So, you want to be a knight? It goes without saying you must be free-born and of noble birth and true. Honor, chivalry and valor are a must. Of course, to prove yourself worthy in battle is a prerequisite, as is rescuing a fair damsel or two from a dragon's keep. But where to find a dragon these days?
To hear it told, there used to be a fire-breathing dragon behind every rock, hill and tree. You might try the nearest loch (preferably a bottomless one), flood-prone river, or foggy swamp. Dragons, ancient and modern are often associated with water. Dragons have been known to raise up whirlwinds, spawn thunderstorms, and form waterspouts on the sea. Dragons trouble rivers cause great floods. But when they sleep, and all is still, then their fiery breath comes into contact with the water and thick fogs and mists occur. They are known the world over and throughout the ages. The Old Testament names the great, gliding and uncatchable sea-serpent, Leviathan...compare, if you will to the more modern sightings of the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland.
Yet, fond as we are of Nessie, we of the Western mind are generally repulsed by these fantastic creatures. Thanks greatly to the Biblical allegory, painting Satan as the original deceiving serpent and great dragon cast out of heaven. Dragons are to be feared, fought, withstood and defeated. Dragons were guardians of dark secrets and treasures best left alone. The crowning glory of many a hero, in story and song, was victory over some wicked dragon. Merlin, Siegfried, Beowulf, Tristan, Sts. Michael and George all had their way with the creature. Not so in the East. Dragons could be harbingers of fortune as well as fate. It all depended on their color: black for destruction, yellow for luck and blue for greatness. (It is said that two blue dragons appeared the night Confucius was born.) The dragon of thunder roared for the Imperial family.
However, before we scoff at our ancestors, let us view the world from their mindset...which is to say, minus a few thousand years of science, technology and discovery. It was either day or night, period. There was no cheating the darkness with street lamps and paved roads. Nighttime was the domain of lions, wolves, and no telling what else. Forget being robbed, those foolhardy enough to venture out after nightfall risked being eaten. Knowing no more than they, would it seem more reasonable to assume that a smoldering mountain was inhabited by some winged, fire-belching serpent...or that you dwelt on a thin crust of dirt which floated atop an 8,000 mile diameter ball of molten iron and your volcanic neighbor was simply a pressure vent designed to keep the planet from blowing apart at the seams? Is it harder to believe that a "falling star" was a hunk of space trash with which the earth collided, being only one of billions of like bodies in the universe, or a dart of fiery dragon's breath in the night sky?
Our view of the ancients is flavored by our own preconceptions and demand for literalism. I mentioned in an earlier piece, that gargoyles often resemble dragons, whence comes the name...from La Garouille, a great dragon which supposedly lived in the Seine, ravaged the town of Rouen and was slain by St. Romanus, Bishop of Rouen in the 7th century. As far-fetched as that sounds, it may well be true. As floods were assumed to be caused by those fearsome creatures, anyone who could deliver a city from such a catastrophe could truly be said to slay a dragon. The word, "gargouille" means simply "waterspout". That "gargoyle" was derived from that is no surprise. It is the sound they make. Functional gargoyles serve as architectural waterspouts, draining excess rainwater from roofs which might otherwise collapse under the water's weight. So, as water passes through, they "gurgle" or "gargle." To the Celts, on the other hand, the dragon was a symbol of military prowess and become the word for "chieftain." Therefore pen-dragon (as in Arthur Pendragon) represented a sort of king. Any knight who killed a chief in battle indeed slew a dragon.
But it is exactly the education gap between the centuries which prevents our being able to truly see the world as they did. Evidence is not enough. We demand the proof in a bottle, sterilized, homogenized, repeatable under laboratory conditions, visible under an electron microscope and set down in mathematical equation. As Baron Munchausen lamented, "It's all logic and reason now, and science... Laws of this, that or the other. No place for three-legged cyclops in the South Seas. No place for cucumber trees, and oceans of wine." No room, in short, for dragons.
The world so long ago valued wisdom, and that gleaned from a lifetime of experience. Today we value knowledge over wisdom...and know very little of value. "A silver-haired head is a crown of glory, if it is found in the way of righteousness" (Prov. 16:31, NKJ) is old school, today we better reflect the vanities of Ecclesiastes...and cover up the gray with Grecian Formula.
Are dragons pure fantasy, horrific creatures invoked by some long-forgotten discovery of dinosaur fossils and embellished by superstition over the years? Or, could they yet remain undiscovered, perhaps a plesiosaur, for instance, presumed extinct for millions of years...but then so was the coelacanth fish, until one was caught in 1938. Let's not forget that while reports of the fire-breathing variety are scarce, sightings of great sea-serpents continue. Granted, they seem a bit camera-shy (photos of Nessie and her kind are most remarkable by their consistent poor quality). Yet in 1848, the captain and crew of HMS Daedalus reported such a creature in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Africa. In 1905, two members of the British Royal Zoological Society, no less, as well as crew members of the steamship Valhalla, twice sighted a great mysterious serpentine creature, off Brazil.
So dragons, it seems, are first cousin to the fairies of Peter Pan, relegated either to faith or fancy, depending on your point of view. Every time someone says they don't believe in one, a fairy (or dragon, in this case) falls down dead. If you're ever to earn that noble title, good sir, you'd better clap with all your might!
By the way, if you do catch one, you'll want to feed it. As fair maidens are both out of season and politically incorrect, I suggest you take a dietary tip from Edward Topsell's History of Foure-Footed Beastes. It's a recent 17th century publication, so I'm sure you'll be able to find it at most any bookstore or newsstand.
Acknowledgments:
4, 17, 59, 60
© Russ Brown, 1998