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Post by cowboyleland on Jun 29, 2013 18:21:57 GMT -9
Here is a dragon from Le livre et la vraye hystoire du bon roy Alexandre which was apparently written in Paris between 1420 and 1425 and in now in the Royal Manuscript collection of Great Britain. I don't have the painterly skills to make an actual "back" but since it is in profile I think it works fine mirrored. dragon by cowboyleland, on Flickr
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Post by Vermin King on Jun 30, 2013 8:59:53 GMT -9
You know the first thing that hit me is that this is a four-limbed beast, two wings and two legs. So many times we think of dragons as four legs and two wings. I just thought it interesting. Good find.
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Post by cowboyleland on Jun 30, 2013 18:14:52 GMT -9
Anatomically (more) plausible but archetypically unsatisfying.
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Post by bravesirkevin on Jun 30, 2013 23:34:10 GMT -9
You know the first thing that hit me is that this is a four-limbed beast, two wings and two legs. So many times we think of dragons as four legs and two wings. I just thought it interesting. Good find. The dragons of Skyrim and Game of Thrones both have 2 wings and 2 legs so I think that style of dragon is likely to become the standard one, with my beloved Larry Elmore and Jeff Easley style dragon pictures likely to start being considered the inaccurate ones... unless the next hobbit movie has some serious impact on the younger generation. Save us Smaug, you're our only hope! I tend to think of 2 legged variety as being animals rather than sentient creatures, while the 4 legged variety is the one that has conversations with people, shape shifts into human form and uses magic. It might be because my introduction to the subject was Dungeons and Dragons, but I've always refered to, and thought of, the 2 legged variety as wyverns, though I think that the distinction is much older than that, as some of my heraldry reference books only use the term dragon when the figure has 4 legs, and wyvern when it only has 2. All of that said, when I first looked at this pic, I didn't think of dragons or wyverns. The first thing I thought when I saw this guy was "cockatrice".
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Post by WackyAnne on Jul 1, 2013 6:10:43 GMT -9
You know the first thing that hit me is that this is a four-limbed beast, two wings and two legs. So many times we think of dragons as four legs and two wings. I just thought it interesting. Good find. The dragons of Skyrim and Game of Thrones both have 2 wings and 2 legs so I think that style of dragon is likely to become the standard one, with my beloved Larry Elmore and Jeff Easley style dragon pictures likely to start being considered the inaccurate ones... unless the next hobbit movie has some serious impact on the younger generation. Save us Smaug, you're our only hope! I tend to think of 2 legged variety as being animals rather than sentient creatures, while the 4 legged variety is the one that has conversations with people, shape shifts into human form and uses magic. It might be because my introduction to the subject was Dungeons and Dragons, but I've always refered to, and thought of, the 2 legged variety as wyverns, though I think that the distinction is much older than that, as some of my heraldry reference books only use the term dragon when the figure has 4 legs, and wyvern when it only has 2. All of that said, when I first looked at this pic, I didn't think of dragons or wyverns. The first thing I thought when I saw this guy was "cockatrice". Huh, I didn't catch the below-average number of legs the first time around. But it's true, four limbs is more anatomically plausible (the whole wave-vs.-wave-and-a-half debate on fish swimming physics). As to the division between dragons and wyverns on the basis of legs, that's stayed with me because of the excellent (and beautifully if occassionally illustrated) novel Dragonworld. I've been meaning to dig that out again, recently, so am glad for the extra inspirational nudge!
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Post by wyvern on Jul 1, 2013 7:16:22 GMT -9
Couldn't really let the comments here go by without remarking!
You'll never find a single definition for what constitutes a "dragon", hardly surprising given that the name derives from the Greek "drakon", which just means "big snake" - so the number of legs, or even wings, doesn't enter into that. Medieval illustrations of fabulous beasts more likely to have been dragons (such as those fighting Saints George and Michael) show features drawn from lions, dogs, snakes, lizards/crocodiles and birds (claws and wings chiefly) with or without wings, and with or without legs. They seem to show a development from a clearly serpentine form with either no legs or two (and either no wings or exclusively feathered ones) in the 11th to 13th centuries, towards one which encompassed the full gamut of creature-forms by the 14th to 16th centuries and later. The number of examples from the first period is small, however. (I did an analysis of 63 illustrations of the two saints showing dragons from the 11th to 19th centuries back in '98...)
The modern heraldic wyvern is two-legged, certainly, and it can look a little like some medieval conceptions of the cockatrice.
Meanwhile, back at the illustration here - gorgeous creature Cowboyleland!
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Post by madarchitect on Jul 1, 2013 9:01:09 GMT -9
Hmm. I did a quick research (read "checked Wikipedia"). It seems the word Wyvern is not attested until XVII century and is derived from Latin vipera- serpent/snake. Here comes the Greek drakon mentioned by Wyvern. (That sounds wierd: . Then going by medieval mindset wyvern=snake=dragon=satan. It were all dragons - emanations of Evil. Until modern fantasy made them into separate "species" I would consider "wyvern" to be just a name to denote two legged dragon for heraldical purpose. Actually most of the medieval mythical/folk creatures and beasts were pretty much undefined, eg elves could be either small or tall, beautiful or ugly (or both depending on the context). Arguments on what differs a dragon from a wyvern usually bear heavy D&D bias. (or HoMM, or Warhammer or whathever one considers a primary reference source) I agree they are fun, but still pointless. Anyway great find Cowboyleland. For me it is 100% dragon. Just missing St. George here.
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Post by mesper on Jul 1, 2013 19:02:51 GMT -9
Hmm... the truth is not so obvious I'm afraid... Cowboy is right, moreover it seems that decent dragon is 2 or... 6 leg-driven! There is sound suspicion that there is no such creature as 4-leg dragons!!! In fact these 4 legs are just average value - it's quite simple, these 4 legs were just made-up by scared to death knights, adventurers, peasants etc. => you know: (2+6) / 2 = 4, right? You already have proof for 2-legs dragon provided by Cowboy (vide amazing figurine!), now please find attached evidence for 6-legs one: 3-head 6-matic winged dragon
If you'll need more facts and references: most fearful Empire's war-machines => walking AT-AT => 2 legs! Now regarding 6-legs: please go outside and checkout some big(!) trucks nearby => most of these are 6 wheels (2 + 4)! So both present-day and futuristic engineers are using the same solution as legendary beasts! Quod erat demonstrandum
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Post by wyvern on Jul 3, 2013 10:08:09 GMT -9
I did a quick research (read "checked Wikipedia"). It seems the word Wyvern is not attested until XVII century and is derived from Latin vipera- serpent/snake. Here comes the Greek drakon mentioned by Wyvern. (That sounds wierd: . Then going by medieval mindset wyvern=snake=dragon=satan. It were all dragons - emanations of Evil. Until modern fantasy made them into separate "species" I would consider "wyvern" to be just a name to denote two legged dragon for heraldical purpose. I did a little further checking in several sources (that is, not Wikipedia ). Although wyvern indeed first appears in English in the early 17th century (the Oxford English Dictionary's first attestation is dated 1610), the word wyver, with many variant spellings, including several beginning with "g" instead of "w", such as guiure, predates it by around 300 years, as meaning "viper". It derives uncertainly from either the Old French givre (and variant spellings) or/and the Latin vipera. The terms "wyver" and "wyvern" may have been thought interchangeable from early Heraldry (the OED has a citation suggesting that dating to 1678, for example), but a further citation from 1599 suggests "wyver" may have been the original version, as even then being "well knowen unto the Heraldes usinge the same for armes, and crestes, & supporters". That suggests the heraldic version (not necessarily that precisely as described subsequently, of course) was already well-established by the late 16th century. From other citations of wyver's usage in the OED prior to 1599, the first dating to sometime during the 14th century, it's interesting that it was often classed among the venomous beasts along with adders (Britain's only poisonous snake), dragons, and, more vaguely, serpents. As written in places, this might imply a loose size gradation of serpents/snakes from adders (smallest), through wyvers to dragons (largest), but without any further description. "Wyvern" certainly is defined as being primarily a heraldic creature, from its earliest description with the wings and legs of a bird (implying two of each), and the tail of a snake, though several sources are quite insistent that it must also have a barbed tail. However, it seems that sometime before 1700, it was also being used to describe a genuinely-believed past creature, as the OED, citing Surtees' "History of Durham", includes a quote from that period regarding the slaying of a "monstrous, and poysonous vermine or wyverne, an aske or werme" by Sir John Conyers in that English county. ("aske" is I think the medieval English version of "asp", incidentally.) Modernly, the tale is that of the Sockburn Worm, a dragon-slaying folktale still repeated and re-enacted in the area today, including by the current Bishop of County Durham and the leading member of the Conyers family. All of which tends to reinforce MadArchitect's comment about the vagueness of medieval creature descriptions on the whole!
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