The story of the emergence of Andrew as a second or an alternative symbol is a mysterious one, which has various possible starting-points, like the story of the emergence of a nation which it mirrors. There can be little doubt, however, that it was given fresh elaborations in the course of the twelfth century. At the defeat of the Viking Ivar in Stratheam in 903, the staff of Columba, dubbed Cath Buaid ('Battle Victory'), had guaranteed success, and his status as 'apostle' of the 'men of Scotland' was unchallenged at the time of the battle of Corbridge (918). It is possible, however, that a cult of St Andrew had emerged as early as the reign of Constantine, King of Picts, between 789 and 820. By the middle half of the tenth century, more than a century before Queen Margaret instituted the celebrated free transport across the Forth at Queensferry for pilgrims to St Andrews, there is ample evidence that the shrine of St Andrew at what was still called Kilrimont was already a popular pilgrimage centre, whose fame had spread throughout Scotland and further afield. Another King Constantine, son of Áed, retired to the monastic life there in 952; his son, Indulf, died there in 965, as did an Irish prince called Áed, 'in pilgrimage' in 965. By the eleventh century, that older place-name was being superseded by the name of the Apostle himself.

Although St Andrew was to become the patron saint of the macMalcolm dynasty - just as Columba had been that of the mac Alpin line before it - the substitution was never total. Queen Margaret enjoyed a reputation long after her death as the rebuilder of lona as well as the patron of pilgrims of the Apostle. Donald Ban, brother of Malcolm Canmore, was the last Scots King to be buried on lona but the usual burial place for kings of Scots from 1107 onwards was at Dunfermline rather than St Andrews. Thus the identification of Columba with the Celtic church and St Andrew with the new practices of western Christendom introduced in their various forms in the twelfth century was never absolute. It was significant that the establishment of a second route for pilgrims to St Andrews across the Forth, between North Berwick and Ardross, known as the Earl's Ferry, was the work of the premier native noble of the mid-twelfth century, Duncan, Earl of Fife. As in secular politics, a balance between old and new was struck within the Church - in piety and its saints as much as in its organisation. It was a hybrid Church for a hybrid people.