Pages in category 'Scottish legendary creatures' The following 53 pages are in this category, out of 53 total. This list may not reflect recent changes. Tagged as Chinese mythology, Divine Archer, epic myths, monster slayers, myth, mythology, Yi the Divine Archer. April 16, 2013 12:03 am THE TOP EIGHT NEGLECTED MONSTER-SLAYERS IN WORLD MYTHOLOGY. When it comes to gods and/or demigods who slay monsters Hercules, Thor and Gilgamesh get the bulk of the attention. Vishnu and Shiva’s.
Argus, byname Panoptes (Greek: “All-Seeing”), figure in Greek described variously as the son of Inachus, Agenor, or Arestor or as an aboriginal hero (autochthon). His byname derives from the hundred eyes in his head or all over his body, as he is often depicted on Athenian from the late 6th century bc.
Argus was appointed by the goddess to watch the cow into which (Hera’s priestess) had been transformed, but he was slain by, who is called Argeiphontes, “Slayer of Argus,” in the Homeric poems. Argus’s eyes were transferred by Hera to the tail of the.
His fate is mentioned in a number of Greek tragedies from the 5th century bc—including two by, Suppliants and Prometheus Bound, and ’ Phoenician Women—and the Latin poet ’s Metamorphoses from the 1st century ad.
(Redirected from Dragonslayers)
Saint George slaying the dragon, as depicted by Paolo Uccello, c. 1470
A dragonslayer is a person or being that slays dragons. Dragonslayers and the creatures they hunt have been popular in traditional stories from around the world: they are a type of story classified as type 300 in the Aarne–Thompson classification system. They continue to be popular in modern books, films, video-games and other entertainments. Dragonslayer-themed stories are also sometimes seen as having a chaoskampf theme - in which a heroic figure struggles against a monster that epitomises chaos.
Description[edit]
Andromeda Chained to a Rock by Gustave Doré (1869).
A dragonslayer is often the hero in a 'Princess and dragon' tale. In this type of story, the dragonslayer kills the dragon in order to rescue a high-class female character, often a princess, from being devoured by it. This female character often then becomes the love interest of the account. One notable example of this kind of legend is the story of Ragnar Loðbrók, who slays a giant serpent, thereby rescuing the maiden, Þóra borgarhjörtr, whom he later marries.
There are, however, several notable exceptions to this common motif. In the legend of Saint George and the Dragon, for example, Saint George overcomes the dragon as part of a plot which ends with the conversion of the dragon's grateful victims to Christianity, rather than Saint George being married to the rescued princess character.
In a Norse legend from the Völsunga saga, the dragonslayer, Sigurd, kills Fafnir - a dwarf who has been turned into a dragon as a result of guarding the cursed ring that had once belonged to the dwarf, Andvari. After slaying the dragon, Sigurd drinks some of the dragon's blood and thereby gains the ability to understand the speech of birds. He also bathes in the dragon's blood, causing his skin to become invulnerable. Sigurd overhears two nearby birds discussing the heinous treachery being planned by his companion, Regin. In response to the plot, Sigurd kills Regin, thereby averting the treachery. [1]
Mythologists such as Joseph Campbell have argued that dragonslayer myths can be seen as a psychological metaphor:[2]
'But as Siegfried [Sigurd] learned, he must then taste the dragon blood, in order to take to himself something of that dragon power. When Siegfried has killed the dragon and tasted the blood, he hears the song of nature. he has transcended his humanity and re-associated himself with the powers of nature, which are powers of our life, and from which our minds remove us.
...Psychologically, the dragon is one's own binding of oneself to one's own ego.'[3]
Dragonslayer characters[edit]
Susanoo slaying the Yamata no Orochi, by Kuniteru
The dragonslayer (Copper door 1974) by German artist Klaus Rudolf Werhand
Antiquity
Medieval and early Modern legend
Sigurd or Siegfried
Skuba Dratewka/Krakus
Mamadi Sefe Dekote (Africa)
Benzaiten aka Saraswati
Tolkien's legendarium
Bard the Bowman
References[edit]
^Byock, Jesse L. (1990). Saga of the Volsungs: The Norse Epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. ISBN0-520-23285-2.
^The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyes, Anchor Books 1988 ISBN978-0-307-79472-7
^The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyes, Anchor Books 1988 ISBN978-0-307-79472-7
External links[edit]
Media related to Dragonslayers at Wikimedia Commons
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