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The European dragon is a legendary creature in folklore and mythology among the overlapping cultures of Europe.. The Roman poet Virgil in his poem Culex lines 163–201, [1] describing a shepherd battling a big constricting snake, calls it "serpens" and also "draco", showing that in his time the two words probably could mean the same thing.
A mad dragon which used to live in Mount Kanlaon in Negros Island. According to Hiligaynon mythology, it was defeated by the epic heroes, Laon and Kan. [29] Vietnamese dragons: Rồng or Long: A dragon that is represented with a spiral tail and a long fiery sword-fin. Dragons were personified as a caring mother with her children or a pair of ...
The medieval dragon is depicted as an evil, hideous monster always associated with evil. In Latin, draco means both dragon and serpent; the dragon is linked to the serpent and in particular to the tempter of Genesis, who drove Adam and Eve to taste the forbidden fruit. [5] Medieval encyclopedias therefore classify it as a serpent. [6]
One medieval French legend holds that, in ancient times, a fearsome dragon known as La Gargouille had been causing floods and sinking ships on the river Seine, [163] so the people of the town of Rouen would offer the dragon a human sacrifice once each year to appease its hunger. [163]
The oldest creatures outright referred to as "winged dragons" are Helios's chariot steeds, which aid Medea. In British heraldry, the term "wyver" first appears in Great Roll in 1312, and is derived from the Old French "wyvre", meaning "serpent". The term "dragon" appears by the following century.
The Historia Brittonum and History of the Kings of Britain are the only medieval texts to use the white dragon as a symbol of the English. A similar story of white and red dragons fighting is found in the medieval romance Lludd and Llefelys, although in this case the dragons are not used to symbolize Britons or Saxons. The battle between the ...
Merlin's traditional biography casts him as an often-mad cambion, born of a mortal woman and an incubus, from whom he inherits his supernatural powers and abilities. [7] His most notable abilities commonly include prophecy and shapeshifting. Merlin matures to an ascendant sagehood and engineers the birth of Arthur through magic and intrigue. [8]
Urnes-style runestone U 887, Skillsta, Sweden, showing a runic dragon and a bipedal winged dragon.. Worms, wurms or wyrms (Old English: wyrm, Old Norse: ormʀ, Old High German: wurm), meaning serpent, are archaic terms for dragons (Old English: dracan, Old Norse: dreki, Old High German: trahho) in the wider Germanic mythology and folklore, in which they are often portrayed as large venomous ...