Party per chevron gules and or, three lion-dragons ducally crowned and countercharged.—Easton.
The Gorgon
Reference has already been made to the gorgon in a quotation from Milton. The name now denotes anything unusually hideous. In classic story there were three gorgons, with serpents on their heads instead of hair. Medusa was the chief of the three, and the only one that was mortal. So hideous was her face that whoever set eyes on it was instantly turned to stone. She was slain by Perseus, and her head placed upon the shield of Minerva (termed the Ægis of Minerva). Homer, in the “Odyssey,” Book xi. thus alludes to the dread creature:
“Lest Gorgon rising from the infernal lakes
With horrors armed, and curls of hissing snakes,
Should fix me stiffened at the monstrous sight,
A stony image in eternal night.”
And Shakespeare, in Macbeth, Act ii. sc. 3, uses the name to picture, in a word, the horrible discovery of the murdered Duncan:
“Approach the chamber, and destroy your sight
With a new gorgon.”
The Cockatrice
This chimerical creature was said to be produced from a cock’s egg hatched by a serpent; hence its name. It differs from the wyvern of heraldry only in having a head like that of a dunghill cock. “This monster is of that nature,” says an old writer, “that its look or breath is said to be deadly poison”; and this, in addition to the ordinary weapons of offence, would constitute it rather a difficult creature to be interfered with.
