Wyvern/ Western Dragon-Bird Information

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_dragon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guivre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyvern
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilisk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockatrice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aitvaras
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dragons_in_mythology_and_folklore

Owing to the constant interest in the topic by "Troodon Man," I am reviewing the information on the European dragons, Wyverns and dragon-birds, to be written up in a longer detailed article to follow. I have two preliminary scale reconstructions I am working on below with the green form centered in Western Europe from Spain and Portugal to Wales and England, and central Europe and the red phase in Eastern Europe from the Baltic to the Balkans and including also Russia and Turkey. The head seems to have little hornlike extensions similar to what is seen in some other types of pheasants, and it seems that both the longer wing and tail feathers are marked with eyespots (ocelli)

 

 

European dragons
Catalan dragon	drac	Catalan dragons are serpent-like creatures with two legs (rarely four) and, sometimes, a pair of wings. Their faces can resemble that of other animals, like lions or cattle. They have a burning breath. Their breath is also poisonous, the reason by which dracs are able to rot everything with their stench. A víbria is a female dragon.[NOTE: Also includes local 2-footed Tatzelwurm variant]
French dragons	Dragon	Authors tend often to present the dragon legends as symbol of Christianity's victory over paganism, represented by a harmful dragon. The French representation of dragons spans much of European history, and has even given its name to the dragoons, a type of cavalry.
Sardinian dragon	scultone	The dragon named "scultone" or "ascultone" appears in legends in Sardinia, Italy. It had the power to kill human beings with its gaze. It was a sort of basilisk, lived in the bush and was immortal.
Scandinavian & Germanic dragons	Lindworm	Lindworms are serpent-like dragons with either two or no legs. In Nordic and Germanic heraldry, the lindworm looks the same as a wyvern. The dragon Fafnir was a lindworm.
English dragons	Wyvern	Wyverns are common in medieval heraldry. Their usual blazon is statant. Wyverns are normally shown as dragons with two legs and two wings.
Welsh dragons	Y Ddraig Goch	In Welsh mythology, after a long battle (which the Welsh King Vortigern witnesses) a red dragon defeats a white dragon; Merlin explains to Vortigern that the red dragon symbolizes the Welsh, and the white dragon symbolizes the Saxons – thus foretelling the ultimate defeat of the English by the Welsh. The ddraig goch appears on the Welsh flag [The anfac  fourlegged , non winged and the twolegged, winged creatures are separate but combined in this dragon]
The worm hill dragon		700 AD the Anglo-Saxons settled and called the hill "Wruenele" this translates as "Wruen" worm, reptile or dragon and "ele" hill. According to local folklore the hill at Knotlow was the lair of a dragon and the terraces around it were made by the coils of its tail. Knotlow is an ancient volcanic vent and this may explain the myth.
The Bignor hill dragon		There is a brief mention of a Dragon on Bignor Hill south of the village of Bignor near the famous Roman Villa, apparently "A Large dragon had its den on Bignor Hill, and marks of its folds were to be seen on the hill". Similar legends have been told of ridges around other hills, such as at Wormhill in Derbyshire.
Zomok [Hungary]		A giant winged snake, which is in fact a full-grown zomok. It often serves as flying mount of the garabonciás (a kind of magician). The sárkánykígyó rules over storms and bad weather.
sárkány		A dragon in human form. Most of them are giants with multiple heads. Their strength is held in their heads. They become gradually weaker as they lose their heads. In contemporary Hungarian the word sárkány is used to mean all kinds of dragons. [It comes from a root meaning "Lord" as in feudal]
Slavic dragons	zmey, zmiy, żmij, змей, or zmaj, or drak, or smok Smok Wawelski from Sebastian Münster's Cosmographie Universalis, 1544	Similar to the conventional European dragon, but multi-headed. They breathe fire and/or leave fiery wakes as they fly. In Slavic and related tradition, dragons symbolize evil. Specific dragons are often given Turkic names (see Zilant, below), symbolizing the long-standing conflict between the Slavs and Turks. However, in Serbian and Bulgarian folklore, dragons are defenders of the crops in their home regions, fighting against a destructive demon Ala, whom they shoot with lightning.[2][3]
Armenian dragon	Vishap	Related to European dragons
Siberian dragon	Yilbegän	Related to European Turkic and Slavic dragons
Romanian dragons	Balaur, Zburator	Balaur are very similar to the Slavic zmey: very large, with fins and multiple heads.
Chuvash dragons	Vere Celen	Chuvash dragons represent the pre-Islamic mythology of the same region.
Asturian and Leonese dragons	Cuélebre	In Asturias and León mythology the Cuélebres are giant winged serpents, which live in caves where they guard treasures and kidnapped xanas. They can live for centuries and, when they grow really old, they use their wings to fly. Their breath is poisonous and they often kill cattle to eat. Leonese language term Cuelebre comes from Latin colŭbra, i.e., snake.
Albanian Dragons	Bolla File:Bua Shpata coat of arms Bollas in the Coat of Arms of House of Bua Shpata	In the Albanian mythology Bolla (also known as Bullar in South Albania), is a type of serpentic dragon (or a demonic dragon-like creature) with a long, coiled, serpentine body, four legs and small wings in ancient Albanian folklore. This dragon sleeps throughout the whole year, only to wake on Saint George's Day, where its faceted silver eyes peer into the world. The Bolla does this until it sees a human. It devours the person, then closes its eyes and sleeps again.[4] Bolla was worshiped as the deity Boa by the ancestors of Albanians, Illyrians.[5] Bolla appears in the coat of arms of the House of Bua Shpata.
	Kulshedra	In its twelfth year, the bolla evolves by growing nine tongues, horns, spines and larger wings. At this time it will learn how to use its formerly hidden fire-breathing abilities, and is now called a kulshedra or kuçedra (hydra). The kuçedra causes droughts and lives off human sacrifices. Kulshedras are killed by Drangue, Albanian winged warriors with supernatural powers. Thunderstorms are conceived as battles between the drangues and the kulshedras.
	Dreq	Dreq is the dragon (draco) proper. It was demonized by Christianity and now is one of the Albanian names of the devil.
Portuguese dragons	Coca [ie, Cocadrille]	In Portuguese mythology coca is a female dragon that fights with Saint George. She loses her strength when Saint George cuts off one of her ears.
Greek dragons	Drákōn - δράκων	Cadmus fighting the Ismenian dragon (which guarded the sacred spring of Ares) is a legendary story from the Greek lore dating to before ca. 560–550 B.C. Greek dragons commonly had a role of protecting important objects or places. For example, the Colchian dragon watched the Golden Fleece and the Nemean dragon guarded the sacred groves of Zeus.[6] The name comes from the Greek "drakeîn" meaning "to see clearly".[7]
Tatar dragons	Zilant	Really closer to a wyvern or cockatrice, the Zilant is the symbol of Kazan. Zilant itself is a Russian rendering of Tatar yılan, i.e., snake.
Turkish dragons	Ejderha or Evren	The Turkish dragon secretes flames from its tail, and there is no mention in any legends of its having wings, or even legs. In fact, most Turkish (and later Islamic) sources describe dragons as gigantic snakes. [Actually there are two kinds, see note at end]
Lithuanian Dragons	Slibinas	This dragon is more of a hydra with multiple heads, though sometimes it does appear with one head.

ADDITIONAL  Lithuania, Latvia, Estonian and Karelian Dragons:
Ai / Aijatar / Ajatar / Ajattara / Aijo
Region: Estonia, Southern Regions
Time Period: Unknown
Sources: Giants, Monsters, and Dragons

Aitvaras
Region: Lithuania
Time Period: 1547 (first mention)
Sources: Giants, Monsters, and Dragons pg 10, Circle of the Dragon others

Notes:
• Changes appearance - indoors it's a cock, outdoors its a dragon with a fiery tail
• Can bring both good luck and bad luck to it's masters, but will bring stolen money.
• Can be purchased - the price is a soul.
• The bad news - once you have one, they're near impossible to get rid of.
• Eats omelets, eggs and neighbour's chickens
• If injured, would be healed by just touching the ground
Tale 1:
One story says that a new wife wondered by her mother-in-law's corn bin never ran out, so she took a consecrated candle and looked in the bin. There she found an Aitvaras, but the candle scared it away and it disappeared.
Tale 2:
First mentioned when a neighbor suddenly became wealthy and the others investigated
Kaukas
Region: Lithuania
Time Period: Unknown
Sources: Giants, Monsters, and Dragons

Notes:
• Flying dragon with fiery tail that also manifests as a fowl.
• Brings good fortune and stolen goods and may be the guardians of treasure

aitvaras_by_silni-d4bzn9q

Ejderha (Turkey)

 

Galician_dragon_(Medieval_Age)

Zmej-Slavic, Balkan and Central-European Dragon

 



Trento-Italy-cathedral-relief_ hunting hound_with_wyvern
This could give the approximate scale for a large pheasant-like bird as measured against an average hunting hound.
In this case it is hard to measure around the tail coil but the whole is about ten feet long..

 

Front half of dragon statue, can be considered as representing the whole of a Wyvern in  itself  by incorporating the legend this way. The Dragon of Wales started out with just the two (Front)

 legs but later added on the rear pair also, as in this statue.                     

cockatrice



St George and the Dragon, above and below

 

Turkish lore speaks of a good dragon and a bad dragon in eternal conflict, a tradition supposedly derived from Inner Asia.
http://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCkrek
Bükrek and Sangal - Altai Turks and  two dragons fighting in mythology. The conflict is reminiscent  of Yin-Yang symbol. Bukri or also known as Bukra (Bukran),  Has good qualities. Harmless to humans, or even to help. Lizard appearance. No wings, and therefore can not fly. All the seas connects the major sea (ocean) live. There is a very strong ["Water tiger"] claws and a long neck. Her voice is also very nice, and it sounds even said to the other end of the world. It is in conflict with Evil dragons who seek escape from his voice. Fought the nine-year-long war with the evil dragon Sangal and won the match. (Twist / bug / Buk) is derived from the root. Twisty, is writhing. It also embodies the meaning of strength and invincibility. In this context, Boke (hero, champion) has to do with the concept. Bogen / Böge (shaman) are also linked with the word.

It seems that the religious myths recognize a sort of long-necked sea serpent or dragon traditionally, whose name is a "String of Buoys" reference originally but which became the common term of reference for Long Necked Sea-serpent when seen around the area of modern Turkey. This is potentially useful to know. I also don't know how extensively the myth reaches into Inner Asia.

 

REPOSTING: Roman Relocations of Sirrush Dragons

My Friend Jeff Albertson was just asking about a comparison made on the Living Dinosaurs site:

To which some discussion followed:

Dale Drinnon The Mesopotamian seal is well known, and it is a Mushush or a Dragon-of-Ishtar-gate type, but identical to the Egyptian "Serpopards" at about the same date. Speculation has always been that these are representations of Mokele-mbembes. That does not rule out the possibility that they DO represent them AND the M-Ms are actually big monitor lizards

3 hours ago · Like · 2

Dale Drinnon The representation certainly look like sauropod dinosaurs, but they also are derived at a very great distance from the source and there is no reason to assume they are very accurate

3 hours ago · Like · 3

Scott Mardis There are very similar images of the Beasts of Nodens from Lyndney Park, U.K.

[Graphic unfortunately not available: reprinted in In Search of Lake Monsters and other sources]

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

 

Dale Drinnon BTW, I have a couple of blogs up on this, my guess is that the Beast of Nodens is a recycling of the same emblem used in later days by some Roman Legions. Many Roman legions used Dragons as emblems, down to just big snakes, but from the looks of things at one time some units were pushing a somehat feline-looking, long-necked and long-legged sort of dragon as their emblem. It was an unusual variation, not known in the Roman world at the time otherwise. The older forerunners for the design come from Saharan rock art. [there is an older Frontiers of Anthropology blog which remarks on this as a cultural marker]

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirrush

Sunday, 28 August 2011

More Gargoyle Dragons but Out of Africa by Way of Rome

The Peluda, The Questing Beast, and The Dragons of Nodens

...And while we are on the subject of snakeheaded and necked dragons, the Questing Beast of Arthurian tales seems to have a strongly Plesiosaurian shape without counting the feet, and there is some uncertainty as to what kind of feet it is supposed to have:
The Questing Beast seems to have been added on to Arthurian lore in the versions that were circulating in France at about 1300-1500, the end of the Middle Ages, but the type of dragon seems to be traditional in both France and England from long before then. It is a fourlegged and wingless dragon coloured like a leopard with a spotted tawny-red coat and a lighter belly: but all that goes to say is that it is very similar to the Sirrush.

The story goes that it makes a noise like a few dozen hunting dogs baying wherever it goes, which is a feature piously interpreted by the church fathers; and yet since the whole point of the story is that the creature is continually hunted but is never caught, the sound of the hunting dogs would be due to the hunting dogs that are always supposed to be pursuing it.



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



Questing Beast





From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Questing Beast, or the Beast Glatisant (Barking Beast), is a monster from Arthurian legend. It is the subject of quests undertaken by famous knights such as King Pellinore, Sir Palamedes, and Sir Percival.

The strange creature has the head and neck of a serpent, the body of a leopard, the haunches of a lion and the feet of a hart. Its name comes from the great noise it emits from its belly, a barking like "thirty couple hounds questing". 'Glatisant' is related to the French word glapissant, 'yelping' or 'barking', especially of small dogs or foxes.

The questing beast is a variant of the mythological giraffe.
[This is also said of the Sechet, Sirrush and Serpopard. It is obviously incorrect in any of those cases-DD]
The first accounts of the beast are in the Perlesvaus and the Post-Vulgate Suite du Merlin. The Post-Vulgate's account, which is taken up in Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, has the Questing Beast appear to King Arthur in Chapter 19 of Caxton's version, after he has had an affair with his sister Morgause and begotten Mordred. (They did not know that they were related when the incestuous act occurred.)

Arthur sees the beast drinking from a pool just after he wakes from a disturbing dream that foretells Mordred's destruction of the realm (no noise of hounds from the belly is emitted while it is drinking); he is then approached by King Pellinor who confides that it is his family quest to hunt the beast. After his death, Sir Palomide followed the beast....

The beast has been taken as a symbol of the incest, violence, and chaos that eventually destroys Arthur's kingdom [The many barking dogs are also said to represent individual sins-D]



Gerbert de Montreuil provides a similar vision of the Questing Beast in his Continuation of Perceval, the Story of the Grail, though he says it is "wondrously large" and interprets the noise and subsequent gruesome death by its own offspring as a symbol of impious churchgoers who disturb the sanctity of Mass by talking. Later in the Post-Vulgate, the Prose Tristan and the sections of Malory based on those works, the Saracen knight Sir Palamedes hunts the Questing Beast. It is a futile venture, much like his love for Sir Tristan's paramour Iseult, offering him nothing but hardship. In the Post-Vulgate, his conversion to Christianity allows him relief from his endless worldly pursuits, and he finally slays the creature during the Grail Quest after he, Percival and Galahad have chased it into a lake.

The Questing Beast appears in many later works as well, including stories written in French, Spanish, and Italian.
However, in a few stories, the symbolic meaning of the Questing Beast is much more benign. For example, in T.H. White's The Once and Future King, the Questing Beast is actually a misunderstood creature. There is, in fact, no good reason for Pellinore to be hunting him, and the Pellinore's long search for the beast epitomizes all the meaningless knightly pursuits encouraged by a chivalry grounded in the "might makes right" purpose.

http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/student_orgs/arthurian_legend/quests/monsters/abeasts.html




The Questing Beast looks a good deal like the Egyptian monster Ameimat here.

Amended Deviant Art Contest Submission for an Egyptian Dragon. This was the closest thing I could find to a Sechet design on the internet so I simplified the dragon to bring it in line with the original Sechet design, then added some colours to the background to make it show up better. No slight is meant on the original artist, but this Egyptian Dragon design is more authentic. The Sechet is illustrated in E.A. Budge, The Egyptian Book of the Dead, quite near the start. Like all derived creatures it is supposed to be coloured like a leopard-tawny-red with darker spots and a lighter belly. It was the colouring associated with red that made the Sirrush to be known as The Red Serpent., and the mythical multiheaded Dragon of Revelation in the Bible is also red.


A very old Saharan water-monster, 10000 years old or more, marked near a water source. these were rather along the line of bunyips and depictions of them could commonly be confused with giraffes but not always so. The long legs represented rain or flowing streams and this one has rather an ostrich head and neck with a horse's tail at the rear. Note it does have four legs. At a very early age this representational water monster became confused with the giant water-lizard or Congo Dragon (depicted in parallel usually as a recognisably llizard-shape but shown as 12 to 24 feet long to scale with human figures)
The Water Monsters here became Serpopards in earliest Egypt and Mesopotamia and identified with Sechets and Sirrushes: the original idea may have been that they were also the same as Mokele-mBembe because they were identified with control of the water supply. They are also close to some grafitti-dragons in Europe of the Megalithic age which are also four-legged and Sirrush-like: some of these show up on very old rock art in Spain. Some of the "Brontosaurs" shown on South African rock art are also basically of the Sirrush design-but NOT in Central Africa for some reason.

Pallate of Narmer being the best-known representation of "Serpopards". The Saharan Water-monsters developed a specifically-paired stylisation probably around 6000-4000 BC. At first it was the tail that went all the way around in a circle, and because the body was rather oblong with feline-like feet, this stylisation came very close to the North American representations of Water-Panthers or Mishipizhws.







The Paired-entwined-necks version is not represented exactly that way in the Sahara but it seems to borrow from the design of the cadyseus. The Saharan examples I have seen show the two bodies divided down the middle at the spine and the creatures mirror-imaged on either side: the original idea seems to have been that one of them is male and the other is female. So presumably they are "Necking" and not wrestling.

That the same design simultaneously appeared also in Mesopotamia is also significant. There is also a stylized version from the early Balkan cultures and this has the four-legged bodies forming a box, the dragon heads on either side, and a dish or basin in between.




Yet another Egyptian depiction of "Serpopards"




Sechets have several similar names in Egypt and one surprising fact is that a very similar name turns up as a sea monster in the Northwest Coast area! One of the other names in Egypt is Sent (ends in hard-t so I suppose it should be "Sentt") which means "The Terror"-presumably in reference to the fact that it is a frightening creature. The Hieroglyphic for "Sent" at one time looked very much like a Plesiosaur but later it was "corrected" to be a cooked goose!





On this seal of Tutmose III shown below the Sechet design is not standing up like a quadruped bt it is stretched out horizontally for swimming. Yet the (not nearly so log) snakelike neck, four limbs on a shorter body and this time a crocodile like tail, are all of similar proportions. The limbs are more flipperlike (the left fore one is showing on the opposite side at "a") and the whole creature is more recognisably Plesiosaurian (as indeed this example was already labelled) "c" is the creature's head turned back in a half-circle.





Several Roman Legions adoted the Dragon as their emblem: most likely it was the windsock-dragon of Dacia (that could well be the personification of a destructive comet) But in the case of legions stationed in Egypt, it seems that some soldiers used the Egyptian dragon or Sechet, the one thay was most like the Sirrush of Ishtar gate. and because of their favoritism for this emblem some unusual associations came about. One result was that Sirrush-like dragons turned up afterwards in Tang China, just about in the Dark ages BUT appearing in China at the same time as Nestorian Christians and Goddess depictions which resembled the Virgin Mary.











For those of us that read Peter Costello's book In Search of Lake Monsters the next depiction is easily recognised: the two neck-entwined dragons were found in the mosaic still preserved at a temple complex at Lydney Park in Gloucestershire. It seems Nodens was identified with Mars, the War God of the Romans, and the dragons were imported by military men (although carrying over a marine decorative theme) But it is clear the dragons are carrying on the Serpopard tradition, and some similar depictions of intertwined dragons appear so late as to be contemporary with the voyages of Christopher Columbus.









One final thing is that the four legged "Red Dragon" or Sirrush seems to be the basic underlying reason for the dragon on the flag of Wales, with only the addition of wings modifying the original design very much. If Folklore is any indication, there were originally two dragons, one white and one red, and facing each other in contention, but the red dragon supporters won out and kept their own dragon on the flag, leaving the white one off. Possibly the white dragon was originally meant to be female.

Best Wishes, Dale D.

Tarasque and Medcroc

The Tarasque is a specific sort of a dragon reported in the South of France and often traditionally identified as a sort of a crocodile. Fairytale book illustration is of recent vintage but the intention of the artist to show a crocodilelike beast is fairly clear. (Crocodiles are sometimes seen to "Blow water" like a whale upon emerging from the depths, a feature which has been used in the attempt to identify the Leviathan as a crocodile: The Leviathan was supposedly the Tarasque's father)

From Wikipedia;"A carved early Gothic column capital at the Church of St. Trophime in Arles, 14th century, depicting the Tarasque; it is one of several carvings here that show legends of local folklore as well as biblical figures"
Figure has been inverted and enlarged to show detail. Original is below text following.

Tarasque is evidently based on a very large crocodile that lives in the Mediterranean: different estimates of the size of the Tarasque range from "longer than a horse" to 30 to 50 feet long. It is also sometimes said to have "Horned" ears.

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

Legend

Legend reported among others by the Golden Legend^[2] has it that the creature inhabited the area of Nerluc in Provence, France, and devastated the landscape far and wide. The Tarasque was a sort of dragon with six short legs like a bear's, an ox-like body covered with a turtle shell, and a scaly tail that ended in a scorpion's sting. It had a lion's head.

The Tarasque was said to have come from Galatia which was the home of the legendary Bonachus, a scaly, bison-like beast which burned everything it touched. Some speculate that the story of the Bonachus may be related to either that of the Unicorn or the Phoenix [It is not: the name means "bison" and the story about its incendiary farts laying waste to the countryside is basically only a very crude joke]. The Tarasque was the offspring of the Onachus and the Leviathan of biblical account; disputably a giant sea serpent.

The king of Nerluc had attacked the Tarasque with knights and catapults to no avail. But Saint Martha found the beast and charmed it with hymns and prayers, and led back the tamed Tarasque to the city. The people, terrified by the monster, attacked it when it drew nigh. The monster offered no resistance and died there. Martha then preached to the people and converted many of them to Christianity. Sorry for what they had done to the tamed monster, the newly-Christianized townspeople changed the town's name to Tarascon.
The story of the Tarasque is also very similar to the story of Beauty and the Beast and King Kong. The monster is charmed and weakened by a woman and then killed when brought back to civilization. A similar idea is found in the myths of Enkidu and the unicorn: both are calmed by sending them a woman. The description and legend of this creature is curiously similar to other dragons of French folklore such as Gargouille and Peluda.

A carved early Gothic column capital at the Church of St. Trophime in Arles, 14th century, depicting the Tarasque; it is one of several carvings here that show legends of local folklore as well as biblical figures

As of the 1500s and 1600s, the Tarasco was commonly depicted as a simple large lizard-shaped creature

The image shown on the church column at Arles being one of the earliest known representations of the Tarasque, it should be taken as the most authoritative. Although the number of legs is not shown, the notion of the creature having six legs instead of four postdates this representation by a century or two: furthermore I am in possession of a crocodile illustration from a bestiary which shows six legs also.

http://bestiary.ca/index.html

The really identifying features on the figure are the shape of the head from the top with bulging eyes and nostrils, and the broad back with an armouring of squared scutes, common among crocodiles. Unfortunately the tail of the creature wraps around the column and cannot be seen from this view. Tarasque is a creature that is legendary in both Southern France and in adjoining Spain: one of its functions is also as a nursery bogie, and as such it is also called  Cocordrilo, Corco or Coco. Some of the more modern sightings of such French "Dragons" also say they are four legged and lizardlike. On the other hand another sighting of a "Dinosaur" seen in Italy in the 1970s could have been a MedCroc, and the press represented it as having multiple legs like the Tarasque, even though the original report did not specify the number of legs. The witness was certain it was not a crocodile but that could also mrean it was more like an Alligator.

George Eberhart, Mysterious Creatures (2002)
Tarasque DRAGON of medieval France. Etymology: From the castle of Tarascon, on the Rhône River. Alternatively, Tarascon (originally called Nerluc) is said to have taken its name from the Dragon after it was killed. Physical description: Size of an ox. Head like a lion’s. Ears like a horse’s. Hard skin, covered with spikes. Six legs. Bearlike claws. Serpentine or scorpion-like tail. Behavior: Amphibious. Sloughs its skin every seven years. Said to have caused the river to flood. Made itself a nuisance by eating people and destroying bridges. Habitat: An underwater cave near Tarascon. Distribution: The Rhône River, between Arles and Avignon, Provence, France. The ani- mal is said to have come originally from Galatia in central Turkey, which may [or may not]  indicate a Celtic origin.[Near the 'Crocodile River' in fact-DD] Significant sightings: St. Martha (a Syrian prophetess conflated with Martha, the sister of Lazarus) was said to have overcome Tarasque with holy water and the sign of the cross. There were reports of river monsters in the Rhône in 1954 and 1955. In June 1964, a long-necked SEA MONSTER was seen by Jacques Borelli at the river’s mouth. Present status:The city celebrates St. Martha’s victory over Tarasque with a festival in late June each year. Possible explanations: (1) A Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus), especially since St. Martha is associated with the Middle East. (2) An Aurochs (Bos primigenius), though this wild European bull was neither amphibious nor particularly ferocious [The Aurochs suggestion actuially goes wiith the Bonnachon and not the Tarasque. The Aurochs was indeed a very dangerous beast.-DD]. (3) Creationists have suggested that Tarasque was the Late Cretaceous dinosaur Triceratops, though the legend does not mention horns on the head. Ceratopsian dinosaurs are known only from North and South America and Asia. (4) A closer match would be a glyptodont, a large armadillo-like mammal that lived in South America until the end of the Pleistocene, 10,000 years ago. One species weighed nearly 2 tons. Glyptodonts had armored horns on their heads; huge, turtlelike shells made of bony hexagons bound together by collagen; bones at the base of the tail; and stiff, bony sheaths at the tip [But did not inhabit the Old World at any time]. (5) The theropod dinosaur Tarascosaurus salluvicus, a femur of which was discovered near Tarascon at Lambeau du Beausset in 1991, was named after Tarasque. Sources: Rabanus Maurus, The Life of Saint Mary Magdalene and of Her Sister Saint Martha: A Medieval Biography, trans. David Mykoff (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian, 1989); Louis Dumont, La Tarasque: Essai de description d’un fait local d’un point de vue ethnographique (Paris: Gallimard, 1951); Eliza Gutch, “Saint Martha and the Dragon,” Folklore 63 (1952): 193–203; Bernard Heuvelmans, In the Wake of the Sea-Serpents (New York: Hill and Wang, 1968), p. 528; Felice Holman and Nanine Valen, The Drac: French Tales of Dragons and Demons (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975), pp. 54–55; Ulrich Magin, “A Brief Survey of Lake Monsters of Continental Europe,” Fortean Times, no. 46 (Spring 1986): 52–59; Paul S. Taylor, The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Bible (San Diego, Calif.: Master Book Publishers, 1988), p. 40.

More Gargoyle Dragons but Out of Africa by Way of Rome

The Peluda, The Questing Beast, and The Dragons of Nodens



















One of the specifically-named Gargoyle-type dragons of the North of France (Loire River area) was the Peluda or La Velue, which means The Hairy One. This one had the classic Plesiosaur description of a snake's head and neck threaded through a turtle's body, but also had as a defense a back full of spines like porcupine quills. It is plain enough to see that this is another maned Merhorse only the mane is not said to be made of hair it is said to be made of spines. Actually in most traditional descriptions, the mane is said to be of (keratinized or horny) spines instead of just hair, and in our culture we tend to think of the mane like a horse's mane and assume it is made out of just hair.

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




Peluda
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Peluda (sometimes called the "Shaggy Beast" or La Velue which is French for "Hairy One") is a supposed dragon or mythical beast that terrorized La Ferté-Bernard, France, in medieval times. It is said to have come from and lived near the Huisne river near the town. Despite the French origins, its more recognized name is Occitan —or any latin origin— for "hairy". Depending on the account, it had an ox-sized porcupine-like body["Covered with porcupine quills" probably an exaggeration for "having a crest like quills". The older depictions do not make the quills cover the body-DD] . Consistently, it was said to have these poisonous stingers that it could also shoot off its body, a snake's scaly neck, head, and tail, large, tortoise-like [sea turtle like?] body and legs, and a green color.

The lore proposed that the beast was denied access to Noah's Ark, yet survived the biblical flood by seeking refuge in a cave near the Huisne River. After many years, it returned to rampage across the countryside, wilting crops with its breath and devouring both livestock and humans. It was finally defeated after it killed a man's fiancée. He tracked it down and cut off its tail. This was the only vulnerable point on the beast, and it died immediately.[Heuvelmans notes in a case of a sea-serpent report when the creature was killed and its tail brought back that the tail is the least convincing part of the body to prove the story of a horrible beast-and it indicates a hoax to his way of thinking. The same could be said in this case-Dd]

The Peluda was said to be capable of the following feats, which vary between tales:

Searing breath that could wither crops.
Firing off its quills like arrows.
Invulnerability except for its tail.
Creating floods by stepping into rivers.
A single strike from its tail was lethal to a full grown man.
Breathing out fire as a typical dragon.
Spitting out a powerful stream of water

[It seems to me this started out as a typical waterspouting Gargoyle-Dragon, with the traditional power of water control ascribed to it. It would not be the searing breath that withered crops, but the presumed ability for it to withhold rain. most of the description "which vary between tales" would be later embellishments, although I don't doubt that it could kill a man with just a stroke of its tail.-DD]

References:

Rose, Carol. Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth. W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 217, 289. ISBN 0-393-32211-4.

Shuker, Karl (1995). Dragons: A Natural History. Simon & Schuster, New York. ISBN 0-684-81443-9

The Shaggy Beast of La Ferte-Bernard, from Book of Imaginary Beings by J.L. Borges

See also: Gargouille


And while we are on the subject of snakeheaded and necked dragons, the Questing Beast of Arthurian tales seems to have a strongly Plesiosaurian shape without the quills, and there is some uncertainty as to what kind of feet it is supposed to have:
The Questing Beast seems to have been added on to Arthurian lore in the versions that were circulating in France at about 1300-1500, the end of the Middle Ages, but the type of dragon seems to be traditional in both France and England from long before then. It is a fourlegged and wingless dragon coloured like a leopard with a spotted tawny-red coat and a lighter belly: but all that goes to say is that it is very similar to the Sirrush.

The story goes that it makes a noise like a few dozen hunting dogs baying wherever it goes, which is a feature piously interpreted by the church fathers; and yet since the whole point of the story is that the creature is continually hunted but is never caught, the sound of the hunting dogs would be due to the hunting dogs that are always supposed to be pursuing it.



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



Questing Beast





From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Questing Beast, or the Beast Glatisant (Barking Beast), is a monster from Arthurian legend. It is the subject of quests undertaken by famous knights such as King Pellinore, Sir Palamedes, and Sir Percival.

The strange creature has the head and neck of a serpent, the body of a leopard, the haunches of a lion and the feet of a hart. Its name comes from the great noise it emits from its belly, a barking like "thirty couple hounds questing". 'Glatisant' is related to the French word glapissant, 'yelping' or 'barking', especially of small dogs or foxes.

The questing beast is a variant of the mythological giraffe.
[This is also said of the Sechet, Sirrush and Serpopard. It is obviously incorrect in any of those cases-DD]
The first accounts of the beast are in the Perlesvaus and the Post-Vulgate Suite du Merlin. The Post-Vulgate's account, which is taken up in Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, has the Questing Beast appear to King Arthur in Chapter 19 of Caxton's version, after he has had an affair with his sister Morgause and begotten Mordred. (They did not know that they were related when the incestuous act occurred.)

Arthur sees the beast drinking from a pool just after he wakes from a disturbing dream that foretells Mordred's destruction of the realm (no noise of hounds from the belly is emitted while it is drinking); he is then approached by King Pellinor who confides that it is his family quest to hunt the beast. After his death, Sir Palomide followed the beast....

The beast has been taken as a symbol of the incest, violence, and chaos that eventually destroys Arthur's kingdom [The many barking dogs are also said to represent individual sins-D]




Gerbert de Montreuil provides a similar vision of the Questing Beast in his Continuation of Perceval, the Story of the Grail, though he says it is "wondrously large" and interprets the noise and subsequent gruesome death by its own offspring as a symbol of impious churchgoers who disturb the sanctity of Mass by talking. Later in the Post-Vulgate, the Prose Tristan and the sections of Malory based on those works, the Saracen knight Sir Palamedes hunts the Questing Beast. It is a futile venture, much like his love for Sir Tristan's paramour Iseult, offering him nothing but hardship. In the Post-Vulgate, his conversion to Christianity allows him relief from his endless worldly pursuits, and he finally slays the creature during the Grail Quest after he, Percival and Galahad have chased it into a lake.

The Questing Beast appears in many later works as well, including stories written in French, Spanish, and Italian.
However, in a few stories, the symbolic meaning of the Questing Beast is much more benign. For example, in T.H. White's The Once and Future King, the Questing Beast is actually a misunderstood creature. There is, in fact, no good reason for Pellinore to be hunting him, and the Pellinore's long search for the beast epitomizes all the meaningless knightly pursuits encouraged by a chivalry grounded in the "might makes right" purpose.


http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/student_orgs/arthurian_legend/quests/monsters/abeasts.html

The Questing Beast looks a good deal like the Egyptian monster Ameimat here.

Amended Deviant Art Contest Submission for an Egyptian Dragon. This was the closest thing I could find to a Sechet design on the internet so I simplified the dragon to bring it in line with the original Sechet design, then added some colours to the background to make it show up better. No slight is meant on the original artist, but this Egyptian Dragon design is more authentic. The Sechet is illustrated in E.A. Budge, The Egyptian Book of the Dead, quite near the start. Like all derived creatures it is supposed to be coloured like a leopard-tawny-red with darker spots and a lighter belly. It was the colouring associated with red that made the Sirrush to be known as The Red Serpent., and the mythical multiheaded Dragon of Revelation in the Bible is also red.


A very old Saharan water-monster, 10000 years old or more, marked near a water source. these were rather along the line of bunyips and depictions of them could commonly be confused with giraffes but not always so. The long legs represented rain or flowing streams and this one has rather an ostrich head and neck with a horse's tail at the rear. Note it does have four legs. At a very early age this representational water monster became confused with the giant water-lizard or Congo Dragon (depicted in parallel usually as a recognisably llizard-shape but shown as 12 to 24 feet long to scale with human figures)
The Water Monsters here became Serpopards in earliest Egypt and Mesopotamia and identified with Sechets and Sirrushes: the original idea may have been that they were also the same as Mokele-mBembe because they were identified with control of the water supply. They are also close to some grafitti-dragons in Europe of the Megalithic age which are also four-legged and Sirrush-like: some of these show up on very old rock art in Spain. Some of the "Brontosaurs" shown on South African rock art are also basically of the Sirrush design-but NOT in Central Africa for some reason.

Pallate of Narmer being the best-known representation of "Serpopards". The Saharan Water-monsters developed a specifically-paired stylisation probably around 6000-4000 BC. At first it was the tail that went all the way around in a circle, and because the body was rather oblong with feline-like feet, this stylisation came very close to the North American representations of Water-Panthers or Mishipizhws.







The Paired-entwined-necks version is not represented exactly that way in the Sahara but it seems to borrow from the design of the cadyseus. The Saharan examples I have seen show the two bodies divided down the middle at the spine and the creatures mirror-imaged on either side: the original idea seems to have been that one of them is male and the other is female. So presumably they are "Necking" and not wrestling.

That the same design simultaneously appeared also in Mesopotamia is also significant. There is also a stylized version from the early Balkan cultures and this has the four-legged bodies forming a box, the dragon heads on either side, and a dish or basin in between.




Yet another Egyptian depiction of "Serpopards"




Sechets have several similar names in Egypt and one surprising fact is that a very similar name turns up as a sea monster in the Northwest Coast area! One of the other names in Egypt is Sent (ends in hard-t so I suppose it should be "Sentt") which means "The Terror"-presumably in reference to the fact that it is a frightening creature. The Hieroglyphic for "Sent" at one time looked very much like a Plesiosaur but later it was "corrected" to be a cooked goose!





On this seal of Tutmose III shown below the Sechet design is not standing up like a quadruped bt it is stretched out horizontally for swimming. Yet the (not nearly so log) snakelike neck, four limbs on a shorter body and this time a crocodile like tail, are all of similar proportions. The limbs are more flipperlike (the left fore one is showing on the opposite side at "a") and the whole creature is more recognisably Plesiosaurian (as indeed this example was already labelled) "c" is the creature's head turned back in a half-circle.





Several Roman Legions adoted the Dragon as their emblem: most likely it was the windsock-dragon of Dacia (that could well be the personification of a destructive comet) But in the case of legions stationed in Egypt, it seems that some soldiers used the Egyptian dragon or Sechet, the one thay was most like the Sirrush of Ishtar gate. and because of their favoritism for this emblem some unusual associations came about. One result was that Sirrush-like dragons turned up afterwards in Tang China, just about in the Dark ages BUT appearing in China at the same time as Nestorian Christians and Goddess depictions which resembled the Virgin Mary.











For those of us that read Peter Costello's book In Search of Lake Monsters the next depiction is easily recognised: the two neck-entwined dragons were found in the mosaic still preserved at a temple complex at Lydney Park in Gloucestershire. It seems Nodens was identified with Mars, the War God of the Romans, and the dragons were imported by military men (although carrying over a marine decorative theme) But it is clear the dragons are carrying on the Serpopard tradition, and some similar depictions of intertwined dragons appear so late as to be contemporary with the voyages of Christopher Columbus.









One final thing is that the four legged "Red Dragon" or Sirrush seems to be the basic underlying reason for the dragon on the flag of Wales, with only the addition of wings modifying the original design very much. If Folklore is any indication, there were originally two dragons, one white and one red, and facing each other in contention, but the red dragon supporters won out and kept their own dragon on the flag, leaving the white one off. Possibly the white dragon was originally meant to be female.

Best Wishes, Dale D.