THE national symbol of Scotland speaks of purity and power, of goodness and, er, pointiness. Beloved of children, revered by patriots, it is Harry Potter meets Robert the Bruce. It is a graceful beast, though fair to say it has trouble getting under low doors. It is the unicorn. Aye, him.

You must have seen one aboot, atop a mercat cross or on the gates of big hooses. There seems something apt, given the country’s current constitutional collieshangie, in a fantasy creature representing our nationhood.

Some say it is even more appropriate that the beastie is oft depicted in chains, though heraldry experts say these predate the Treaty of Union, after which one constituency of thought maintains it should have been shown with its tail between its legs.

It is also said that the chains indicate the beastie can only be freed by a virgin or a referendum, both of which are hard to find in Scotland. But how did Scotland, a land of puddles and snotters, come to adopt as national symbol something that looks so healthy and clean, a white horse with a big stick coming oot its heid?

The Herald:

The traditionally advanced explanation is that, as the English had rather unimaginatively chosen a lion, we chose that beast’s traditional enemy, the unicorn. Sounds a tad childish, and it’s difficult to know the truth of the matter as people in the past were generally too busy or thick to write anything doon.

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The lion vs unicorn thesis is further complicated by the fact that William I of Scotland, credited with being the first to adopt the symbol, was also known as William the Lion. Back in the day, it was lion this and lion that, mind. You can imagine the average hard-pressed serf saying: “Ah wish ye’d shut up wi’ yir lions.”

Prior to the Union of the Crowns in 1603, Scotland’s royal coat of arms was supported by two unicorns, often depicted above the national motto “Nemo me impune lacessit” (translation: “What are you lookin’ at?”).

However, when James VI of Scotland – even by the standards of monarchy, an absolute heid-the-ba’– also became James I of England, he replaced one of the unicorns with a lion to symbolise the unity of the two eternally incompatible countries. So the story goes. It gets a bit complicated after that, with a Scottish version ensuring the unicorn is seen as Billy Big Baws on coats of arms (through royal millinery and positioning), and some English versions having the lion as Percy Property Values lording it over the scene.

The Herald:

The unicorn has a longer ancestry than Scotland and England, however, yea, even allegedly featuring in yon Bible where, lo, they are wont to turn up depending on the translation. The Hebrew word re’em is thought to mean “wild ox”, but some experts think that’s a load of aurochs.

At any rate, the King James Version prefers to go with “unicorn”, to wit: "And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with their bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness." Izzat Isaiah, aye?

There are unicorns in ancient Greek “scientific" writings, too, supposedly found in India, though the same works claimed that Ethiopians lived in holes and squeaked like bats, that shaving the head hardens the skull and prevents baldness (at least in Egypt), and that there were ants bigger than foxes stoatin’ aboot the Indian desert. Ancient Greece: cradle of western civilisation.

The 13th century Italian explorer Marco Polo proved that travel narrows the mind when he wrote of unicorns: “They have a single large black horn in the middle of the forehead. They have a head like a wild boar’s. They spend their time by preference wallowing in mud and slime. They are very ugly brutes to look at.”

Rhinoceros, you idiot. That’s a rhinoceros.

Mind you, a rhino wouldn’t be too out of place on a Scottish coat of arms: grey-skinned, aggressive, overweight.

The West’s leading intellectual of all time, Leonardo da Vinci, wrote of the unicorn: “Laying aside all fear, it will go up to a seated damsel and go to sleep in her lap.” Will it, aye? This was supposed to be how hunters would catch the beast, presumably to kill or torment it, this being a noble human tradition with wildlife.

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All in all, I must say I find the unicorn a fabby symbol for a country, and will own that I am rather proud of it. I can’t think that it means much any more in terms of enmity with England, other than us saying of our southern pals apropos the pointy horn: “They do not like it up ’em, you know. They. Do. Not. Like. It. Up. ’Em.”

The idea of us choosing the unicorn because it couldnae stand lions is probably rather far-fetched, unless you accept that we do have a way of choosing the opposite path to England’s. Your football fans are hooligans? Ours shall be angels. You are right-wing and anti-Europe? We shall be left-wing and pro-Europe.

I can’t think that the unicorn today could give much of a fig for constitutional politics. The story goes that it can never be conquered, though in 1707 it appears to have been swayed by a basket of apples.

The poor beast sometimes gets dragged into contemporary constitutional debates online, usually in terms of entirely uncharacteristic abuse and derision. Unionists say independence is selling us a unicorn or fantasy. Independistas say unionists are so patriotic that, if they could get away with it, they’d sell the national symbol’s horn to the Chinese for traditional medicine.

Ultimately, though, a national animal symbol is just a daft badge. Consider the following examples: coo (Nepal), zebra (Botswana), tapir (Belize), rufous-bellied thrush (Brazil), turtle (Cambodia), squirrel (Denmark), goat (Iraq), and a flippin’ dodo (Mauritius).

Load of namby-pamby nonsense. What do these countries need, readers? Correct. They need to get unreal.