Dragons

The first dragon I remember was Puff the magic dragon. It's a song and it was on children's radio programs when I was a kid. Puff was a rascal of a dragon, friendly to children and loved games. He also loved a bit of chaos, but all in good fun. He had a real flame going on too.

My next dragon was the one that St George fought to save the princess from being eaten. George was probably Turkish as it happens. The flag of St George is the red cross on a white background which is the English (and Welsh) part of the Union Jack flag. The dragon in this case was a real baddie, extorting money and later human sacrifices from the local population. The story that I was told sounded simple, but when you look into the historic details, it's a retelling of a reworked story from far of lands which have evolved over time. But it brings in flaming and a general need to get one over on the humans.

George sets the tone for most dragon stories, a hero who steps up and fights a dragon that is destroying the local area.

Next for me I suppose was Greek mythology brought us the Hydra, the multi headed beast that is another miscreant out to do no good. Another heroic adventure.

In mountainous regions, there is often mythology of dragons, and trolls. The thunderstorms come from the mountains, the lightning storms too. And there are lots of scary noises that originate in the inaccessible areas in the mountains which are attributed to dragons.

I read Tolkein's "Lord of the Rings" and he contributed Smaug, sitting on a hoard of treasure and breathing fire. When you look into this, Smaug is believed to be based on the dragon in the Norse Beowulf legend. This dragon imparts arcane knowledge to the hero, as it lays dying. So a baddie that relents a bit on its death bed.

If we go to some of the films from the last 20 years, dragons are hell bent on burning away all of humanity. They are just things that fight to the bitter end for their existence.

My favourite dragons were in Terry Pratchett's Diskworld novels, Lady Sybil Ramkin keeps smal swamp dragons as pets. Various rooms are reinforced because her dragon explode from time to time when they are a bit off-colour. her favourite dragon appears to be called Errol and he saves the day when a full-sized dragon from the dragon dimension brings trouble to Ankh-Morpork.

If we miss out Puff, then all the stories seem to contain a dragon up to no good, a hero to kill the dragon. There are elements of mysterious knowledge and acquiring wealth. All the stories are different.

There's a good bit of artistic license an author can apply when dealing with dragons. I know that I swapped things around, some aspects were a bit tongue in cheek.