Chief among Dragon-slayers of Christian legend we find the following:
St. Philip the Apostle is said to have destroyed a huge dragon at Hierapolis, in Phrygia.
St. Michael, St. George, St. Margaret, Pope Sylvester, St. Samson, Archbishop of Dol; Donatus (fourth century), St. Clement of Metz, all killed dragons—if we may trust old legends.
St. Keyne of Cornwall slew a dragon.
St. Florent killed a terrible dragon who haunted the Loire.
St. Cado, St. Maudet and St. Paull did similar feats in Brittany.
The town of Worms (famous as the place at which the Diet of Worms was held before which the reformer Luther was summoned) owes its name to the “Lind-wurm” or dragon there conquered by the hero Siegfried as related in the “Nibelungen Lied.” (See p. 100.)
Drachenfels, on the Rhine (Dragon Rocks), is so called from the same monster; and at Arles and Rouen legends are preserved of victories gained by saints over the Tarasque and Gargouille, both local names for the dragon. St. Martha conquered the fabulous Tarasque of the city of Languedoc, which bears the name of “Tarascon.” Gargouille (waterspout) was the great dragon that lived in the Seine, ravaged Rouen, and was slain by St. Romanus, Bishop of Rouen, in the seventh century. The latter name has come down to us in the term “gargoyle,” applied to the monstrous heads which often decorate the waterspouts of old churches.
A strange relic of the ancient faith is perpetuated in the remains of early Celtic art in the curiously wrought interlaced monsters which form the chief ornament of ancient Irish crosses, and particularly in the borders and initials of illuminated manuscripts, whose spirals and interminable interlacements of the most complex character, often allied with equally strange colouring, form a style perfectly unique in itself, and unlike any other; the elaborate knots terminating in draconic heads, and with wings and animal extremities in wonderfully ingenious patterns that seem almost beyond the limits of human ingenuity. In the kindred art of Scandinavia we find similar decoration founded on serpentine forms.
Another survival of the dragon myth exists in the name given to some of our fighting men on the introduction of firearms. A kind of blunderbus gave to the troops who used it the name of “dragoniers,” whence is derived the well-known term dragoons. They used to be armed with dragons—i.e., short muskets—which spouted fire, like the fabulous beast so named. The head of a dragon was wrought on the muzzles of these muskets. We have all heard of the Dragonades, a series of persecutions by Louis XIV., which drove many thousands of Protestants out of France—and out of the world. Their object was to root out “heresy.” A bishop, with certain ecclesiastics, was sent to see if the heretics would recant; if not they were left to the tender mercies of the Dragonniers, who followed these “ministers of peace and good will to men.” The same game of conversion was practised by the Reformed Church upon the Presbyterians of Scotland, with its accompaniment of “dragons let loose”—in which Claverhouse took a leading part.
“In mediæval alchemy the dragon seems to have been the emblem of Mercury; hence the dragon became one of the ‘properties’ of the chemist and apothecary, was painted upon his drug pots, hung up as his sign, and some dusty stuffed crocodile hanging from the ceiling in the laboratory had to do service for the monster, and inspire the vulgar with a profound awe of the mighty man who had conquered the vicious reptile.”6
When apothecaries’ signs were not derived from heraldry, they were used to typify certain chemical actions. In an old German work on alchemy one of the plates represents a dragon eating his own tail; underneath are the words which, translated, signify: “This is a great wonder and very strange; the dragon contains the greatest medicament,” and much more of similar import.
The Dragon in the Royal Heraldry of Britain
“Advance our standards, set upon our foes,
Our ancient word of courage fair Saint George
Inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons.”
“Richard III.,” Act v. sc. 3.
“Come not between the dragon and his wrath.”
“King Lear,” Act i. sc. 2.
The dragon does not seem to have been a native emblem with the Romans, and when they adopted it it was only as a sort of subordinate emblem—the eagle still holding the first place. It seems to have been in consequence of their intercourse with other nations either of Pelasgic or Teutonic race. Amongst all the new races which overran Europe at the termination of the classical period the dragon seems to have occupied nearly the same place that it held in the earlier stages of Greek life. Among the Teutonic tribes which settled in England the dragon was from the first a principal emblem, and the custom of carrying the dragon in procession with great jollity on May eve to Burford is referred to by old historians. The custom is said by Brand also to have prevailed in Germany, and was probably common in other parts of England.
Nor was the dragon peculiar to the Teutonic races. Amongst the Celts it was the symbol of sovereignty, and as such was borne on the sovereign’s crest. Mr. Tennyson’s “Idylls” have made us familiar with “the dragon of the great Pendragonship” blazing on Arthur’s helmet as he rode forth to his last battle, and “making all the night a stream of fire.” The fiery dragon or drake and the flying dragon of the air were national phenomena of which we have frequent accounts in old books.
The Irish drag means “fire,” and the Welsh dreigiaw (silent flashes of lightning) “fiery meteors”; hence Shakespeare says:
“Swift, swift, ye dragons of the night!—that dawning
May bare the raven’s eye.”
Cymbeline, ii. 2.
A principal source of the Dragon legends in these countries is the Celtic use of the word “dragon” for “a chief.” Hence Pen-dragon (sumus rex), a sort of dictator in times of danger. Those knights who slew a chief in battle slew a dragon, and the military title soon got confounded with the fabulous monster. The name or title Pendragon (dragon’s head) was among British kings and princes what Bretwalda was among the Saxons; and his authority or supremacy over the confederation was greater or less according to his valour, ability, and good fortune. Arthur succeeded his father Uther, and was raised to the pendragonship in the first quarter of the sixth century.
The dragon was a symbol among the heathen. One of the sons of Odin was thus invoked: “Child of the Dragon, Son of Conquest, arise! grasp thy silver spear; thy snowy steed prepare and haste thee to the strife of the shield! Uprise thou Dragon of Onslaught!” And again:
“Wave high the dragon’s flaming sign,
Roll wide the shout of glee;
Ho! conquest ope thy crimson gates
This day I give to thee.”
“The Dragon of the Shield struck his sounding war-board with his ponderous spada. The fierce-browed children of Hilda gathered round at the signal.”
Maglocue, a British king who was a great warrior and of a remarkable stature, whose exploits had rendered him terrible to his foes, as a surname was called “The Dragon of the Isle,” perhaps from his seat in Anglesey.
Dragon Standard.
From the Bayeux Tapestry.
Cuthred, King of Wessex, bore a dragon on his banner. A dragon was also the device of the British King Uther Pendragon, or Dragon’s-head, father of that King Arthur of chivalric memory, who so bravely withstood the incursions of the Saxons. Two dragons addorsed—that is, back to back—are ascribed to Arthur, as well as several other devices.
Dragon’s Hill, Berkshire, is where the legend says St. George killed the dragon. A bare place is shown on the hill where nothing will grow, and there the blood ran out. In Saxon annals we are told that Cedric, founder of the West Saxon kingdom, slew there Naud, the pendragon, with 5000 men. This Naud is called Natan-leod, a corruption of Naud-an-ludh; Naud, the people’s refuge.7
“It has sometimes been thought,” says Miss Millington, “that the royal Saxon banner bore a dragon; certain it is, that on the Bayeux tapestry a dragon raised upon a pole is constantly represented near a figure, whilst the words ‘Hic Harold’ prove to be intended for Harold; yet Matthew of Westminster, in describing a battle fought in the time of Edward I., says that the place of the king was ‘between the dragon and the standard,’ which seems to imply that the standard or banner had some other device. The dragon was perhaps a kind of standard borne to indicate the presence of the king. Henry III. carried one at the Battle of Lewes, fought against Simon de Montfort in 1264:
“‘Symoun com to the feld,
And put up his banere;
The king schewed forth his scheld,
His dragon full austere.’
It was not, however, at that time restricted to the King, for Simon himself in the same battle
“‘Displaied his banere, lift up his dragoun.’
The English at the Battle of Crecy carried a ‘burning dragon, made of red silk adorned and beaten with very broad and fair lilies of gold, and broidered about with gold and vermilion.’ This banner,” adds Miss Millington, “perhaps resembled that used by the Parthians and Dacians, which is described by Ammianus Marcellinus as ‘a dragon, formed of purple stuff, resplendent with gold and precious stones fixed on a long pike, and so contrived that when held in a certain manner, with its mouth to the wind, the entire body became inflated, and stretched its sinuous length upon the air.’”
“The dragon,” says Mr. Planché, “was the customary standard of the kings of England from the time of the Conquest. It was borne in the battle between Canute and Edmund Ironside; it is figured in the Bayeux tapestry, and there are directions for making one in the reign of Henry III., but it never formed a portion of their armorial bearings, i.e., as a charge upon the shield of arms.”
Henry VII., first of the Tudor line, assumed as one of his badges the red dragon of Cadwallader—“Red dragon dreadful.” Henry claimed an uninterrupted descent from the aboriginal princes of Britain, Arthur and Uther, Caradoc, Halstan, Pendragon, &c. His grandfather, Owen Tudor, bore a dragon as his device in proof of his descent from Cadwallader, the last British prince and first King of Wales (678 a.d.), the dragon being the ensign of that monarch. At the Battle of Bosworth Field Henry bore the dragon standard. After the battle of Bosworth Field Henry went in state to St. Paul’s, where he offered three standards. On one was the image of St. George, on the other a “red fierce dragon beaten upon green and white sarsenet” (the livery colours of the House of Tudor); on the third was painted a dun cow upon yellow tartan,—the dun cow, in token of his descent from Guy Earl of Warwick, who had slain
“A monstrous wyld and cruelle beaste
Called ye dun cow of Dunsmore Heath.”
The dun cow is still one of the badges of the Guards. This monarch founded the office of Rouge dragon pursuivant on the day before his coronation (October 29, 1485). Henry VII., Henry VIII., Edward V., Mary and Elizabeth all carried the dragon as a supporter to the royal arms, but varied in position, and at times superseded by a greyhound. (A greyhound argent, collared or, the collar charged with a rose gules, was a Lancastrian badge.) Henry VIII. used for supporters the red dragon and white greyhound of his family; a red dragon and a lion gardant gold, sometimes crowned; at other times a silver greyhound and a golden lion, an antelope, a white bull, a cock, &c. On the union of Scotland and England under King James, the Scottish unicorn was substituted for the sinister supporter, while the lion gardant, first adopted by Henry VIII., appears to have permanently superseded the red dragon of Wales, the white greyhound, &c., as the other supporter of the royal arms, the dragon being relegated to be the special badge of the principality of Wales, which position it still retains. The present royal badges, as settled at the union, 1801, are:
Richard III. as a badge had a black dragon. “The bages that he beryth by the Earldom of Wolstr (Ulster) ys a blacke dragon,” derived through his mother from the De Burghs, Earls of Ulster.
Mallet, in his “Northern Antiquities,” states “that the thick misshapen walls winding round a rude fortress at the summit of a rock were called by a name signifying dragon, and as women of distinction were, during the ages of chivalry, commonly placed in such castles for security, thence arose the romances of princesses of great beauty being guarded by dragons, and afterwards delivered by young heroes who could not achieve their rescue until they had overcome their terrible guardians.” The common heraldic signification of a dragon is one who has successfully overcome such a fortress, or it denotes the protection afforded to the helpless by him to whom it was granted, and the terror inspired in his foes by his doughty or warlike bearing. It was a title of supreme power among the early British.
A Dragon passant.
The dragon has always been an honourable bearing in British armoury, in some instances to commemorate a triumph over a mighty foe, or merely for the purpose of inspiring the enemy with terror. This seems to have been especially the case with the dragon standard—the “red dragon dreadful” of Wales (y Ddraig Coch) described as:
“A dragon grete and grimme
Full of fyre and eke venymme.”
The Crocodile as the Prototype of the Dragon
In the existing representatives of the antediluvian saurians, the crocodile and alligator, we see the prototypes of the dragons and hydras of poetic fancy. The crocodile is a well-known huge amphibious reptile, in general contour resembling a great lizard covered with large horny scales that cannot be easily pierced, except underneath, and reaching twenty-five to thirty feet in length. The crocodile was held sacred by the ancient Egyptians, the Nile was and is its best-known habitat; it is also found in the rivers of the Indian seas. Though an awkward creature upon land, it darts with rapidity through the water after fish, which is its appropriate food, but it is dangerous also to dogs and other creatures, as well as to human beings entering the water or lingering incautiously on the bank.
It is the Lacerta crocodilus of Linnæus, from Greek κροκοδειλος (krokodeilos) a word of uncertain origin. The Alligator, the American crocodile, takes its name from the Spanish El Legarto, the lizard. The Latin form is Lacertus or Lacerta.
Miss Millington, in her “Heraldry in History, Poetry and Romance,” says that both dragon and crocodile seem anciently to have been confounded under one name, and that Philip de Thaun, in his “Bestiarus,” says that “crocodille signifie diable en ceste vie.” Guillim, an old heraldic writer, says: “The dragons are naturally so hot that they cannot be cooled by drinking of waters, but still gape for the air to refresh them, as appeareth in Jeremiah xiv. 6.”
Young, author of “Night Thoughts,” in a footnote appended to the magnificent description of the leviathan (crocodile), in his paraphrase of part of the book of Job says: “The crocodile, say the naturalists, lying under water, and being there forced to hold its breath, when it emerges, the breath long repressed is hot, and bursts out so violently that it resembles fire and smoke. The horse suppresses not his breath by any means so long, neither is he so fierce and animated,” yet the most correct of poets ventures to use the same metaphor regarding him:
“Collectumque premens volvit sub naribus ignem.”
The Heraldic Dragon
The mythical dragon is represented in heraldic art with the huge body of the reptile saurian type covered with impenetrable mail of plates and scales, a row of formidable spines extending from his head to his tail, which ends in a great and deadly sting; his enormous jaws, gaping and bristling with hideous fangs, belch forth sparks and flame; his round luminous eyes seem to shoot gleaming fire; from his nose issues a dreadful spike. He is furnished with sharp-pointed ears and a forked tongue, four sturdy legs terminating in eagle’s feet strongly webbed, clawing and clutching at his prey. Great leathern bat-like wings armed with sharp hook’s points, complete his equipment. The wings are always “endorsed,” that is, elevated and back to back.
Crest, a Dragon’s Head erased collared and chained.
The dragon of our modern books of heraldry is a miserable impostor, a degenerate representative of those “dragons of the prime, that tore each other in their slime.” It is curious to note in this the gradual degradation from the magnificent saurian type of the best period of heraldic art to a form not far removed from that given to an ordinary four-legged creature covered with plates and scales. His legs are longer and weaker, his mighty caudal appendage, shrunk to insignificant and useless proportion, and most unlike his ancient prototype the crocodile. This error of our modern heraldic artists displays remarkable lack of proper knowledge of this mythical creature and his attributes. Such a splendid creation of the fancy should not be represented in such a weak and meaningless form by the hands of twentieth-century artists. The ancient form is infinitely to be preferred as a work of symbolic art.
Arms of the City of London.—Two dragons are the supporters of the arms of the City of London, the crest a dragon’s sinister wing. They are thus blazoned: Argent a cross gules, in the first quarter, a sword in pale point upwards of the last. Supporters, on either side a dragon with wings elevated and addorsed, argent, and charged on the wing with a cross gules.
The crest is a dragon’s sinister wing charged with a similar cross.
The County of Chester has for its supporters two dragons, each holding an ostrich feather.
Basingstoke, Linlithgow and Dumfries on the town seals have St. Michael overthrowing the dragon (see p. 72).
The dragon appears in various forms in the arms of many towns, and also in those of some peers.
Sinister supporter of the arms of Viscount Gough.
One of the most extraordinary and elaborate coats of arms of modern times is that of Viscount Gough. The sinister supporter of the shield is a dragon (intended to represent the device upon a Chinese flag). A dragon or, gorged with a mural crown sable, inscribed with the word “China,” and chained gold.
Examples vary considerably in the form of the dragon, some early examples represent it to have four legs, others with only two, when it is properly a wyvern. The pendent “George” in the Order of the Garter represents it with a body similar to a crocodile, winged and covered with plates and scales.
A similar device to that of the George noble of Henry VIII. was the St. George slaying the dragon by Pistrucci, a foreigner employed at the mint. This handsome reverse, says Mr. Noel Humphrey, “Coin Collector’s Manual,” is nearly a copy from a figure in a battle-piece on an antique gem in the Orleans collection, but several Greek coins might equally well have furnished the model. Old George III. sovereigns and five-shilling pieces have this most finely conceived and executed device on the reverse of the coins. It also appears upon some sovereigns of Queen Victoria. Prominence is naturally given to the figure of St. George, the dragon in consequence being diminished in its relative size.
The Hydra
“Seven great heads out of his body grew,
An iron breast, and back of scaly brass;
And all imbrued in blood his eyes did shine as glass,
His tail was stretched out in wondrous length.”
Spenser, “Faerie Queen,” Book i. c. vii.
The hydra is represented in heraldry as a dragon with seven heads; it is not of frequent occurrence as a bearing in armory.
Hercules and the Lernean Hydra. From Greek vase.
The terrible dragon, with one hundred heads, that guarded the golden apples of the Hesperides, slain by Hercules, was celebrated in classic mythology; so was the Lernean hydra, a monster of the marshes that ravaged the country of Lerna in Argolis, destroying both men and beasts. The number of its heads varies with the poets, though ancient gems usually represent it with seven or nine. Hercules was sent to kill it as one of his twelve labours. After driving the monster from its lair with arrows he attacked it with his sword, and in place of each head he struck off two sprang up. Setting fire to a neighbouring wood with the firebrands he seared the throat of the Hydra until he at length succeeded in slaying it. The fable is usually referred to in illustration of a difficulty which goes on increasing as it is combated. (See page 63.)
“Whereon this Hydra son of war is born
Whose dangerous eyes may well be charmed asleep.”
Henry IV. part ii. sc. 2.
The Hydra.
The Lernean hydra, the watchful dragon of the garden of the Hesperides, the many-headed Naga or snake of the Hindu religion, are, say learned writers, only some of the many forms under which the relics of the ancient serpent-worship exhibited itself.
A hydra, wings endorsed vert, scaled or, is the crest of Barret of Avely, Essex. It is also borne by the names Crespine and Downes.
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