[XIII]
THE DRAGON: A FANCY OR A FACT
I am about to write of loathly dragons, “gorgons and hydras and chimæras dire.” Every one knows what a dragon looks like, though probably most people could not give a minute description of the beast. A number of quite distinct creatures, some living on land, some in sea, are spoken of in the Bible by a word which is translated as “dragon.” The ancient Welsh chieftains, like many fighting princes of old days, bore a “dragon” on their banners, and were themselves called “dragons” (Pen-dragon), and when a knight slew such a chieftain fabulous stories grew up as to his combat with and slaughter of a “dragon.”
The complete, legitimate dragon of the present day is the dragon of heraldry, which is maintained in proper form and with authorised attributes by the Heralds’ College. I have a drawing of this “official” beast before me ([Fig. 16]). He is represented as of large size, but whether theoretically the heralds of to-day consider him to be as large as a lion or ten times as long and tall I do not know. His body is lizard-like, and covered with scales resembling those of some lizards (unlike a crocodile in this respect). His head is not unlike that of a crocodile, excepting that he has a short, sharp horn on his nose, and a beard on his chin, and also a pair of large pointed ears which no living reptile possesses. His mouth is open, showing teeth like those of a crocodile, and from it issues a remarkable tongue, terminating in an arrow-head-shaped weapon (presumably a “sting”) unlike anything known in any living animal. His tail is very long and snake-like (an important fact when we come to consider his ancestry), and is thrown into coils. It terminates in an arrow-head-shaped structure like that of the tongue, quite unlike anything known in any real animal. He has four powerful limbs, which are not like those of a lizard or a crocodile. They resemble those of an eagle, and have grasping toes and claws, three directed forward and one backward. In addition, he has a pair of wings, which are leathery, and supported by several parallel bars, a structure which gives the wings a remote resemblance to those of a bat. The wing is quite unlike that of a pterodactyle (the great extinct flying lizard), and has no resemblance whatever to that of a bird, which is, of course, formed by separate quill feathers set in a row on the bones of the fore-arm and hand. The wings are always represented (even in illegitimate and Oriental dragons) as much too small to carry the dragon in flight. The dragon has, further, a crest of separate triangular plates set in a row along the mid-line of his back, extending from his head to the end of his tail. Some lizards (but not crocodiles) have such a crest. The most like it is that of the New Zealand lizard, called the Sphenodon.
Fig. 16.—The heraldic dragon: observe the bat-like wings, the ears, the horned nose, the beard, the arrow-like tongue and tail-piece, the scaly body, the dorsal crest, the snake-like tail with its unnatural arrow-like termination.
Fig. 17.—The heraldic griffin. It alone of the dragon-like monsters has feathery wings.