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"Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it."
Alexandre Dumas

Dragons A - Z Index
Dragons A - H
Dragons I - P
Dragons Q - Z

This is a continuation of the Dragons A - Z section

Q

Quetzalcoatl
The Legend: A hard one to catagorise, Quetzalcoatl was for the most part, a beneficient deity for the mesoamerican people. The information i have found about this god is often contradictory but i have pieced together what sense can be made of the texts i have read. Many of the Maya gods appeared under different guises and Quetzalcoatl was no different. He was known as the feathered serpent and would often appear as such. He appeared in tales throughout south america as a central Aztec deity as well as to the Maya. He also appears in 3000 year old Olmec representations.
In some mesoamerican legends it is said that the first deity was dual gendered. The male side was Tonacatecuhtli and the female Tonacacihual. Both aspects of this deity coupled to create the most important and familiar solar deities, all of which had a colour associated with them. Quetzalcoatl's colour was white. It was believed in some parts that Quetzalcoatl (feathered serpent) and his opposite Tezcatlipoca (smoking mirror) created our worldwhich was then ruled by huitzilzilpochtzi. Quetzalcoatl seems to be one of the more popular gods and came directly from the toltecs, very often associated with the setting sun. Perhaps the gods form of a serpent came about because, for the most part, the serpent was central and positive creature.
It was said:

To the Toltecs he was associated with the morning and evening star. He was said to disaprove of human sacrifice which seemed to be a rare virtue.
Some stories state that it was Quetzalcoatl that gave humankind the ability to write.
In the multicultured city of Teotihuacan there were engravings, among other evidence, of the feathered serpent. In Xochicako a site surrounded by revetments and ditches there is a building we call feathered serpent platform. Its lower stage was decorated with the snake or dragon similar to those from Teotihuacan.
A Toltec - Aztec story says that Quetzalcoatl was defeated in a ritual ball game by his enemy Tezcatlipoca, who became a jaguar and chased him out of Tollen. Perhaps Quetzalcoatl, in effect the culture hero of the Toltec and Aztecs died. It was believed he would one day return, like the rising sun.

Notes: He was known to the Maya as Kukulkan

References: A Little History of Dragons - Joyce Hargreaves, Aztecs & Maya - The Ancient peoples of Middle America - N.James, Mythology - C.Scott Littleton, The Oxford companion to World Mythology, The Wordsworth Dictionary of Mythology.

Carving of Quetzalcoatl in Teotihuacan

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R

Rainbow Serpent, The
The Legend: This is one of the central or at least most known of the mythological beings of aboriginal Australia. Despite its central importance information on it is sparse, perhaps due to the non-literacy of indigenous Australians and the disrespect for their culture on the part of early white settlers. As well as being sparse, rainbow serpent tales are also seemingly inconsistent, probably due to the diversity of aborigines themselves, perhaps leading mythologists to group all (or at least most) aboriginal myths involving serpent like beings as rainbow serpent myths. Consequently at this stage this A-Z entry does the same - all Australians dragons and serpents are lumped together under the general heading of "Rainbow Serpent".

One rainbow serpent story (unreferenced as it derives from conversations during a personal year out in Australia and New Zealand) concerns the central region around Uluru (Ayers Rock) and Kata Tjuta (the Olgas). In the dreamtime the Rainbow Serpent (in this story female) formed much of the local landscape by the passage of her body. She laid her eggs, which we see as the Olgas before sleeping - Uluru itself being the sleeping serpent. Consequently, the local aborigines consider Uluru to be a sacred site of great importance, in a landscape in which every waterhole, weathered rock formation or pretty much anything else is of some mythological significance. For the local people therefore the modern tourist practice of walking up her back shows great disrespect.

The Djuan of Arnhem Land in the Northern territory tell a tale of a Rainbow Serpent (in this version called Kurrichalpongo) and a man called Nagacork. The old man had spent several days unsuccessfully searching for his favourite fish, before finding that his friends (who weren't fussy about their fish) had already found it and eaten it. In anger and sadness he sang a song to Kurrichalpongo, who caused a great flood, destroying many of Nagacork's less pious neighbours, the rest of whom escaped in animal form. Subsequently Kurrichalpongo laid many eggs which in hatching carved out many landscape features. Finally Kurrichalpongo grew even angrier and caused an even greater flood (with a really big storm this time) which destroyed even more of his neighbours - leaving their lands for the sons of Nagacork, the Djuan.

Another tale, this time from the west coast region concerns a male rainbow serpent known as Thugine, who lives in the sea. In this story two young boys disobey their elders (who have left the group to go hunting) and go down to the sea for a swim. When the elders return they notice that the boys are missing and only realise what has happened when they notice two new rock formations in the sea - Thugine has turned eaten them and turned both to stone in punishment.

Yurlunggur, is a male Rainbow-Serpent manifestation from the Yolngu of Arnhem Land in Australia's Northern Territory, Carol Rose describes him as a vast being inhabiting deep pools of water. His name is also spelt as Julunggul, Julungsul, and Wulungul. Legend has it that the Wawalug sisters (important creator beings for the local people, and part of a trinity) camped by Yurlungurs pool (without realising where they were) and cooked food for themselves and their children. They enraged Yurlungur when their food jumped out of the fire and into the pool (although some other sources such as the British council, suggest that the serpent was angered by the odour of menstrual blood). Yurlungur expressed his anger by causing a great flood, prompting the sisters to begin ceremonial chants and dances as protection. However they soon became exhausted, giving Yurlungur the chance to swallow all four while they slept, before rising to the heavens (the way Rose describes it, although this seems inconsistent with the general concept of the dreamtime) and boasting of his deeds. However the other dreamtime beings disapproved of his swallowing humans and forced him to regurgitate them. This is an important part of local myth relating to puberty and the transition to adulthood.

These stories illustrate the diverse manifestations of the Rainbow serpent, sometimes appearing as an almost incidental creator being, at others a powerful lawgiver. In general the Rainbow Serpent is associated with water, and can be variously benevolent or wrathful. I can only conclude that despite the centrality of a serpent being for many aborigines, there are actually many Rainbow Serpents. The notion that there is a unitary mythological beast relevant across all Australia is the result of an essentialisation of many diverse beings into one, by people who didn't understand the culture they were observing.

Notes: Australia itself is huge - the size of the continental United States (not including Alaska, Hawaii etc), supporting a contemporary population of around 20 million, almost all of whom live around the coasts. Estimates of the indigenous pre-European population have varied widely from a few hundred thousand to around 15 million. Human settlement on Australia's continental landmass is thought to have arrived via the Torres strait (between Northern Australia and New Guinea), spreading around the coasts before the centre. This first human settlement took place between 30 and 50 thousand years ago, making the indigenous inhabitants by far the oldest continous human culture. Despite being in general very hot, arid and with little topographical variation, the continent does have mountainous regions and also tropical and sub-tropical rainforest. Most aborigines seem to have lived in nomadic, or more commonly transhumant (nomadism along regular repeated routes on a seasonal or periodic basis) band groups of up to around 50 members. These groups tended to be male dominated gerontocracies, with a strong tendency toward sexual segregation.

One other trait shared in common by most aboriginal groups is the concept of the dreamtime or world-dawn, something more like a state of being in the past, present and future all at once rather than a specific time period, interestingly aboriginal art often seems to reflect this by representing a narrative in a single image. Traditional aboriginal beliefs and stories take place in this dreamtime in which the boundaries between people and the rest of the natural world become blurry - an animistic totemism which becomes the basis for aboriginal kinship, with different groups being defined as being "wallaby people", or a "billabong-man". Dreamtime stories are ritually told in song, forming the basis for the songlines, which serve a dual purpose of passing on folk knowledge and myth, and also provide landscape maps. Bruce Chatwin's beautiful (if entirely unreferenced and highly subjective) travelogue, "The Songlines" is a good personal introduction to aboriginal culture. Chatwin's book recounts a tale of a man who used these songlines to navigate from the Adelaide region to the far north coast (a journey of almost three thousand kilometres) in search of a wife, before walking back again.

References:
Flannery, T. 1994.
The future eaters.

Rose, C. 2000
Giants, dragons and monsters.

www.sacred-texts.com - see Some Myths and Legends of the Australian Aborigines, by W. J. Thomas in the Australia section.

Littleton, C Scott (ed), 2002.
Mythology: the illustrated anthology of world myth and storytelling.

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Suileach
The Legend: During the 5th and 6th centuries, the inhabitants of the countryside around Lough Swilly, in Donegal, Ireland, were being terrorised by a huge many-eyed sea-serpent. Suileach lived underwater, but rose out and swooped down on anyone ignorant or lost enough to approach, and was capable of carrying off people from several miles away to satisfy its voracious appetite.

One day, St Colum Cille (known in English as St Columba) came to the area, where he hoped to found a monastery, and heard of the terrible beast who commanded the fear and respect of the locals. He strode out towards the lough, and Suileach arose from the waters, perhaps to accept the saint’s challenge, or maybe because he scented dinner. St Colum Cille was able to kill (or some versions say, to banish) the monster solely by the power of his holy faith, and free the people from this terrible threat.

Background. St Colum Cille is, after St Patrick, perhaps the most revered saint in Ireland, and is also important to the christianisation of Scotland, where he spent much of his adult life. He founded thirty-eight monastries in Ireland, dedicated to teaching writing and scribing as well as to prayer, and when he went to Scotland to convert the Irish-speaking Dal Riada, it was he who founded the Christian community on Iona.

Although most Irish folk tales that recount the story of Suileach ascribe his vanquishing to St Colum Cille, a few ascribe this incident to various other heroes, and none of the biographies of the saint mention that episode until very much later.

Interestingly, the first account we have of the saint’s life, written by Adamnán around a hundred years after St Colum Cille’s death, does mention another, more famous monster. This biography claims that, when Colum Cille was preaching to the Dal Riada in Scotland, he came across some people burying a man who had been seized while swimming and killed by a monster living in the water. The saint sent one of his companions into the water to draw up the creature, and then raised his hand and commanded it to approach no closer, but to go back to the deeps where it belonged. It returned to its watery lair and submerged, and never again bothered the people. Adamnán explicitly states that the monster arose from the River Ness, and if such a large creature were to submerge completely at Colum Cille’s command, it may have been in the nearby Loch, which would make this the first written account of an appearance of the Loch Ness monster.

Symbolism. This tale is very much a synthesis of the Irish oral folk tale tradition with the recently arrived Christian ethic, so the symbolic elements of the story are probably intended to centre more around Colum Cille than around Suileach. St Colum Cille lived around a hundred years after St Patrick is credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland (or perhaps with consolidating and evangelising an existing, less systemised Christian presence). Ireland seems to have had strong, widespread beliefs in the power of serpents, monsters, and sea-dragons, and it may have been necessary to claim that St Colum Cille had power over the Suileach and the Loch Ness monster, in the same way that St Patrick is credited with driving the snakes out of Ireland, in order to consolidate his position as a powerful man, and Christianity as a religion with more potent “magic” than that of the druids and other wise men who preceded him.

Nevertheless, we can gain some insights into the Irish mindset at the time from the type of powerful being that the saint had to overcome. Like many Irish Gaelic words, the name of this monster is capable of different layers of meaning, depending on the context and the era. Suileach can mean dark-eyed, or clear-eyed (in the sense of clear-visioned), but in this case is usually taken to describe the fact that the creature is claimed to have had many eyes, probably on multiple heads. Like many other strange Irish beasts, Suileach is very much associated with water, which is an important element in Celtic traditions, often seen as the dwelling place of the gods, or of those more powerful than humans, or of those who can influence human destiny. A large body of water can also be interpreted as a place where this world and another meet, where boundaries blur, and otherworldly beings can cross into ours.

References:
Adamnán, Vita Columbae (The Life of Columba), CELT, University of Cork
Curran, B. The Creatures of Celtic Myth, Cassell and Co
Rose, C. Giants, Monsters and Dragons, W.W. Norton

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T

Tiamat
The Legend: The babylonian/summerian legend of Tiamat is also the tale of the worlds beginning. In Ninevah in Iraq, seven tablets were excavated. On them was the creation epic, The Enuma Elish (The babylonian Genesis) in the form of a long poem. They are dated back to the 2nd century bc and once translated told the story of the dragon Tiamat. The tablets tell of how, in the begginning there was nothing but two elements. Apsu, the spirit of fresh water and Tiamat, the spirit of salt water and chaos. Tiamat was portrayed as a large dragon, with a serpentine body, hons and a long tail.
Tiamat gives birth to several children, the gods, who rise up against their father Apsu and kill him for fear of him killing them first. In her rage at Apsu's death Tiamat declares war against her offspring and spawns eleven creatures to aid her. They were the viper, shark, scorpion man (Girtabili), storm demon, great lion, dragon, mad dog and four nameless ones. With Apsu gone she also enlisted the aid of the god Kingu to command her armies.
It was the god Marduk or Merodach who finally killed Tiamat by trapping open her jaws with a net and shooting her heart with his bow and arrow. From her body came came the earth and milkyway and from her blood came the rivers. A similar ending befell Kingu who was killed by Anu (Some sources mention Marduk as Kinku's slayer) and from his blood mankind was created.

Sybolism: Tiamat seems to symbolise primeval chaos and darkness.

Notes: Some sources also state different names for this legend. They name Tiamat as Asag and Marduk as Ninurta

References: A Little History of Dragons - Joyce Hargreaves, Giants, Monsters & Dragons - Carol Rose, The Dragon - Francis Huxley, The Enuma Elish (Web translation), The Oxford Companion to World Mythology

Typhon
The Legend: Distraught at the destruction of the Giants, Mother Earth (Ge) lay with Tartarus, and in the Corcian Cave of Cilicia brought forth her youngest child. The childs name was Typhon and, as stated by the tales, he was the largest monster ever born. It was said that where his legs should have been there was nothing but coiled serpents and his huge arms had countless serpent heads instead of hands. His dark wings blocked out the sun, fire flashed from his menacing eyes and flaming rocks spewed forth from his mouth. Typhon left the cave and headed toward Olympus to do battle with the gods.

When he attacked Olympus the gods fled, changing into animals to better their escape. Only Athene stood her ground before the monstrous creature. She taunted Zeus for his cowerdice untill the gods leader reverted back to his true form. Zeus let fly a thunderbolt at Typhon before attacking with a flint sickle. Wounded, Typhon fled to Mount Casius, which looms over Syria from the north. It was here that the two grappled. Typhon twined his coils around Zeus, disarming him of his sickle. Using the sickle Typhon severed the sinews of Zeus's hands and feet before dragging him into the Corcyian Cave.

Although Zeus was immortal he could not a finger and Typhon had hidden the sinews in a bear-skin over which Delphyne, a serpent-tailed sister-monster, stood guard. The gods were dismayed at their leaders defeat but Hermes and Pan went to the cave to attempt a rescue. Pan frightened Delphyne with a sudden horrible shout while Hermes recovered the sinews, placing them back in Zeus's limbs. Some legends mention it being Cadmus who took back the sinews from Delphyne, saying that he needed them for strings for his lyre so he could play her delightful music. In that version of the tale it is Apollo that shoots Delphyne dead.

After being rescued, Zeus returned to Mount Olymus and mounted apon a chariot drawn by winged horses and once more pursued his new enemy. Typhon had gone to Mount Nysa in the meantime, where the three fates offered to restore his vigour by giving him ephermeral fruits. In reality however, they were dooming Typhon to death. Zeus caught up with his quarry and thre thunderbolt after thunderbolt at him. In retalliation Typhon picked up mountains and threw them at the god. Zeus managed to wound Typhon and the streams of the monsters blood gave Mount Haemus its name. Typhon fled towards Sicily, where Zeus finally ended the epic battle by hurling Mount Aetna apon the wounded monster.

Notes: In the Corcian Cave at Delphi Delphyne's mate was called Python and not Typhon in a variation on the tale. Where-as Python personified the destructive winds, Typhon translated to mean "stupefying smoke" and his appearance describes a volcanic reaction, hence Zeus buring him under Mount Aetna.

Typhon and other Greek myths bear resemblence to the Egyptian myths. For instance the flight of the gods from Typhon, where they became animals seems an attempt to explain the Egyptian worship of gods who took animal form. A further source for this legend seems to be the Babylonian creation epic, the Enuma Elish where the gods flee from the horde of monsters spawned by Tiamat and Apsu.

References: Greek Mythology and Religion - Haitalis, Mythology - C.Scott Littleton, The Greek Myths Vol 1 & 2 - Robert Graves - The Folio Society.

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V

Vritra
The Legend: Vritra is the name of the vast dragon or serpent in the Hindu mythology of India. The name means "Encloser" Its other names are Vrtra and Vitra. It has been described as a gigantic spider but it is, more often than not, thought of as a three headed serpent that encircles the world and is often identified with Ahi, the cosmic serpent in the Vedic mythology. As one of the evil Asuras, the serpent was the enemy of Indra the storm god. The two would fight over and over again with neither gaining a deciding victory. Being fedup with the constant fighting, the god Vishnu that neither of the two should attack the other with any iron, stone or wood that was wet or dry in either day or night. For a while the truce held but one day, when the sun was setting and so it was neither night or day, Indra saw his enemy from the shore. The god entered the foamy waters and attacked the serpent in an element that was neither wet nor dry or any of the forbidden elements. And thus was the sky serpent slain, releasing the cloud-cattle (rain) that had been held captive in the mountains in his ninety-nine fortress. The end of Vritra signified the end of the drought.   

Symbolism: Vritra symbolises the destructive element of nature and was often thought to be the main cause of drought.
References: Giants, Monsters and Dragons - Carol Rose, Mythology - C. Scott Littleton

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W

Wantley Dragon
The Legend: In Wantley, England, an anonymous ballad has been retold since the 16th century which tells the story of a ferocious dragon which terrorised locals, eating their animals and generally causing havoc in the local area. This dragon was the Wantley dragon which resided in a local water hole in a small lodge in Yorkshire. The ballad was published in 1685AD by Thomas Percy, the Bishop of Dromore, and tells the tale of a dragon with two ferocious wings and a sting in his tail, as long as a flail. It had ong claws in his paws, forty four teeth of iron and a hide as tough as any buff.

The tale goes on to tell how the dragon would devour children as easy as men would eat an apple, as well as cattle's and trees. A valiant knight called More of More Hall was called upon to slay the dragon and save the locals. The knight demanded a fair maiden to anoint him in the evening and dress him in the morning before the battle. This of course was done and the knight donned strong armour with spikes adorning it, (a fairly common theme in English folklore it would seem) some of which were thought to be 6 inches long. The knight was described as looking big and strong but also like an outlandish hedgehog. The knight frightened all that looked upon him as he set out towards the lair where the dragon presided. More crept down into a well where the dragon would often drink and waited. He then rose upon the dragon and hit him in the mouth. Two days and one night they did fight. The dragon with his tough hide and the knight with his strong armour meant they never had one wound between them. More of More Hall hit the dragon on the behind which was thought to be the dragons one weak point. The dragon fell onto the knights long spikes and thus his life ended.

Notes: Apart from the ballad not a lot is known about the Wantley dragon although some believe that it was in fact local brigands who were terrorising the locals.

Other Sources also say that Wantley Dragon story tells the tale of a nasty attorney who cheated children of their estates, but was made to give them back by a gentleman called More who went against him “armed with the spikes of the law”. Some also believe that the the ballad is in fact older than first thought as the More coat of arms bears a dragon which can be traced as far back as 1634.

References: British Dragons - Jacqueline Simpson, Dragons of the West - Nigel Pennick, Giants, Monsters & Dragons - Carol Rose

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Y Ddraig Goch
See Ddraig Goch, Y

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Bibliography

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