Tuesday, May 27, 2008

the legendary dragon

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One of this weeks prompts on Writers Island is Legend.
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Imagine if you can an enormous hideous creature, twenty feet high, with a long thin head, piercing glassy eyes and red forked tongue lashing wildly as flames roar from its mouth. It raises itself up on two muscular legs and reaches forward with flaying arms, and long bony talons lash out at anything that gets in its way. A thin pointed tail whips around as it destroys everything in its path

Two enormous bat-like wings unfurl, and then begin to flap, before this terrifying animal flies into the sky surveying everything that falls beneath its shadow.

The mighty dragon has been part of folk law for centuries. The earliest sightings were back in the year 793 when the sky over the island of Lindisfarne was supposedly filled with dragons of many colours. In writings from 1222 London was reportedly over-run with dragons which brought on freak weather conditions –storms, floods and ball lightening caused panic in the city.

Famous legendary heroes regularly destroyed dragons. One such event took place near where I live when the conquering hero was offered the hand of the king’s daughter as a reward. England’s patron saint St George is always depicted slaying a dragon as is St Clements.

Dragons are usually depicted standing guard over hoards of gold and jewels, whilst inhabiting deep lakes or underground caverns. They are either seen as creatures of terror, or genial animals in children’s stories and cartoons.

Either way, the dragon has been the stuff of legends for centuries throughout Europe and Asia, and the world of art and literature is all the more colourful for it!
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photos Google Images
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7 comments:

  1. When you described dragons’ fierceness, I realized that even though I’ve seen movies where a dragon has to be fought seriously, I’ve never taken dragons’ fierceness seriously. I suppose it’s the glamorization-to-defamation ratio leaning toward the glamorization side...and so I’m left with a big ol’Disney soft spot for them! Well, I came here to see if you’d responded to the Sunday Scribblings prompt #112 and Mr. Linky had just eaten your link as he was prone to do this weekend. Instead, I see that you were away gawking at Greece and writing about dragons and oh! I love the music on your site! Pavane, especially. So soothing to my fraught mind! Very nice here. Thanks for it all! :-)

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  2. Oh I Love dragons. Nice piece

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  3. Hey Keith,

    I love dragons and your pic is great.

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  4. Very interesting... am back after a break.. looking forward to reading your posts more often now!!

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  5. I enjoyed Sean Connery as the voice in that movie about the last dragon. This reminded me of him.

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  6. I am a dragon fan from way back. I made a sign for the porch that picks up a line from old medieval maps, "Beyond this place there be dragons." This was very interesting.

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  7. I just finished my response to the prompt.. come read The Journey Home

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