So what DID happen to St Andrew’s lucky hand?
IT is an enduring mystery that has baffled the people of St Andrews for 40 years – who stole the ‘lucky’ left hand from a statue of Scotland’s patron saint?
University bosses have launched an appeal for the return of the missing appendage to make St Andrew whole again for a more public display.
The larger than life-size statue was created by the late Scots artist Alexander Handyside Ritchie.
He took his inspiration for the sculpture from the more famous statue of St Andrew created by revered artist Francois Duquesnoy in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
The Scottish version once stood in the foyer of the North British and Mercantile Insurance Company building in Edinburgh. People passing it would touch the fingers of the saint’s left hand for luck.
The hand vanished, however, after the statue was given to the University of St Andrews in the 1960s and placed among shrubbery in the Fife town’s Botanic Garden car park.
University officials have no record of when the hand disappeared but believe it was either knocked off accidentally or taken in student high jinks, and may still be in the possession of a former student or St Andrews resident.
Now the university plans to clean, restore and move the statue to a central location, and has appealed to generations of students past and present for information leading to the missing hand.
Dr Katie Stevenson, University of St Andrews’ assistant vice-principal, collections, who is leading the restoration project, said: ‘The hand of St Andrew is an important part of the statue’s history.
‘We are pleased to be able to retrieve Andrew for conservation and repair and we hope his new home in the gardens of the university museum on The Scores will allow people to enjoy him. It would be wonderful if we could locate his original hand for our repair work.’
Saint Andrew, the Patron Saint of Scotland, was a fisherman and one of Jesus’s 12 apostles. He is mentioned in the Bible as taking part in the ‘Feeding of the Five Thousand’ and was crucified on a saltireshaped cross in AD60.
According to legend, some of the saint’s relics were later brought to Fife.
The statue will be moved from its current location for restoration work before the end of this year and will be reinstated in the grounds of the university museum in the spring of next year.
The university is hoping to give it a permanent home on the lawns of Madras College.