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| Dragon copyright Susan Morrison Jones |
What on earth is the Welsh Dragon based on..........
Most of modern day hypothesis believe that a dragon is
really some sort of pre historic animal which has survived the many climatic
changes and the centuries that have passed.
In Celtic myth and legend, it is possible that mountains
could be perceived as the back bone of a mythical beast. Stories of monsters
that flew and ate large animals, predators from an ancient memory perhaps.
Earthquakes and aftershocks could be perceived by an
uneducated, unawares peoples as a large monster underground roaring its head
off.
But as the Dragon is the effigy on the welsh Flag, it has a
more ingrained importance to its peoples.
The myths, the legends of Dragons being living creatures in
Welsh lands are numerous with the word Ddraig or draig being the Welsh for
Dragon. Goch means red and the Ddraig Goch
(red dragon pronounced Draig Gox)) is the heraldic emblem on the Welsh
flag.
From The Book of the Three Dragons to the Mabinogian the
dragon is featured as a part of myth, legend and simple storylines.
Are there other possibilities to add to the truths of
dragons in Wales?
The prehistoric bones of Giant Bears, Lions Leopards and
enormous rhinoceros have been found in Wales. Could our ancient Welsh, with no
understanding of such animals have simply decided the rhinoceros’ teeth which
are huge flat and triangular be those of the mythical dragon? did the enormous
thigh bone of an ancient giant bear look more like a dragon’s thigh to those
people. If you have no real references it is a possibility I suppose.
Dracoraptor hanigani, dates back 201 million years and is
one of the oldest known Jurassic dinosaurs. Remains of this dinosaur (a
juvenile one) were discovered in Wales in 2014, who is to say if such bones
were found back in the 5th century to give rise to the idea of dragons.
Such thoughts continue unabated. I pounce on new writings,
articles and the like if they mention Dragons, looking for something to explain
where the myth started and why it became so important.
I've read so many fables, legends and stories, books and
extracts i could probably write my own book but here, in this part of my quest
for knowledge it is the word Pendragon that began my first thoughts.
Pen is welsh, no doubt about it, it means Head as in the top
man, the head of the dragon I suppose but the English didn't record Uther as
Pendraig they used the term Pendragon, perhaps arbitrarily deciding it read
more romantically. More inspiringly.
Pendraig is the proper name and Draig (dragon) was a term
for the most fearful, the most dominant and I suppose makes sense in that way
as a title for a Prince or a King. Perhaps as recording Uther as the Pendraig
the English wished to display his fearful strengths and capabilities and his
infamous raging temper.
Killing a Dragon, the stories of so many Knights tales, may
actually be no more than a mixed up record and fable of a Knight killing a
despot of a ruler a Draig whose ruler ship was both cruel and bloody. Perhaps
that is why we don't find a dragon’s skeleton somewhere in the land, we, the
English and the Romans didn't understand what was meant by Draig.
But that would have been such a poor storyline wouldn't it.
Historically, most of the rulers of any country or tribe appeared to have been
very strong, quite cruel to our modern way of thinking. But a story about a
beast, legendary creature with flames and huge teeth, that was worthy of
telling.
In Wales the sea mists can roll across the Llyn in seconds,
they still call it the Dragons Breath in some places. The curling mists from
the valleys can be seen stealing down the land, rising from streams in a
curling wispy trail like some huge beast breathing out smoke.
All these 'little' things combine to make a body of thoughts
that don't take a heap of imagination to turn into the fable of a true dragon.
A winged beast, capable of breathing fire and flying across the land, hiding
itself in the mountains and the deep caves around the country.
But in our old books there are references to other things
that might add a little to the myth.
Mythical Monsters, by Charles Gould, [1886]
Thus, the author of British Goblins suggests that for the
prototype of the red dragon, which haunted caverns and guarded treasures in
Wales, we must look in the lightning caverns of old Aryan fable, and deduces
the fire-darting dragons of modern lore from the shining hammer of Thor, and
the lightning spear of Odin.
The stories of ladies guarded by dragons are explained on
the supposition * that the ladies were kept in the secured part of the feudal
castles, round which the walls wound, and that an adventurer had to scale the
walls to gain access to the ladies; when there were two walls, the authors of
romance said that the assaulter overcame two dragons, and so on. St. Romain,
when he delivered the city of Rouen from a dragon which lived in the river Seine,
simply protected
p. 201
the city from an overflow, just as Apollo (the sun) is
symbolically said to have destroyed the serpent Python, or, in other words,
dried up an overflow. And the dragon of Wantley is supposed by Dr. Percy to
have been an overgrown rascally attorney, who cheated some children of their
estates, but was compelled to disgorge by a gentleman named More, who went
against him armed with the "spikes of the law," whereupon the
attorney died of vexation.
The dragon plays an important part in Celtic mythology.
Among the Celts, as with the Romans, it was the national standard.
While Cymri's dragon, from the Roman's hold
Spread with calm wing o’er Carduel's domes of gold. *
The fables of Merllin, Nennius, and Geoffry describe it as
red in colour, and so differing from the Saxon dragon which was white. The hero
Arthur carried a dragon on his helm, and the tradition of it is moulded into
imperishable form in the Faerie Queen. A dragon infested Lludd's dominion, and
made every heath in England resound with shrieks on each May-day eve. A dragon
of vast size and pestiferous breath lay hidden in a cavern in Wales, and
destroyed two districts with its venom, before the holy St. Samson seized and
threw it into the sea.
In Celtic chivalry, the word dragon came to be used for
chief, a Pendragon being a sort of dictator created in times of danger; and as
the knights who slew a chief in battle were said to slay a dragon, this
doubtless helped to keep alive the popular tradition regarding the monster
which had been carried with them westward in their migration from the common
Aryan centre.
WELSH ROMANCES AND ENGLISH LEGENDS
Celtic invaders from the continent possessed themselves of
Ireland, Cornwall, Wales and western Scotland, even before the beginning of the
Christian era, expelling or absorbing the previous native occupants, also many
savage notions. They brought with them, and all sections share the substructure
of, a body of faiths and fancies, poetic and superstitious, engaging demonic
creatures, supermen and personifications of nature, that form a more or less
unified mythology known to antiquarians as the great Celtic dragon-myth. Its
stories, in which prehistoric fiction and legendary or real incidents and
personages are inextricably mingled, abound in giants, semi-human ogres,
serpents and dragons of land, water and air, sea-monsters, mermaids and
fairies. J. F. Cambell has devoted a whole book to this matter, and an awesome
belief in much of its mystery still lingers among the peasantry about the Irish
lakes, in the glens of wilder Wales, and among the lochs and sea-isles of
Scotland. Dreadful 'warrums,' half fish, half dragon, still inhabit some Irish
lakes, while on others the boatmen will speak with bated breath of monstrous
beasts that formerly lurked in their depths; and the 'water-horses' of certain
Scottish lochs are near cousins to them.
these are just two examples of older books which mention our
dragon myth or legend as part of a cultural heritage.
Many such books exit. A search through ancient library collections
brings a hoard of treasure of such stories.
Arthur is said to have used the Cross of Christ on a banner
into battle. He would have had to represent two separated people, the Pagan and
the Christian, he reportedly did so by wearing emblems of both paths. A red
dragons image on his helmet and a banner for the army to see from afar.
Romantic writers create myths to make stories nicer, more acceptable or
readable to a people who had no TV or film, but waited for a book, a tale from
the Druid or a whispered terrorising from a sibling when they had gone to bed.
the scarier the better as long as love featured in it somewhere. People the
world over still 'go' for the same kind of stimulation.
Just a little aside: -
My Father was what is known as a Shot firer, it meant he
would go down into the Coal Pit and explode part of the earth to reveal a seam
of coal. One such incident occurred and the seam was not coal, but a fault line
which dispersed a vast amount of water from an underground source, into the pit
itself. The men barely escaped with their lives. My Father called the fault
Roaring Meg, he told me it was the name for the 'old dragon fault' from the
Llyn Peninsular, through Snowdonia and up into the area now known as
Merseyside.
Robert Holdsworth, a structural geologist at Durham
University, says the Llyn peninsula earthquakes are an enigma to researchers:
"This area seems to be a hotspot for tremors. It's part of a wider band of
activity that spreads from north Wales, up through north-west England into
Scotland. We don't really understand what's causing them, unlike, say, the San
Andreas fault line in California, which lies on a plate boundary. And we don't
understand why they localise where they do."
The Llyn is known locally as 'the arm of Wales though’. Some
would romanticise a bit and call it the dragons tail'... which I doubt but then...who’s to say
otherwise
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