"_The scaly monster of a dragon, coiled
Full in the central field--unspeakable,
With eyes oblique retorted, that askant
Shot gleaming fire._"
HESIOD.--"The Shield of Hercules."
The dragon is the most interesting and most frequently seen of all
chimerical figures, and it is a remarkable fact that such a creature
appears at an early period of the world's history to have been known in
the East and in countries widely separated. Long anterior to the dawn of
civilisation in the West of Europe, even in far-off China and Japan in the
extreme East of Asia we find the dragon delineated in very much the same
form in which it appears in our national heraldry.
The ancients conceived it as the embodiment of malignant and destructive
power, and with attributes of the most terrible kind. Classic story makes
us acquainted with many dreadful monsters of the dragon kind, to which
reference will afterwards be more particularly made.
It is often argued that the monsters of tradition are but the
personification of solar influences, storms, the desert wind, the great
deeps, rivers inundating their banks, or other violent phenomena of
nature, and so, no doubt, they are, and have been; but the strange fact
remains that the same draconic form with slight modifications constantly
appears as the type of the thing most dreaded, and instead of melting into
an abstraction and dying out of view, it has remained from age to age, in
form, distinctly a ferocious flying reptile, until in the opinion of many
the tradition has been justified by prosaic science. It is surprising to
find that the popular conception of the dragon--founded on tradition,
passed on through hundreds of generations--not only retains its identity,
but bears a startling resemblance to the original antediluvian saurians,
whose fossil remains now come to light through geological research, almost
proving the marvellous power of tradition and the veracity of those who
passed it on.
Mr. Moncure Conway ("Demonology, or Devil Lore") says: "The opinion has
steadily gained that the conventional dragon is the traditional form of
some huge saurian. It has been suggested that some of those extinct
saurians may have been contemporaneous with the earliest men, and that
traditions of conflicts with them, transmitted orally and pictorially,
have resulted in preserving their forms in fable proximately."
"Among the geological specimens in the British Museum," says Hugh Miller,
"the visitor sees shapes that more than rival in strangeness the great
dragons and griffins of mediæval legends; enormous jaws, bristling with
pointed teeth, gape horrid, in stone, under staring eye-sockets a foot in
diameter; and necks that half equal in length the entire body of a
boa-constrictor. And here we see a winged dragon that, armed with sharp
teeth and strong claws, has careered through the air on leathern wings
like those of a bat." We are also told in the sacred Scriptures by Moses
of "fiery serpents," and by Isaiah of "a fiery flying serpent." Other
monsters--dragons, cockatrices, and some of whose form we have no
conception--are also mentioned. Euripides describes a dragon or snake
breathing forth fire and slaughter, and rowing its way with its wings. It
is evident that such a creature may at one time have existed. Looking at
the widespread belief in dragons, there seems little doubt that the
semi-myth of to-day is the traditional successor of a really once-existent
animal, whose huge size, snake-like appearance, and possibly dangerous
powers of offence made him so terrible that the earlier races of mankind
adopted him unanimously as the most fearful embodiment of animal ferocity
to be found.
One of the latest acquisitions in the Natural History Museum, South
Kensington, is the skeleton of that enormous creature the long-limbed
dinosaur (_Diplodicus Carnegii_), recently discovered in America,
eighty-nine feet in length from the head to the tip of the tail, the huge
bulky framework of the monster measuring eleven feet in height at the
shoulder. The enormous length of its neck and tail, with relatively small
head, would indicate it to be an amphibious inhabitant of the waters,
feeding on the vegetation growing in its depths.
Mr. Moncure Conway, in his remarkable work, "Demonology, or Devil Lore,"
describes all intermediate stages between demon and devil under the head
of dragon. This he believes to be the only fabulous form which accurately
describes all the transitions. Throughout all the representations of the
dragon one feature is common, and that is the idealised serpent. The
dragon possesses all the properties of the demon along with that of
harmfulness, but differs from the devil in not having the desire of doing
evil. The dragon in mythology is the combination of every bad feature in
nature, all of which is combined into one horrible whole. "The modern
conventional dragon," says Mr. Conway, "is a terrible monster. His body is
partially green, with memories of the sea and of slime, and partly brown
or dark, with lingering shadows of storm-clouds. The lightning flames
still in his red eyes, and flashes from his fire-breathing mouth. The
thunderbolt of Jove, the spear of Woden, are in the barbed point of his
tail. His huge wings--bat-like and spiked--sum up all the mysteries of
extinct harpies and vampires. Spine of crocodile is on his neck, tail of
the serpent and all the jagged ridges of rocks and sharp thorns of jungles
bristle round him, while the ice of glaciers and brassy glitter of
sunstrokes are in his scales. He is ideal of all that is hard,
destructive, perilous, loathsome, horrible in nature; every detail of him
has been seen through and vanquished by man, here or there; but in
selection and combination they rise again as principles, and conspire to
form one great generalisation of the forms of pain, the sum of every
creature's worst."
"THE EXTERNAL FORMS OF DRAGONS are greatly dependent on the nature of the
country in which they originate. In the far north, where exist the legends
of the swan and pigeon, maidens and vampires, exists the swan-shaped
dragon. As demons of excessive heat principally existed in the south, so
in the north the great enemy of man was excessive cold. In the northern
countries is found also the serpent element, but as serpents are there
frequently harmless, this feature does not enter much into their
composition. The CUTTLEFISH is supposed to have helped in the formation of
the HYDRA, which in its turn assisted in forming the dragon of the
Apocalypse. Assyrian ideas also seem to have assisted in the pictorial
impersonations of the hydra. This many-headed monster is a representation
of a torrent, which being cut off in one direction breaks out in another.
The conflicts of Hercules with the hydra are repeated in those of the
Assyrian Bel with Trinant (the deep), and also in the contentions of St.
Michael with the dragon. The old dragon myths left in Europe were
frequently utilised by the Christians. Other saints besides St. Michael
were invested with the feats of Hercules; St. Margaret, St. Andrew, and
many others are pictured as trampling dragons under their feet. The
Egyptian dragon is based on the crocodile, and this form being received
into Christian symbolism did greatly away with other pagan monsters. The
hideousness of the crocodile and the alligator could easily be exaggerated
so as to suit the most horrible contortions of the human imagination.
Amongst the most terrible dragons is Typhon, the impersonation of all the
terrors of nature. Son of Tartarus, father of the harpies and of the
winds, he lives in the African deserts; from thence fled in fear, to
escape his terrible breath, all the gods and goddesses. He is coiled in
the whirlwind, and his many heads are symbolical of the tempest, the
scrive, the hurricane, and the tornado."
Under the head of THE COLONIAL DRAGON Mr. Conway has embodied all the
horrors and difficulties with which the early colonists would be beset.
Amongst these he places the GORGON and the CHIMERA. The most widely spread
of all is the last named, and from it is supposed that all Christian and
British dragons are descended. The Christian myth of ST. GEORGE AND THE
DRAGON is but a variation of BELLEROPHON AND THE CHIMERA, in which the
last has given place to the dragon and the pagan hero to St. George.
[Illustration: Japanese Dragon.]
"In ancient families there are usually traditions of some far-distant
ancestor having slain a desperate monster. It is always the colonial
dragon that has been borrowed by poets and romancers. THE DRAGON killed by
Guy of Warwick is but another variation of the chimera. There is again the
SOCKBURN WORM, slain by Sir John Conyers for the devouring of the people
of the neighbourhood; the well-known tradition of the LAMBTON WORM is in
reality a modification of the ARYAN DRAGON OF THE STORMCLOUD; smaller than
a man's hand he swells out to prodigious dimensions."
A favourite subject for Chinese and Japanese painting and sculpture is a
dragon very much of the same type, and a monstrous representation of a
dragon in the form of a huge Saurian still forms the central object at
Japanese festivals.
Among the Chinese the dragon is the representation of sovereignty, and is
the imperial emblem borne upon banners, and otherwise displayed as the
national ensign. To the people of that vast country it represents
everything powerful and imposing; and it plays an important part in many
religious ceremonies and observances. Dr. S. Wells Williams, the eminent
sinalogue, describes the fabulous monster of Chinese imagination in the
following passage: "There are three dragons--the _lung_ in the sky, the
_li_ in the sea, and the _kiau_ in the marshes. The first is the only
_authentic_ species according to the Chinese; it has the head of a camel,
the horns of a deer, eyes of a rabbit, ears of a cow, neck of a snake,
belly of a frog, scales of a carp, claws of a hawk, and palm of a tiger.
On each side of the mouth are whiskers, and its beard contains a bright
pearl; the breath is sometimes changed into water and sometimes into fire,
and its voice is like the jingling of copper pans. The dragon of the sea
occasionally ascends to heaven in waterspouts, and is the ruler of all
oceanic phenomena." The fishermen and sailors before venturing away from
land or returning to port, burn joss-sticks and beat gongs to ward off the
evil influences of the dragon, and it is worshipped in a variety of ways.
According to a fable current in China, the Celestial Emperor Hoang-ti was
carried up to heaven, along with seventy other persons, by a great
dragon; those who were only able to catch at his moustaches were shaken
off and thrown on the ground. It is still the custom when an emperor dies
to say that the dragon has ascended to heaven. An eclipse the simple
Celestials believe to be caused by a great dragon that seeks to devour the
sun or moon. A great noise is made by firing guns, beating drums, and the
rattling and jangling of pairs of discordant instruments to frighten the
monster away. A frequent subject of their artists is the dreadful dragon
sprawling through masses of curling clouds in the act of grasping at or
swallowing the great luminary, a subject which no doubt bears a deeper
meaning than we see, and one intimately connected with their mythology.
[Illustration: JAPANESE IMPERIAL DEVICE. The Dragon, the Ho-Ho, or
Phœnix, and the Chrysanthemum.]
In some of their splendid festivals the worship of the dragon is
celebrated with great excitement and furore. On the Canton river a boat of
immense length formed like a dragon in many wondrous folds, rowed by fifty
or more natives, with wild music and dancing, and accompanied by a crowd
of junks; the unfurling of sails and the streaming of flags from the
masts, the beating of drums, the noise and smoke from the firing of guns,
all exhibit the fondness of a people for the pleasures of a national
holiday.
_Dragon's Teeth._--Cadmus slew the dragon that guarded the well of Ares,
and sowed some of the teeth, from which sprang up the armed men who all
killed each other except five, who were the ancestors of the Thebans.
Those teeth which Cadmus did not sow, came to the possession of Ætes, King
of Colchis; and one of the tasks he enjoined on Jason was to sow these
teeth and slay the armed warriors that rose therefrom. The frequent
allusion to the classic term _dragon's teeth_ refers to subjects of civil
strife; whatever rouses citizens to rise in arms.
The mythical dragon has left the lasting impress of his name in various
ways in our language and literature, as in the art of nearly every
country.
Ω _Dragon's Head_ and ℧ _Dragon's Tail_.--In astronomy _Nodes_ are the
opposite points in which the orbit of a planet, or of a moon, crosses the
ecliptic. The ascending node marked by the character (Ω), termed the
_Dragon's head_, is where the planet or moon ascends from the south to the
north side of the ecliptic, and the descending node indicated by the
character (℧) the _Dragon's tail_ is where it passes from the north to the
south side.
_Draco_, a constellation in the northern hemisphere, representing the
monster that watched the golden apples in the garden of the Hesperides,
slain by Hercules, and set as a constellation in the heavens.
_Draco volens_, a meteor sometimes visible in marshy countries--_Ignus
fatuus_, or will-o'-the-wisp.
_Draco volens_, or flying dragon, a curious class of saurian reptiles
peculiar to the East Indies, having membranous attachments to their limbs,
which give them the appearance of flying as they leap from tree to tree.
_Dragon's blood_, a vegetable balsam of a dark red colour brought from
India, Africa, and South America. So called from its resemblance to dried
and hardened masses of blood.