Dragon
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
Fairy tales are more than true - "People believed in the reality of the Dragon. In the middle of the sixteenth century, the Dragon is recorded in Conrad Gesner’s Historia Animalium, a work of a scientific nature."--Book of Imaginary Beings (1957) by Jorge Luis Borges "The intensive study of dragons impressed upon me the importance of the part played by the Great Mother, especially in her Babylonian avatar as Tiamat, in the evolution of the famous wonder-beast."--The Evolution of the Dragon (1919) by Grafton Elliot Smith |
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A dragon is a legendary creature, typically with serpentine or reptilian traits, that features in the myths of many cultures. There are two distinct cultural traditions of dragons: the European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Greek and Middle Eastern mythologies, and the Chinese dragon, with counterparts in Japan, Korea and other East Asian countries.
The two traditions may have evolved separately, but have influenced each other to a certain extent, particularly with the cross-cultural contact of recent centuries. The English word "dragon" derives from Greek δράκων (drákōn), "dragon, serpent of huge size, water-snake".
European dragons
European dragons are legendary creatures in folklore and mythology among the overlapping cultures of Europe.
In European folklore, a dragon is a serpentine legendary creature. The Latin word draco, as in constellation Draco, comes directly from Greek δράκων, (drákōn, gazer). The word for dragon in Germanic mythology and its descendants is worm (Old English: wyrm, Old High German: wurm, Old Norse: ormr), meaning snake or serpent. In Old English wyrm means "serpent", draca means "dragon". Finnish lohikäärme means directly "salmon-snake", but the word lohi- was originally louhi- meaning crags or rocks, a "mountain snake". Though a winged creature, the dragon is generally to be found in its underground lair, a cave that identifies it as an ancient creature of earth. Likely, the dragons of European and Mid Eastern mythology stem from the cult of snakes found in religions throughout the world.
In Western folklore, dragons are usually portrayed as evil, with the exceptions mainly appearing in modern fiction. In the modern period the dragon is typically depicted as a huge fire-breathing, scaly and horned dinosaur-like creature, with leathery wings, with four legs and a long muscular tail. It is sometimes shown with feathered wings, crests, fiery manes, ivory spikes running down its spine and various exotic colorations. Iconically it has at last combined the Chinese dragon with the western one.
Many modern stories represent dragons as extremely intelligent creatures who can talk, associated with (and sometimes in control of) powerful magic. In stories a dragon's blood often has magical properties: for example in the opera Siegfried it let Siegfried understand the language of the Forest Bird. The typical dragon protects a cavern or castle filled with gold and treasure and is often associated with a great hero who tries to slay it, but dragons can be written into a story in as many ways as a human character. This includes the monster being used as a wise being whom heroes could approach for help and advice, so much so that they resembled Asian dragons rather than European dragons of myth.
See also
- List of dragons in mythology and folklore
- Dragons in Greek mythology
- List of fictional dragons
- Chinese dragon
- Cockatrice
- Griffin
- Guivre
- An Instinct for Dragons, hypothesis about the origin of dragon myths
- Order of the Dragon, founded in 1408 by Sigismund, King of Hungary, later Holy Roman Emperor.
- Sea monster
- Wyvern
- Zahhak (Persian dragon)
- Zilant
- Balaur
- Bat (heraldry)
- Behemoth
- Dinosaur
- Dragonology
- Feilong (mythology)
- Guivre
- Here be dragons
- Ichneumon (medieval zoology)
- Komodo dragon
- List of dragons in literature
- List of dragons in mythology and folklore
- Saint George and the Dragon
- La Sainte Marguerite (Giulio Romano)