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International support for Flower of Scotland to be national anthem

The national football team sing Flower of Scotland before matches.
The national football team sing Flower of Scotland before matches.

A group of MSPs have been told that an international survey showed 41% of people thought Flower of Scotland should be the country’s official national anthem.

The song proved to be the most popular among 10,000 people who took part in a online poll organised by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO).

The other contenders were Robert Burns’s A Man’s a Man for a that, Scots Wha Hey, Highland Cathedral and Scotland the Brave.

RSNO made recordings of all five songs available on its website to inform a debate and voting decisions.

It said Scotland the Brave secured 29% of votes cast by people from every continent except Antarctica and 16% backed Highland Cathedral.

The details of the 2006 survey, compiled by Kenneth Osborne, acting chief executive of RSNO, were submitted to Holyrood’s public petitions committee which is examining the case for Flower of Scotland to be adopted as the country’s official anthem.

They are taking forward a petition lodged by Aberdeen man Chris Cromar who claimed the song was a people’s anthem and would help “unite the nation” after the independence referendum.

The 22-year-old, from Bridge of Don, has stressed that he was not calling for it to replace God Save the Queen, which is the UK’s national anthem, and claimed it was not “anti-English” despite some of the lyrics.

Mr Cromar said Flower of Scotland – written by the late Roy Williamson of The Corries in 1965 – was sung before and during football matches at Hampden Park in Glasgow and at rugby union games at Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh.

But not everyone supports the Aberdeen University student’s petition.

In an e-mail to MSPs, a man called Robert Scott wrote: “Could I register my objection to this proposal on the basis that this is a depressing dirge of a song, with no lyrical relevance following the recent referendum rejecting Scottish independence.”

The committee is exploring whether a new song should be adopted as the official national anthem.