I thank Mario Buhagiar for his reply on Count Roger and the flag. (August 18). He gave a lot of detail about Gaetano Laferla who popularised the myth of Count Roger, thus dispelling my wrong impression that it was Dr A.V. Laferla, ex-Director of Education who did so. He also confirmed that although fantastic, serious historians were unimpressed or took pains to make no reference to the "tradition".
With reference to Mario Costa's letter of the same date, I wish to point out that nowhere in my letter of August 15 did I imply that I know that it was Count Roger who gave the colours to the Maltese. In fact I expected him to quote the part of Prof. Buhagiar's essay where he "demonstrates conclusively that the Count Roger bestowal of the colours is a recent 19th century fabrication by a certain Laferla".
Another letter by Victor Ragonesi on the facts of the Norman colours (August 22) is worth reading.
Meanwhile, this myth remains just a tradition.