| Dan Howard wrote: |
| In a lot of those paintings I kinda feel sorry for the dragon. |
Take a look at what St. Georgy (George) have done to the poor beast here! It is Poklonnaya Gora park in Moscow...
[ Linked Image ]
Take a look at what St. Georgy (George) have done to the poor beast here! It is Poklonnaya Gora park in Moscow...
[ Linked Image ]
| Artis Aboltins wrote: | ||
Take a look at what St. Georgy (George) have done to the poor beast here! |
Looks like he took a couple of slices out for a big steak :D
| Sander Marechal wrote: | ||||
Looks like he took a couple of slices out for a big steak :D |
Best Cuts by St. George! (C)
| Craig Peters wrote: | ||
Well, I'm not sure about wild men, but giants are quite common in medieval literature, probably more so than dragons. One classic example that comes to mind is the fight between Arthur and the giant in Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur. I'm also fairly certain that Parzifal fights with a pair of giants in one of his many adventures in the version of the story by Wolfram von Eschenbach. |
I remember looking at some scans of an old book that showed a knight rescuing a child from a wild man covered in green wooly fur. The last page of the series shows the wild man all chopped into pieces. I wish I could remember the name of the book or even where I found it online.
Wikipedia is probably a curse word for many here, but it has a good article about the history of Wild Men in Europe. It was a very common theme. Consider the terrible catastrophe that happened when King Charles VI of France and some of his courtiers dressed up as Wild Men for a ball and then caught on fire!
And here's a cool image by Dürer of some Wild Men.
[ Linked Image ]
Their knotty tree root clubs remind me of Paulus Hector Mair's Peasant Staff.
Did you see the image of the two wild men fighting in Bryan Hunt's essay on MS I.33?
[ Linked Image ]
[ Linked Image ]
These are just big hairy peasants. ;)
| Luka Borscak wrote: |
| These are just big hairy peasants. ;) |
Wouldn't be far off some of the medieval descriptions of peasants. ;)
| Craig Peters wrote: | ||
Wouldn't be far off some of the medieval descriptions of peasants. ;) |
Or at least, post-medieval English propaganda descriptions of Irish peasants.
(Actually, if you do know of medieval descriptions of peasants, I'd be interested, but perhaps this isn't the thread for it.)
| Nathan Robinson wrote: |
|
[ Linked Image ] |
Nathan, is that your ink? That is really good. The detail is pretty impressive and I dig the colors.
| Adam D. Kent-Isaac wrote: |
| Nathan, is that your ink? That is really good. The detail is pretty impressive and I dig the colors. |
The images are links to a topic that talks about it. It represents my own dragons to fight, I suppose.
| Adam D. Kent-Isaac wrote: | ||
Nathan, is that your ink? That is really good. The detail is pretty impressive and I dig the colors. |
I don't mean to be morbid, but my first thought at seeing your tatoo was that one day your arm could easily end up in a museum. That is absolutely beautiful artwork.
| Allen Foster wrote: |
| I don't mean to be morbid, but my first thought at seeing your tatoo was that one day your arm could easily end up in a museum. |
I intend to bring the arms into arms and armour museums of the future.
| Craig Peters wrote: |
| Did you see the image of the two wild men fighting in Bryan Hunt's essay on MS I.33? |
You all probably think Sasquatch is a hoax, too! :D
I also tend to favor the snake explanation for the universality of dragons. Snakes are scary and widespread. Dragons are big scary snakes. I'm no expert on medieval literature, but my impression is that when our ancestors wrote and talked about 'Worms' etc., they were drawing much less distinction between dragons and big snakes than we do today.
By the way, before Darwin came along, European academics did generally think that Dinosaur bones came from antediluvian monsters. I believe I read this in 'The Dinosaur Hunters' - a great book. On the other hand, modern scientists think the last dinosaurs died 65 million years before the first knight was born. There have been some dinosaur descendants in the order of thousands of years ago - giant predatory birds in South America- that looked a lot like Griffins. Not that they encountered any knights, but its interesting how close legends can come to truth.
And while I'm rambling...there have been some recent finds of ~10-20,000 yr old hobbit-sized adult skeletons in Indonesia and Eurasia that -if they represent healthy specimens- would suggest our ancestors shared the world with real 'little people'.
I find the notion that some of our folklore could be based on stories passed down from 1000s of years ago fascinating.
Apropos to nothing, I recently read 'Lair of the White Worm' by Bram Stoker. Apparently he was dying when he wrote it, and it shows. I believe HP lovecraft called it 'a good idea, with a development almost infantile'. Only someone interested in the history of horror literature (another one of my obscure hobbies) would like this book.
By the way, before Darwin came along, European academics did generally think that Dinosaur bones came from antediluvian monsters. I believe I read this in 'The Dinosaur Hunters' - a great book. On the other hand, modern scientists think the last dinosaurs died 65 million years before the first knight was born. There have been some dinosaur descendants in the order of thousands of years ago - giant predatory birds in South America- that looked a lot like Griffins. Not that they encountered any knights, but its interesting how close legends can come to truth.
And while I'm rambling...there have been some recent finds of ~10-20,000 yr old hobbit-sized adult skeletons in Indonesia and Eurasia that -if they represent healthy specimens- would suggest our ancestors shared the world with real 'little people'.
I find the notion that some of our folklore could be based on stories passed down from 1000s of years ago fascinating.
Apropos to nothing, I recently read 'Lair of the White Worm' by Bram Stoker. Apparently he was dying when he wrote it, and it shows. I believe HP lovecraft called it 'a good idea, with a development almost infantile'. Only someone interested in the history of horror literature (another one of my obscure hobbies) would like this book.
| Eric Allen wrote: | ||
that's been suggested by several folks. Paleontologist John Horner has, for example, suggested that the mythological Griffin might have been influenced by fossils of Protoceratops andrewsii, a small-ish ceratopsian dinosaur common to the Gobi of Mongolia and China. |
There's a neat historical novel about this: The Gryphon's Skull , by H.N. Turteltaub. (The pen name of popular novelist Harry Turtledove.)
It's been suggested (and I can't find my source for this at the moment -- it's somewhere in a big bag of books from my last move that I haven't unpacked yet) that the previously mentioned "dragon" fought by the Knights Hospitaller was...
...a large Nile crocodile that had made a freak swim (or possibly island-hopped -- my grasp on the Med's geography in that region is at ) from Egypt to Rhodes.
Nile crocodiles are freshwater crocs. How long could one survive in the sea?
| Dan Howard wrote: |
| Nile crocodiles are freshwater crocs. How long could one survive in the sea? |
You and your bloody logic Dan.
:p
| Dan Howard wrote: |
| Nile crocodiles are freshwater crocs. How long could one survive in the sea? |
Actually, most crocodiles can tolerate at least some salt water. Crocodylus porosus may be called the "saltwater crocodile" and have a notably high salt tolerance, but it is by no means the only croc capable of doing so.
Crocodylus niloticus (the Nile crocodile) itself actually is considerably salt-tolerant, and there are known coastal populations, as well as populations on islands off the coast of Africa (there's two populations on Madagascar for starters). Their fossil record corroborates this, as well as modern biological studies.
Though their range has shrunk, within recorded history the Nile croc's range extended all across Africa, including the southern coast of the Mediterranean as far east as Syria and Tunisia. They even extended up through Israel up until the early 20th century.
So one ending up on Malta is by no means out of the question.
yeah, I uh. I study fossil crocodiles. Its my day job.
| Taylor Ellis wrote: | ||
You and your bloody logic Dan. |
I was asking a genuine question. It wasn't meant to be rhetorical. :)
Eric has suggested that it might be possible. Wikipedia reckons that a Nile crocodile was spotted 11 km off Santa Lucia Bay in 1917.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nile_crocodile
Yep, Rhodes was the place. The curious fact is that the story of killing the dragon was originally written in the order's annals, which I believe were written by people living in those times. So dragon or not, that guy very probably killed at least some creature. I don't believe that a nile crocodile would be too far fetched. At least they are hard enough to kill to macth the creature in the story.
EDIT1: Hah! Wikipedia to the rescue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieudonn%C3%A9_de_Gozon :D
EDIT2: Blah, reality is always a bit duller: http://tinyurl.com/yfdv2hq
So no real evidence of killing dragons yet to come...
EDIT1: Hah! Wikipedia to the rescue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieudonn%C3%A9_de_Gozon :D
EDIT2: Blah, reality is always a bit duller: http://tinyurl.com/yfdv2hq
So no real evidence of killing dragons yet to come...
Last edited by Risto Rautiainen on Fri 05 Feb, 2010 10:22 am; edited 1 time in total
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