The dragon is usually depicted with a serpentine body, sharp ears, a barbed tongue and tail, strong leathern wings armed with sharp points, and four eagles’ feet, strongly webbed; but there are many modifications of this form. “Of fancy monsters, the winged, scaly, fiery dragon is by far the most poetical fabrication of antiquity. To no word, perhaps, are attached ideas more extraordinary, and of greater antiquity, than to that of dragon. We find it consecrated by the religion of the earliest people, and become the object of their mythology. It got mixed up with fable, and poetry, and history, till it was universally believed, and was to be found everywhere but in nature.[122] In our days nothing of the kind is to be seen, excepting a harmless animal hunting its insects. The light of these days has driven the fiery dragon to take refuge among nations not yet visited by the light of civilization. The draco volans is a small lizard, and the only reptile possessing the capacity of flight. For this purpose it is provided on each side with a membrane between the feet, which unfolds like a fan at the will of the animal, enabling it to spring from one tree to another while pursuing its food. It is a provision similar to that of the flying squirrel, enabling it to take a longer leap.”[123] The annexed cut represents a dragon volant, as borne in the arms of Raynon of Kent, and the draco volans of the zoologists. A fossil flying lizard has been found in the lias of Dorsetshire, which, to employ the words of Professor Buckland, is “a monster resembling nothing that has ever been seen or heard of upon earth, excepting the dragons of romance and heraldry.”
Considering the hideous form and character of the dragon, it is somewhat surprising to find him pourtrayed upon the banner and the shield as an honourable distinction; unless he was employed by way of trophy of a victory gained over some enemy, who might be symbolically represented in this manner. The dragon often occurring at the feet of antient monumental effigies is understood to typify sin, over which the deceased has now triumphed; and the celebrated monster of this tribe slain by our patron saint, St. George, was doubtless a figurative allusion to a certain pestilent heresy which he vehemently resisted and rooted out. Favine, on the Order of Hungary, remarks that the French historians speak of Philip Augustus ‘conquering the dragon’ when he overcame Otho IV, who bore a dragon as the standard of his empire.[124] It has been suggested that the design of commanders in depicting monsters and wild beasts upon their standards was to inspire the enemy with terror.[125]
The dragon forms a part of the fictitious arms of King Arthur; and another early British king bore the surname of Pen-Dragon, or the ‘dragon’s head.’ The standard of the West Saxon monarchs was a golden dragon in a red banner. In the Bayeux tapestry a dragon on a pole repeatedly occurs near the person of King Harold; and in the instance which is copied in the margin, the words ‘Hic Harold’ are placed over it.[126] It was an early badge of the Princes of Wales, and was also assumed at various periods by our English monarchs. Henry III used it at the battle of Lewes in 1264.
“Symoun com to the feld,
And put up his banere;
The Kyng schewed forth his scheld,
His Dragon fulle austere.
The Kyng said ‘On hie,
Symon jeo vous defie!’”
Robert Brunne.
“The order for the creation of this ‘austere’ beast,” says Mr. Blaauw, “is still extant. Edward Fitz-Odo, the king’s goldsmith, was commanded, in 1244, to make it ‘in the manner of a standard or ensign, of red samit,’ to be embroidered with gold, and his tongue to appear as though continually moving, and his eyes of sapphire, or other stones agreeable to him.”[127]
“Then was ther a Dragon grete and grimme,
Full of fyre and also venymme,
With a wide throte and tuskes grete.”[128]
The dragon-standard must have been in high favour with commanders, for in the same war we find it unfurled in the opposite cause by the leader of the baronial party:
“When Sir Simoun wist the dome ageyn them gone,
His felonie forth thrist, somned his men ilkon,
Displaied his banere, lift up his Dragoun!”
Robt. Brunne.