phillips explained in a 2015 paper, this featured a familiar combo of roses and three lions on a pale blue background.
Ever since the first international fixture between England and Scotland in 1872, England’s national side has sported an FA logo – whichever version was in use at the time – on their shirts.
And that’s the story of how the Three Lions – and more recently the women’s Lionesses – got their name, and why the dulcet strains of the 1996 anthem Three Lions (Football’s Coming Home) can still be heard far and wide whenever there’s an international tournament on.
If nothing else, you’ve got to admire our optimism.
Source Link: People Are Just Learning Why England Have Three Lions On Their Emblem