Mythological Research: Devastating Dragons

It’s been a while since my last research post; I wanted to make those kind of posts a regular thing. But stuff happened, and long story short, I wasn’t able to. Well, this is me trying to amend for that, and I’m doing it explosively.

You read the title, and yup, that's right. This one is all about the big, the bad, and the awesome… dragons.

BOO

Smaug is all the rage these days, and you can’t argue his popularity. He’s big, he’s bad, he single claw-dedly (fang-dedly?) drove out every dwarf from their home in the mountain Erebor, and made their pile of gold his personal couch. What’s not to like?

The Hobbit was written almost 80 years ago, and Smaug certainly wasn’t by the last dragon to be written about since then… but neither was it the first. Dragon lore has existed since pretty much ancient times, and out of curiosity and boredom, I went off and researched what I could find online.

Basically, the first thing to ask is, “What is a dragon?”

The answer, believe it or not, varies.

The Ancient Greeks spoke of drakens, which were more likely than not large serpents, some of which had wings, some of which breathed fire, and all of which were poisonous. They’re littered all around Greek mythology, and one might even suggest that the only reason Greeks believed in dragons was so that someone could come along and kill it.

Exhibit one, the Greek hero Heracles (Known more popularly by his Roman name, Hercules) who just happened to fight the hundred headed Ladon, a dragon that guarded the garden where that golden apple tree grew. He killed it, obviously. Heroes tend to do that kind of stuff in Greek myths.

 Then, there was the one that guarded the Golden Fleece, the Colchian Dragon, which was killed by another hero, Jason. (What did I tell you about heroes?)

Oh, yes, and let’s not forget the Hydra, which, like Ladon, had more than a dozen heads; this one, though, happened to grow two heads for every one that got cut off. Three guesses who killed it? 

That's right: Hercules. 

(Recognize the name? This dragon was what inspired the evil organization Hydra in the Marvel Comics Universe. Remember that catchphrase, “Cut off one head, and two more shall take its place?”)

Dragons in Ancient Greece were just monsters, in the end.

The ones in Europe and the Western world, however, weren’t any better.

There, dragons came to symbolize greed, power and evil; and, like the Greeks, came bundled up in stories with their own hero to destroy or be destroyed by. Unlike the Greek version though, most dragons were physically Smaug-like; four legs, bat-like wings, thick, strong tail, and a bad case of furnace breath.

In Germany, the tale of Beowulf had a fire breathing dragon that guarded vast amounts of treasure. It was this dragon, by the way, that was the inspiration for J.R.R Tolkien's Smaug in The Hobbit. Beowulf did manage to kill this beast, but in doing so, he died as well.

Scholars say that this battle, also the first piece of English literature to feature both a fire breathing dragon as well as fully fledged dragon slayer, symbolizes the fight between good and evil, and the dragon, like every other story so far, represents evil.

Then there’s the tale of Saint George and his own dragon. This legend has a princess as the bounty, rather than the usual hordes of treasure we've come to expect. (I'll leave it up to you to decide which you prefer). This is a popular story in Europe, and to those who haven’t heard it, the blue link in the first line of this paragraph will take you to it.

So, that’s Ancient Greece and Europe covered. But, according to what’s here so far, if dragons were always angry, evil and came with fixed expiry dates… where did the idea of their intelligence come from?

For that, we go to China.

Yes, I see the gears turning. Running through your mind now are all those anime that you either watch or have seen in passing that feature dragons. Anime is from Japan, and Japanese culture has much to do with dragons. But the majority of the dragon mythos in Japan matches that of China, and it’s probably since both countries are right next to each other, and the traditions and tales migrated from China into Japan.

Compared to their very much simpler variations of basically evil counterparts in Europe, dragons of China have much more depth and significance than I could go into here. Out of all the information on Chinese dragons out there, here is some what I picked out.

  

There are nine different types of dragons; and the Quilong, or Horned Dragons, are the most commonly depicted, and are the mightiest of them all. It’s strongly associated with water; apparently, this dragon can make it rain. (No, not that rain. The normal kind.With water and clouds)

All Dragons could fly, but only the Yinglong, the oldest of all eastern dragons, had wings. All dragons, winged or otherwise, were the long serpent-ey type things you see depicted on whatever it is Chinese dragons get depicted on.

 

Rawr

Worthy of special mention are the four Lóng Wáng, or the Dragon Kings.

These are dragon deities, and they could turn into human, though they were always clothed in full imperial attire and their heads still resembled dragons. These four deities each ruled one of the four Seas, and being dragons, they were worshipped and respected.

You didn’t want to get on the bad side of these kinds of dragons; they had power over air and water, and so logically, over the weather, too. Needless to say, they are wise and intelligent; and if you haven't guessed it by now, dragons have a very important part in Chinese culture.

Kind of feel sorry for the European ones now.

And that’s a fraction of what I gleaned on dragon origins. Literature has always had a fascination with dragons, and modern takes on them seem to blend both the European aspect with the Chinese. Usually, it’s by giving them the body of the standard European dragon and then the intellect of the wise, Chinese ones.

Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle does this well; the dragons in this world are powerful creatures, with long lives, superior intellect, fearsome rage, the standard fire-breathing, and of course, powerful magic.

 Magic plays an important role in the series, and dragons have the most powerful magic of all. Here, though, unlike most others, humans and elves become bonded to certain dragons through powerful magic, and once bonded, they fly with them. The Dragon Riders are the focus of the story, and that’s all I can say without going into complicated detail.

If you haven’t read them yet, I recommend you do. And don’t trust the movie. It seemed promising at the start, but it was a very, very poor representation of Eragon’s potential. 

Kilgharrah, the Great Dragon that appeared in the 2008 television series, Merlin, (voiced by John Hurt) was and still is one of my favorite iterations of a dragon. He has the familiar shape and fire-breathing ability of the dragons I grew up with, and, what sets him apart from most dragons of the era, he has both immense wisdom and powerful magic.

Kilgharrah is impossible not to love. He helps and guides the young Merlin when he can, and plays an important role in the story. Sure, there’s one time when he sort of loses it and starts burning stuff up, but you know what they say: you can’t keep a good dragon down.

Or was it “Never Tickle a Sleeping Dragon?”

In the Harry Potter mythos, dragons are just grouchy old animals looking to cook their next meal. Are they intelligent? The book “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” calls them dangerous killers, but there’s no mention of them being holders of great wisdom, benevolent or otherwise.

Maybe it’s just as well. The plot there was already complicated enough with Wizards, Death Eaters and muggles, without adding intellectual dragons to the mix.

And last, but not at all the least… 

Or, as the books go, A Song of Ice and Fire.

The dragons of Westeros are large, powerful, and above all, have strong connections to magic.

Physically, they just have two legs; the wings apparently serve as the upper limbs. Intelligence wise… so far, I don’t remember reading anything about the Dragons having conversations with anyone. Unless George R. R. Martin has something like that up his sleeve, I’d say it’s safe to say that these dragons match the European brute power and animal instincts rather than the wisdom and knowledge of Chinese Dragons.

Good thing, that. This is one series that’s already as weird enough as it can get.

And that’s a wrap.

There is still a ton of information that I intentionally left out here… there is so, so much more to dragons than this. To keep this relatively short and to not lose focus here, I just stuck to the simple stuff; but if you guys are interested in reading up more, I could do another post on the many kinds of European dragons as well as the Chinese ones later on.

Thanks for sticking this far. If you’re itching to find out more right away, there are the links at the bottom for you. If you’d rather let me do the hard work, let me know in the comments!

Sources:   

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/170779/dragon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragons_in_Greek_mythology

http://www.theoi.com/greek-mythology/dragons.html

http://monsters.wikia.com/wiki/European_Dragon

http://fantasy-faction.com/2014/european-dragons

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_dragon