After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Dragons: From the Ancient World to the Hobbit

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

Take dinosaur bones, snake poison, volcanic lava, fear of the unknown. Mix it all together and you have a dragon!Today we're finding out about the ancient origins of dragons and why there used to be a much wider variety of dragon types than we see today. Our guide is dragon expert Jasmine Elmer. Jasmine's new documentary "Dragons: Myth & Reality" is out now on History Hit.Edited by Tom Delargy, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code AFTERDARK - sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.

Wendy's has a new breakfast deal. Mix and match two items of your choice for only $4. Breakfast wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small seasoned potatoes or small hot coffee. Choose two for $4 at Wendy's. Available for a limited time at participating Wendy's in Canada. Taxes extra. It was at this point that Bilbo stopped.

Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. Before him lay the great bottom-most cellar of the ancient dwarves right at the mountain's root. It was almost dark so that its vastness could only be dimly guessed, but rising up from the near side of the rocky floor, there was a great glow, the glow of smorg. There he lay, a vast red golden dragon, fast asleep. His wings folded like an immeasurable bat, his long pale belly crusted with gems. A thrumming came from his jaws and nostrils and wisps of smoke, but his fires were low in slumber. Hello and welcome to After Dark, Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. I'm Dr Maddy Pelling. And I'm Dr Anthony Delaney. And today we're talking, you might have guessed, about dragons, myths and maybe realities with jasmine elmer

jasmine is a classicist with a fascination for ancient monsters she's just finished i have to say a really incredible documentary all about dragons which is out now on history hit so if you're already a subscriber you can watch that not immediately listen to this episode first then go straight away to history hit if you're not a subscriber, but you've been thinking about maybe signing up, then let Jasmine and her work persuade you to go over to historyhit.com and sign up now. So Jasmine, welcome to After Dark. Welcome.

Thank you for having me. I'm really excited. I feel like I should just call myself Doctor something because you guys seem to have both, to have a doctorate. I thought I could just add it on. Just whack it on. I'm just plain old Jasmine. Just plain old old Jasmine maybe I could add my own title I could uh work on

you can be the dragon doctor yeah well okay yeah I'll just do that I'll just poo poo everyone's hard work on their PhDs and chuck in whatever title I want shall I yeah that sounds like a good idea Jasmine Elmer mother of dragons there. Nice. Appreciate that. I'll take that. I'm going to go and update my website straight away. Fantastic. So obviously dragons, we're going to talk about it. We know dragons from The Hobbit. We've just heard Bilbo seeing, I want to say Smaug. I know some people say Smaug, which first of all,

before we get into dragons, what side of the debate do you come down on, Jasmine? Is it Smaug? Is it Smaug? I'm a Smaug. Oh, controversial. I'll be honest, based on almost no particular knowledge of what one you should really go for,

I just think it sounds more fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, why not mix it up? Like one day you might be on both. Just whichever one feels nice, really. Can I also be potentially controversial here and say, I hate The Hobbit. I hate that book. Go away. Get out. I absolutely can't stand it. Just get out right now. The Hobbit. I hate that book.

Go away. Get out. I absolutely can't stand it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I know there are people clicking off at all worlds, but I just can't cope. I can't. Is it the book or the film or all of it? Haven't seen the film. So yes, the book. Oh, okay. I tried to read it multiple times, but I am not able to read. No, I can't read. But it's not, it's just, I can i can't i just you know

what gets it for me and this is in any book weird names they don't go into my head and weird place names they don't go to my head so i go through the hobbit being entirely lost where i'm like so you're not a fantasy reader then i find it difficult truly i yeah truly i find fantasy very difficult because i can't quite get a grasp on names and places yeah so you do know you're talking to an ancient world expert today right so you do not like anything in the ancient world if you don't like weird names i find it hard to truly i find the ancient world hard too because i'm like who where okay i can kind of visualize where they are if it's actually grounded in some geographical place,

which it's not always. But otherwise I'm like, yeah, that sounds lovely. I don't know what you're saying. It is my block. It's my history block. I was talking to somebody recently about the thing that they dislike about history. And two of my things are,

I can't remember stuff about unusual names and places. And then military history is the other block. But the Hobbit is just not my favorite thing i'm not maybe me and maddie should just do this on our own then i feel like you run pop off for a cup of tea today no no because i will have interesting questions that come from a place of ignorance okay okay so we've established that anthony hates the hobbit not not a great and all words all words all fantasies all dragons he hates them thinking of sort of dragons in popular culture though we've got obviously game of thrones we've got

harry potter jasmine do you have a favorite pop culture dragon oh my god no because yeah no i do now i've got one and it's the hydra from disney's hercules nice it is just disney's hercules for me i i don't know it's the songs isn't it just gets me every time and cue the music jasmine sing oh my god oh my microphone seems to be broken it does lead us nicely nice segue because mentioning the hydra there that's maybe a bit of an unexpected dragon in terms of what we think of dragons today we think of them as being these huge fire breathing scaly often winged dragons they're really big into gold as smorg or smaug is in the hobbit but they haven't always looked like that have they so take us back through the mists of time to the ancient world that anthony finds so hard to navigate tell us about

the sort of earliest origins of dragons when do we first encounter them in myths and stories? Yeah, I mean, obviously that's a huge question. And I think I have to make this distinction straight up between sort of we're talking here in a Western tradition, like a Eurocentric tradition. Yes, yeah. Otherwise if we start, you know, we could get into kind of Eastern dragons

and how long they've been around. And that's a different type of, you know, mythical story that we have there. But, terms of the Western dragon, we can go all the way back into the very earliest civilizations that we know. Babylonian cultures have dragons. And obviously, for me, firm, strong dragons in the classical period. So they are really, really old. And they seem to be in mythologies that are as old as we know. And of course, we can't even get into the stories that were told before these civilizations that weren't recorded. You can imagine that dragons may even have been part of those cultures as well in oral traditions.

So to answer that, they've been around a long time, probably as long as we've been around and had our imaginations to create them. Most cultures, most ancient cultures have some kind of dragon story involved. time probably as long as we've been around and had our imaginations to create them most cultures most ancient cultures have some kind of dragon story involved and you know what they look like and what they're about is really quite interesting because as you say you've just beautifully described the one that we all think of the the scary medievally looking dragon that's the one in our heads but actually a lot of diversity in the ancient world as to what a dragon might look like its characteristics which i find fascinating maybe anthony will like that who knows well anthony anthony is now speaking of himself in the third person and already has

a question actually due to his ignorance around dragons and the classical world. But my question is, you said dragons have been around as long as we have, but is there some archaeological explanation going on in terms of that human invention of dragons to explain maybe items they're coming across that they don't necessarily know what they're encountering? Yeah, I mean, for sure. That's a really interesting point. I think that's why we can make claims like they possibly knew about these things early on because they found... I'm definitely holding on to this last point

to make this dramatic drop of information, but actually I'm not making any sense, so I'll just drop it now, which is the fossils. Finding dinosaur fossils or the remains of earlier animals, like even a mammoth and a bone. You can imagine they look huge, these bones, and they kind of can't really explain them.

So one way is possibly finding these fossils and making up stories to try and rationalize them and explain them in some way. And that is one possible route of where the dragon story comes from. in some way. And that is one possible route of where the dragon story comes from. I mean, obviously, it's a horrible question, like, who was the first bloke or woman knocking around that went and found one and went, Oh, I'm gonna make up a story about this thing. I'm gonna call it this. And then I mean, I can't answer that. But what you do know is once this story gets into circulation, of course, there's this amazing effect where you get that kind of cultural snowballing of where you get all these different societies that pick up on the story and make it their own so definitely some kind of like

basis in paleontology rather than archaeology i'd say and i find that really fascinating because the other point is to understand that you know if you're thinking about greece for example because obviously i'm going to always try and steer it back there being a classist but earthquakes and things like in the region means that these sorts of things are actually, you might think, Jasmine, are they that common that they would find a fossil? You don't really find them very often in your back garden nowadays, but actually there's evidence that they would have found these things enough of the time, especially in Greece and earthquake prone locations as these things kind of, you know, were moving about in the soil and came up so it's plausible it's plausible it comes from something like that a rationalization a kind

of playing around with the world around them and that's all myth though right so all myth often is trying to explain human nature or the world around you so it just kind of makes logical sense to me that is a bone let's make up a story about it it's this creature thing i suppose as well you know we can speculate on having sort of material evidence for dinosaurs and people trying to interpret that but also i think dragons belong do you think it's fair to say to just a broader tradition of monsters i'm thinking of like sea monsters or you know if you think to like the anglo-saxon world and like beowulf with grendel and grendel's mother over the hill you know something that's just always on the edge of the landscape over the

horizon in the woodland, in the water that you can't see the depths of, you know, there's something about human psychology that wants to invent, you know, we think of Smaug in The Hobbit, you know, inside the mountain, he's just out of reach, but he's there, literally undermining society and safety human safety anyway i mean i don't really want to add to that because you just put it so perfectly i mean just in short we'll just go home now i'm here for one word answers from the guests that's good this will be a great podcast yeah that sounds about right great great short podcast for everyone yeah no, no, totally. Obviously, you know, I would firmly put dragons

as part of the kind of monster canon. And yeah, you're right. And I think it's because of how they behave and where they live. And as you quite rightly say, especially in an ancient context where geographical location is even more distant in lots of times.

You know, if you think about medieval, we were trading a bit more, there are advanced technology, et cetera, et cetera. And then further on, the unknown becomes smaller and smaller, right? Where's the frontier to unknown places? And monsters nearly always dwell on the periphery or the boundary or into those unknown places. And also their behavior, they kind of maraud around.

They like to be a nuisance. They look scary. They end up in battles with heroes. You sort of tick, tick, tick the boxes of what you kind of take a traditional monster myth to be. So absolutely, I would say they are monsters. And it's quite interesting, like you said, when you think about the human psychology element to that. I think that if you think about what Greeks andks and romans or ancients were thinking about dragons i think they would all they put them in that category themselves they're afraid of it they're not like oh great a dragon although there are some goodies which we can talk about maybe later but in general they are monsters i would say you talk about them looking scary and then you mentioned earlier

that they don't necessarily always look like that Tolkien-esque dragon that we had at the start of the episode. Can you give us an insight into what some of the more unusual looking dragons or the earlier dragons, I suppose, might have looked like as opposed to what we are more familiar with today? Yeah, because the one we've got is like this typecast, isn't it? It's like they tend to like replicate exactly the same features in dragons, sort of medieval and post-medieval period it just they look like that thing right that you just got in your head so i don't even need to describe it but when you go back into ancient cultures and i'm being general about ancient

cultures here again remembering i'm talking mainly in the western tradition the european tradition there's actually quite a few different looks like depending on the monster you're talking about so in the classical period the dragon is a snake and actually you can trace that back into sort of Babylonian and more ancient cultures as well so really it's a dracon is the greek for a dragon but really is a snake so anything serpentine and that's why if you look back into the classical period and before you kind of see see snakes and you're probably saying to me, Jazz, there aren't any dragons back there because you're looking back on that image that you've got right now of that medieval dragon. They are there. It's just that they were snakes. All of them had an origin as a snake. And you can see that in the more modern dragon because it's the scaliness, isn't it? And interestingly,

the fire. So there are some ancient dragons that perhaps breathe fire, but mainly it's to do with the venom that a snake would have. So if you think about, I mean, I don't know if you've been bitten by a snake, guys. I haven't. No, not this week. I haven't, thank God. But if you have, then, you know, it's supposed to be fiery.

You know, it's supposed to be like a burning, isn't it? Like the poison, the venom is a burning sensation. And so that's where we probably think the motif of fire comes from. And obviously, when you want to show that visually, fire breathing is an easier way to, you know, how am I going to show you venom in a picture? Not really. I'll just do fire. So, again, it's all these things exist. The seeds are always there. And there's little roots in reality then as well, isn't there? In the real animal world.

And then it's kind of bigger and better and fantastical. Exactly that. So that's why you get those scaly elements. There are actually wings as well in the ancient world. You do get wings, like Typhon has wings and you get Babylonia, like Tiamat has wings. So you do get wings like Typhon has wings and you get Babylonia like Tiamat has wings. So you do get wings for them and they're not always there though. Why is this the case?

I think first of all, it makes them more interesting if they're a bit different, right? Different monsters for different things. But obviously the symbolism of each element comes together to create a new whole. So I think that that depends on the context of the story and the culture you're talking about and the time but you know there are those sorts of characteristics that continue to go on like even medusa if you think about medusa and medusa had wings as well so there you go i mean it's not as neat and tidy as it is our medieval one but i think more interesting and allows for kind of more detailed and fun analysis of what's going on in one particular storyline absolutely and it makes sense as well in the

ancient world when we think about ancient gods and goddesses that that's a kind of pick your own adventure and lots of those individual gods or goddesses change shape they change their characteristics depending on the story depending on what hero they're coming into contact with like medusa for example you mentioned you know her story changes massively depending on what hero they're coming into contact with. Like Medusa, for example, you mentioned, her story changes massively depending on who's telling it. So why wouldn't the monsters change as well? That makes total sense. Exactly. And you kind of get these pure dragons

that look more like what you think they do. And then you get what we call composite dragons. So they're the ones that are kind of like a mishmash of whatever's going on. Some of them really weird, like the chimera. So you do have these like different genres within dragons as well especially in the classical period so it just makes it more interesting and you can add different elements into your storytelling and we've got to remember

in case people are unsure these things are not real so they are made up yeah i know so sorry spoiler alert so you know like that's why we need those extra elements because we need to embellish the story or add something to it or add an element so yeah it's something that i think you do so well in the documentary for history hit and we can sort of get into this is how dragons always sort of reflect something about the people who are telling the stories about them it's a way of i suppose reflecting back societal concerns or anxieties and we can talk a little bit about what dragons tell us about ourselves. So I'm going to make Anthony describe a few pictures that we've got here in front of us

of different dragons or dragon-like creatures from the ancient world. So, which is a task Anthony always loves to do. So Anthony, the first one we have is an ancient Greek pot, an urn. Tell us what's going on in this image. I will. I'll tell you precisely and everyone should take my word as gospel. I see a one bodied but many headed snake. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, like 10 odd heads there going on. There's two lads, one either side. And one fella has one snake by the neck, which is pointless because there's another nine. And then, oh yeah, the other fella has another snake by the neck. They have stuff that they're going to look like they're going to behead those particular heads. And then there's love hearts.

Oh, maybe that's a leaf. Either a black love heart or a black leaf. I don't know. Surrounding that, but that's just decorative. I don't think it's got anything got to do with the story. And if I were to look at that, though, I see scales, but I would not say dragon, which is interesting based on what you've just been telling us, Jasmine, in terms of they are dragons, just a kind of an earlier form. So there ends my brilliant presentation on this particular urn or whatever it is. Now, Jasmine, tell me everything I got wrong.

I just want to leave it there. I think that was great um okay so you're looking at a pot that shows the image of heracles his greek name for hercules do what you want with the names don't really care because it's a greek pot i'm gonna call him heracles slaying the lanaean hydra which is the second of his labors if you know his famous labors where he gets to do these impossible tasks so the reason it's impossible is because this this particular monster lives in this lake and if you cut off a head to grow in its place so i think you counted the heads like i think you said like nine or ten or something there i didn't quite catch the number many heads yes and you know in

the text a whole range of the number of heads that hydra's got but it could be god knows how many right because up to thousands probably but you know the bad thing is you know cut off the head to grow in its place so the only way that heracles can kill it off because he obviously tries to you've seen the movie you've seen the hercules movie slashing away at it it. Oh, no, too many heads. What am I going to do now? And so he cauterizes them in the end so they can't grow anymore. And that's how he manages to kill it off.

So there you go. That's the story. There's different versions of that. That's the basic one. And the hydra is exclusive to Greece? So the many-headed monster, is that what you mean? Yeah. Oh, it's not a hydra.

No, exactly. The hydra, this is the lenaean hydra like a water snake so you have other examples of water snakes for sure but this is the particular so it relates to the ancient greek story of this particular hydra yeah because you get sea monsters which are different another different category there are so many categories here so how complex it is yeah i do see how complex it is he's freaking out here yes well isn't it's too many words so i'll cut it down for you okay there are sea monsters right who live in the sea but then you've got water snake ones anyway we've gone off the story of heracles anyway he does it

doesn't he because it's a it's a labor he's got a win so he wins and the little dude is uh i owe lous who's his like nephew who comes and helps him occasionally just knocks up and there is hilariously i don't think it's in the the one you've got there actually but there is a little add to this myth that we see which is hera who's the one that sent him on the quest in the first place sends a little crab to like add into the mix i mean i don't know what's going on there let's set him against this massive monster that's gonna kill him easy and then oh it's not working let me send a tiny crab just to annoy them and then you get these in this image just little crab knocking around at the bottom which i don't

think you had in that one but um no i don't see a crab it's very aerial little mermaid though that would be brilliant wouldn't it we're mixing up all the disneys now yeah we have completely confused everyone that's listening now they're going to be like what is this myth we are so sorry do you know one thing that is coming out of this though i think is a very early example of a hero killing a dragon like creature because this is kind of a key part of the dragon mythology isn't it that people go and kill them usually men that in order to prove yourself as a hero in whatever universe you're involved in that killing the dragon wins you some

brownie points but it proves that you're a hero exactly yeah it's a tale as old as time isn't it that you get these in the very earliest of stories Gilgamesh for example he has to get a dragon he has to fight against a dragon. I mean, in a wider sense, it's a monster, usually, of some description, isn't it? It often is actually something dragon-like in very early mythologies. And you're right that in some ways the reason they exist as parts of myth is because the hero needs the baddie to kill off to prove his worth.

And you're right, it's men. They have to go through, you know, there's that famous thing, it's called the heroic cycle, where they go through all these parts of their story. And one element of that story is nearly always kill a baddie. And, you know, that's what they're there for. So often to prove that there might be a godlike element to it, proving their godlike strength or cunning ability or something like that to go through this cycle so you're right that there's always usually each dragon i can think of especially in the classical period has their opponent right the famously medusa and

perseus for example you've we've just spoken about heracles and the hydra typhon fights zeus that's the point of the really isn't it the main point the one thing that's quite interesting is when it's a human hero of some description even zeus is like you know humanoid looking at even if he's a god often there's this concept of order over chaos so the dragon will symbolize some kind of chaos and actually when you get me we spoke about all the weird little features that dragons can have earlier on. And in some ways, that's another kind of play on the making them even more chaotic

and mind-blowing and bizarre so that they're weirder to you and more chaotic so that the figure that is usually the male, I'm not going to get into the patriarchy on here, but we can come another time on that one, right? But the male figure can impose order by slaying the dragon and you get that in a lot of stories so there is a big point to it it's like i know we're mucking about here but there's a serious a really like massive cosmological point to these battles and they do exist in the oldest of kind of

ancient cultures so it's there from like you know again day dot almost tell us about typhon so this is another greek monster isn't it but his appearance is completely insane yeah so typhon because he's very very ancient so he's one of the very first dragons there is like a sort of like you can get a dragon family tree pretty much in classical dragons and he's one of like them i call him the Mac Daddy's, you know, top dog, right? Old school one. He's been there for a long time. And he, that's why he's fighting Zeus because it's this time really before man. And, you know, what he looks like,

as you see, there's lots of pottery with his image on there. And he looks very much like the kind of Babylonian before him, the kind of Mesopotamian dragon. Tiamat, there's a lot of connection between how they look. So often there is some he can be winged he might have a serpentine bottom half he has snakes flying off him somewhere in random

places so he kind of looks different you know there's associations sometimes with him because he's a god of like storm a storm god and wind so there's all of that going on he's got a very kind of unusual iconography probably because he's borrowing almost from the Mesopotamian tradition. It's not quite Greek yet. It's very early in the storyline. But he's a pretty cool figure. And one thing I personally love about him, because I made a joke about PhDs.

I did do a bit of a PhD, but I quit it to do this stuff. And it was actually about volcanic activity and the connection between dragons and volcanic activity. So one of the rational explanations of Typhon is that he's very well connected to Mount Etna. Various ancient authors will make this connection between the fact that Typhon and Zeus have this big fight. And one of the places that he was chucked at the end of it is under Mount Etna. was chucked at the end of it is under Mount Etna. So it's a sort of rationalization for volcanic activity so that this monster is under the ground trying to get out,

all the lava's spewing. So you do actually get a really fascinating connection between dragons and landscape because it's not the only story where you get a connection between volcanic activity and dragons. And I'm not going to claim this but my professor at university called it dragonscapes nice which i think is yeah i mean lovely props to that's a word we can get on board with i think anthony's onto that he's into that word yeah i have there's a question that's forming again you know you mentioned earlier like of course these things don't exist

but was there a time when people thought they did or was it always this rationalization of the landscape or of explaining natural phenomenon or or trying to storytell but was there ever a time where they thought don't go in that cave well yeah i mean of course there is i mean i don't even think it's as neat as like we go from uh storytelling into rationalization although the rationalizations that come from ancient authors tend to happen in the later period later greek and roman period do they get more interested in the science of what's going on so you know in that sense you do see more of that developing in the later classical periods but it's a bit of a mean question anthony because it's the same question like did they believe in the gods because this is all this big pantheon of like everything

isn't it it's like the mythology mythology take you know i'm not saying they take it or leave it pick and choose but what do they believe is a bit of a sticky question because absolutely some people will believe it for sure and other people think pat what a load of rubbish even earlier on in this period right some people have asked me before like we obviously don't believe in dragons now like i said spoiler alert for those people that like freaking out that but sorry and one of the reasons is because we've been everywhere we've explored everywhere we have technology we have knowledge our fingertips etc etc etc but you try and understand this ancient world where you know you could leave your city leave your vicinity and then like you could just die on the edge of that it's like just

truly deadly when you're out of your own like sphere of influence and we're very sanitized though aren't we and safe you'd like what are you gonna do oh i'll just ring on i'll just ring what is the international emergency number i don't know that one none of us know so we're all dead scenario none of us are doing survivor that's none of saying no so that's not great but the point is that we have these safety nets but then can you imagine that that might come out as a fear of a monster a fear of what's over there i mean you might not always think it literally but wild beasts are going to be out there people have seen or heard of the wild beast so it's not even that far to go could one of them look like a dragon i mean yeah i mean a crocodile looks a bit like a

dragon so there's the annoying answer so i'm gonna go yes no which is my favorite way of answering a question that's like that wendy's has a new breakfast deal mix and match two items of your choice for only We'll be right back. Taxes Extra. Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, Catherine Parr. Six wives, six lives. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and this month on Not Just the Tudors, I'm joined by a host of experts to tell the stories of the six queens of Henry VIII who shaped and changed England forever. Subscribe to and follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. One of the most famous dragon stories we have is the tale of St George versus the Dragon. The story originates from Georgia. Though George became the patron saint of England in the 14th century,

the story of his fight against the dragon was written down in the 13th century by the Bishop of Genoa. George came across a village that was being tortured by a dragon. After feeding it all of their livestock, the villagers held a lottery to decide which human they must now send to the fearsome beast. The unlucky victim was to be the king's daughter. As the princess walked out to her death, George fought the dragon and managed to tie a rope around its neck. He gave the princess the dragon to lead back into the village and demanded that, if they wanted that dragon slain, all the citizens must convert to Christianity. They agreed. The dragon was slain. Not only had George rescued the people from danger,

he'd created a village of Christians and therefore saved their souls as well. Yay! Souls have been saved we have christianity coming into the the dragon story now so what does the dragon of the christian european world look like smalg smorg smilg whatever you want to call him today that's a new one just made it up um i mean yes it's the one you've got in your head it's the one you imagined as a child it's the scaly fire breathing winged treasure hoarding thing but what's different that i'd say is that this dragon is firmly kind of placed now into the realm of evil so although we spoke about dragons being monsters earlier on don't think the Greeks and Romans had this sense

of good and evil in the same way that we see in the Christian period you know so it's essentially a creature of the devil really isn't it the dragon in The dragon in the... Okay, well, Christian era. What is the Christian era? It's not really a thing, is it? You know what I mean? In terms of Christian thinking. One thing that's striking me, and this is based on Jasmine's teaching,

so this is me showing I've learned something today. Excellent, I like that. Is that the English patron saint, that is Saint George, and the Irish patron saint are potentially more linked than one might think in that St. Patrick banishes the snakes, St. George is overcoming the dragon, and you have told us, Jasmine,

that they are linked in terms of their kind of origin story. So maybe we're more alike than we thought. Yeah, I mean, this is how I think all day, every day, because you think like, and I try and be as, I'll be careful and cautious here, because we've been in mythology, and we're now entering religion. So this is, for some people, this is, you know, I'm not personally religious or Christian. So I mean, no disrespect when I say this, but when you look at the stories, you can see origins of the stories of saints, and you know, we're looking back at the ancient hero. So you're right. I mean, this is my argument. Everything starts in the ancient world, everything. So what what happens then this morphing from the ancient world into let's call it the medieval christian world and i'm talking in very very broad chronological terms here is that the hero is maybe

being transformed in some way into the sort of saintly heroic figures that we get in the Christian tradition. And that dragons no longer represent chaos necessarily, but evil, which I suppose has lots of connections, but I can see that that is a different concept. At the heart of these stories, there's still this tradition of man goes out and kills dragon. I'm thinking about some of the early medieval examples. We've already mentioned Beowulf, and obviously the big climax of the beowulf story uh for anyone who doesn't know turn off now if you don't want the spoiler is that he fights a dragon he battles a dragon is this just a hangover from the medieval world do you think it's doing something different in terms of like moral teaching are these male figures heroes like beowulf and more obviously christian saintly figures are they

doing the same thing that heracles is doing in the ancient greek world yeah i'm gonna call it medieval piggybacking i don't think anyone would argue with do they predate this period yes they do i mean it's obvious but you are right they're piggybacking on it but they are making it their own because obviously what they're trying to teach through Christian thinking, you've got to think about sort of the context for where these images are shown. So like, you know, I, for example, in the dock, I'm looking at one in a local church wall,

and you see them a lot around in churches, which are kind of like weird, actually. It's kind of like scary. And so, you know, normal people are seeing these images as well as you might think of like a lofty painting somewhere that's been commissioned that's quite posh or, you know, that would obviously be for private viewing probably, you might imagine. So these images though, they're everywhere. And it's one way of, you know, Christian thinking really to get out there in a kind of iconographic way. And so what you see is goodie versus baddie. You see the light of God versus

the darkness of the devil. You see, you know, the fire becomes less about the venom and perhaps the fear of the unknown. We spoke about that geographically in the wild, less about that, more about hell. You know, the need for the light of God and this saintly figure to vanquish it, I'd say is quite similar. You're right. The order over chaos thing in Christian thinking, that is the same thing. Because what is order? It's the way of God. It's the way of Jesus. It's the way of the light. What's the bad stuff? It's the way of the devil and the dark. So in that sense, it is exactly the same. One thing that strikes me about this is I would never have equated a dragon with Christianity, which may be more obvious in the English Christian tradition or elsewhere, because I know

the dragon and Christianity is not just an English thing, but obviously the St. George image is quite widespread. But I would never have thought, yeah, Christianity equals dragon. It doesn't seem to sit comfortably in my head. But of course, it absolutely does when you think back to these stories. I think it's because the sort of fantasy that you're probably imagining, when is it being written is a horrible question again, isn't it? But, you know, it's hundreds of years probably after the medieval period that we start to get this interest in fantasy and dragons being something something in the realm of fantasy but where does that come from and yes it comes from

well we've gone all the way back many thousands of years actually haven't we but you know if you're going to take it back somewhere it's in that christian idea it does make sense right that the dragon becomes potentially this kind of creature of the devil and in its behavior as well like you know often living in a cave darkness in some ways then you do see that thing about the wild back in there the fear of places you know sometimes these geographical excuse me locations so there's always these like little sprinkles left from the ancient world that are all there but i think it's just fascinating how you get this like real demonizing of the dragon in a much stronger way than you do in the ancient world I wonder as well if there's something to be said about medieval attitudes to gender and sex here because when we see the story of Saint George

whether it's written down or depicted in different artworks whether that's you know on the wall of a 14th century church or in a painting, he's always impaling the dragon with a lance. And I think it's fair to say that it's quite sort of phallic and maybe sexualized, but he's always rescuing a damsel in distress. And I wonder if that says something about Christian ideas of morality and sort of female purity versus male intrepidness. Yeah. yeah i mean essentially more piggybacking using this to make more of a point about gender roles about behavior exactly so in the documentary actually we spoke about this uh dr sam richie who is an expert has written extensively about gender and the potential symbolism of things like a lance.

And she talked about different dragons and how many images there are of dragons where you can see their vagina and the spearing of, from some kind of saintly figure into the mouth of a dragon is symbolic of the action of penetration. Where she took that, I don't know, this is her life's work sort of thing, so I don't want to put words into her mouth. But those sorts of, I guess, fears of sexuality are in there. I am an ancient world expert,

so I don't want to speak too much about all of that symbolism in the medieval period, but it's there and it will be multifaceted and multilayered because you've included it, so you're making a point. But also, why have you put it on a church wall? It's interesting. It's definitely there, there though you're right that it definitely exists and it's it's an important element of artistic analysis yeah well to quote the culturally very highbrow film that is shrek it's so fascinating that you're talking when i want to dragon vaginas and that's the only female dragon i can think of and it's that's so interesting that maybe

the dragon in the medieval world is more commonly gendered female and therefore represents a sort of evil chaos version to go alongside and in opposition to the pure damsel in distress who represents the christian morality and things maybe that's an oversimplification of it but there's something so fascinating there about the way to defeat the dragon is to penetrate her if it is female and to save the chaste virginous heroine instead and there's there's just something there isn't there and that's that's it's so interesting but yeah the only female dragon i can think of is in shrek well no actually i asked this question i think again in the doc, or I just think it was actually in the last cut, but yes, many of the dragons in the medieval

period are female because you can see their vaginas or they've got little baby dragons next to them and around them. So you can absolutely identify many of these dragons as female. So you make an incredibly important point. And I think depending on the kind of composition of a piece of artwork, we have a lot of female dragons in the ancient world as well. There's a little bit of borrowing here. And one of the reasons in the ancient world why a female dragon is scarier perhaps than a male dragon is because they can create baby dragons. and this concept of like this eternal damnation and horror of the dragon that can keep reproducing is greater than a male dragon so this one called echidna who's like the literal mother of dragons and she actually has so many all the little dragons are related to her if you follow this

family tree all the ones you can think of so many of them come from her so that is a greater fear so in some ways you can you are getting that replication into the medieval period and we see that in pop culture if you look at game of thrones the idea of producing from your own body dragons is tied to ideas of female power in that story so that's it's really interesting that has a historical root if you like very very interesting i mean it I mean, it's there. So it's all the way back. It's a really fascinating aspect, I think of, I think we could probably do a whole podcast on that.

But maybe people have had enough of dragon's vaginas by now in this conversation. Has anyone ever had enough of them? I don't know. Jasmine, why do my briefing notes say, talk about British worms? No, they're real. They're a thing.

So there's a type of flightless dragon that knocks about. It isn't really a worm, okay? So don't worry. We see them in various local cultures in Britain. They might be connected to special areas like little water holes or little lakes and things like that. and so you get these

sort of like genres of dragon as well in the medieval period which is possibly why it's on your notes to just make the point that we had like this plurality of dragons in the ancient world where you do get them i can't take them seriously already because i don't really know what they do half the time there are various stories with them and they do, they do have the characteristics of other dragons, but I just, because they don't really have much going on for them. I'm like, ah, is that it? I genuinely thought you were going to talk to me about gardening. And I'm not even joking.

I was like, we're getting into modern gardening now. Okay. This is how dragons relate to gardening. I think this is homework for any listeners now to go away and find what is happening with these medieval so-called flightless dragons and to, I think, rehabilitate them in the story of the dragon. They sound like they need a little bit of zhuzhing. Do we? Do we need to zhuzh them? Are there some things that should be dead to history and stay there?

And I propose that that might be one to go in room 101 of history. No, I'm being mean about them. I'm being mean. I mean, I think what they are, if you're looking at them, the bit that is interesting is they definitely give you a little look into local folklore. And that is quite good. That is quite good.

Quite good. Well, I think that's a perfect note to end on. Hopefully this podcast was also quite good. Thank you so much, Jasmine a perfect note to end on hopefully this podcast was also quite good thank you so much jasmine and thank you so much for listening you can listen to us wherever you get your podcasts and if you want to leave us a review and let us know how much you've enjoyed this episode and others please do so wendy's has a new breakfast deal mix and match two items of your choice for only four dollars Thank you. Well thank you for listening to this episode of After Dark Please follow this show wherever you get your podcasts It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour

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