Dragons' World

If you’re a fantasy fiction fan, you’ve probably wondered what it would be like if dragons were real. I can tell you the answer to that, actually”very scary.” Some historians and anthropologists have wondered the same thing, though, and have even attempted to find the “origins” of dragons in actual creatures. This tendency goes as far back as 300 BC, when Chinese historian Chang Qu described the fossil remains of what was thought to be an Asian dragon.The creatures that we know of which most resembled dragons (large, wingless lizards) lived millions of years ago, such as the Quinkana crocodile and the Megalania goanna lizard in Australia. Both of these could be larger than four meters long, and weigh several hundred pounds, but went extinct almost 40,000 years ago. Additionally, a five-to-six meter long snake, the Wonambi, also went extinct in Australia in the last 50,000 years. Scientist Tim Flannery says this may have been due to the Australian Aboriginal culture, which feared the beasts and forbade their children to play at the water-holes where the snakes waited. (more…)

Lewis Carroll’s 1872 novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There features a short poem which has fascinated readers for over a century. The poem, of course, is “Jabberwocky,” a rhyming bit of nonsense which generated a plethora of new words, a number of mysterious creatures, and a good bit of literary criticism. Ironically, Carroll’s original intention was to satirize exactly that sort of over-analysis.The mystery of the jabberwocky itself, however, has inspired many authors. The monster in the poem has “jaws that bite, claws that snatch” and “whiffles through the tulgey woodburbling” as it comes. Carroll’s familiarity with the area of Sunderland has led some to imagine that the Jabberwock was based off the Lambton Worm legend. In this bit of folklore, a young boy named John Lambton skips church in order to spend a relaxing Sunday morning fishing. He ends up catching a strange creature which an old man describes as the devil. Lambton throws the creature in a well, where it is forgottenuntil it grows up, that is. (more…)