Sekka's Mythical Beings

         Kamisaka Sekka (Japan, 1866-1942) was an artist who spanned the movement of Japanese art toward modernism.  The Japanese government sent him to Glasgow to study western arts, where he was much influenced by the Art Nouveau movement.  His work is more simplified and stylized than the styles of Japanese art that came before.  His masterpiece was the three volumes of Momoyogusa, which is sometimes translated A World of Things, and sometimes Flowers of a Hundred Worlds.  The latter is more poetic, but I’m guessing the former is more accurate a translation, and is certainly a more accurate description.  The 60 pieces depict some flowers, but also other plants and animals, views of nature and of daily life, objects, people, scenes from literature, and even a few mythical characters.  These last are what I have for you today.

        We have to start with the dragon, of course!  This is very dramatic, showing only the head and one taloned foot looming out of inky grey cloud.  The eyes and claws are gilded for extra punch, but it’s hardly necessary.

        Next up is another stormy character: Raijin, god of thunder.  He’s following his standard iconography by beating on his drums, while his hair flies wildly.  Again, you can see that this is relatively simple with large areas of flat color compared with traditional Japanese woodblock prints - but it’s still quite complicated compared with anything that uses a single block and a single color of ink.  (I mentioned Raijin’s companion thunder beast the raiju here.)

        And finally we have the hakuhō, translated as “white phoenix,” although I can’t find any information about what, if anything, this bird’s mythical powers might be.  Lots of fantastic birds seem to be translated as “phoenixes” without necessarily having anything in common with the phoenix proper, so I’d love to find out more about this one.  At the very least it’s certainly very beautiful.  I like the faint pattern of the wood grain in the background, and the delicate fluff of the bird’s tail feathers.

        If you want to see one of Sekka’s non-fantasy pieces, I featured his “Seven Herbs of Early Spring” in a previous post (or follow the link to the Cleveland Museum of Art in the credits to see lots of pieces.)

[Pictures: Ryū (Dragon), color woodcut by Kamisaka Sekka, 1909-10;

Raijin (God of Thunder), color woodcut by Kamisaka Sekka, 1909-10;

Hakuho (White Phoenix), color woodcut by Kamisaka Sekka, 1909-10 (All images from Cleveland Museum of Art).]

Z is for Zorzi

         (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, my brand-sparkly-new collection of short stories, poems, and art inspired by fairy tales, myths, and folklore.  All through the month I’ve shared excerpts of art, stories, and poetry from my book, as well as some reflections on the power of the traditional stories that inspired me.)

        Today’s story is another that’s inspired by elements of medieval folklore - particularly some of the botanical creatures found in travelers’ tales and marginalia - rather than by a particular fairy tale.  (However, it does also include yet another nod to “The Sleeping Beauty.”)  Here’s how it begins…

        Rich volcanic soil, moderate rainfall, and favorable agricultural regulations make the town of Arylli the perfect place for growing snapdragons – but it wasn’t always this way.  When Zorzi Ombor brought home a potted vegetable lamb (Agnifera borometz) from the Sorcerers’ Market in Rabo, his neighbors raised their eyebrows.  When his wife Aldita planted barnacle goose trees (Branta arborescens) among the almonds in their orchard, the townsfolk shook their heads.  And when Zorzi and Aldita began cultivating snapdragons (Dracophytum folium), the town fathers took a stand.

        Three of the most respected councilors called on the Ombors one afternoon in July.  Half a dozen vegetable lambs now lined the path to their cottage, grazing meditatively, each within the circuit of its long, flexible stem.  The soft cheeping of barnacle geese still inside their shells could be heard from the orchard on the low hillside behind the house.  To the side of the shed, however, the councilors could see the field of snapdragons.

        The snapdragons could see the councilors, too, and their narrow heads rose up on sinuous necks, turning like sunflowers to keep glowing yellow eyes fixed on the visitors.  One or two hissed softly, thin green tendrils escaping from their thorny jaws like steam.  The councilors crowded together on the path and hurried up to the Ombors’ door.

        “People don’t like them,” Councilor Polo Talig explained, “They’re a menace to the town.”

        “How?” asked Zorzi, as Aldita offered the visitors her famous almond shortbread.

        “Well, the teeth, for one thing.”

        “Nobody objects to rose bushes.”

        “And the vines they breathe out.”

        “Nobody objects to sweet peas.”

        “But they stare at people.  They’re clearly hostile!”

        “Nobody objects to cats.”

        “Look, Zorzi,” Polo insisted, “We know you like your specialty crops, and we’ve tried to be tolerant.  Really we have.”  He looked at the other councilors for support.  “But these dragon plant things are just too much.  We’ve gotten too many complaints.  They’re going to have to go.”

        “Go where?” asked Zorzi. 

        You can read about two of the three species mentioned in the excerpt above at these prior posts: The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary

        Magical Botany B

        Those two marvels both appear in travelers’ tales and people believed they existed in far-flung locales.  As for the Dracophytum folium, on the other hand, that’s inspired by marginalia.  If you’re not familiar with that term, consider it a Word of the Month: it means decorations or writing in the margins of a manuscript.  Marginalia can range from translations, commentary, and helpful diagrams, to elaborate decor to mere doodlings.  The marginalia in medieval illuminated manuscripts can be absolutely gorgeous, but even when it’s a deliberate part of a book’s design and decor, it usually has nothing at all to do with the subject or content of the book.  That left those medieval illuminators free to decorate margins with whatever strange and sometimes downright unhinged images came into their heads.  If you want to see some of the weirder marginal monsters, check out my 2022 A to Z posts on Z is for Zany and X is for Variables.  Of course I’m always on the lookout for dragons, and when I discovered a couple of dragons breathing out vines, I was quite taken with them.  Here are a couple of the dragons that inspired me, one breathing vines, the other with a viny tail.  So I made a botanical dragon of my own.  And if you want a coloring page of my design, you can download it here, as a little celebratory gift for reaching the end of the 2026 A to Z Blog Challenge!

        The moral of Zorzi and Aldita and their snapdragons is that there can be definite advantages to remaining unnoticed.

        Also, on the other hand, there can be definite advantages to being unique and special.

        I don’t have any Dracophytum folium, but I do have a collection of carnivorous plants!  Do  you have any unusual plants or pets?

[Picture: Dracophytum Folium, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2020 (Image from Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns);

Marginal decoration from Hebrew Festival prayer book, Italian, 3rd quarter of the 15th century (Image from the British Library);

Decoration from Book of Hours, Netherlands or Germany, mid-15th century (Image from the British Library);

Venus fly trap, pitcher plant, and sundew, photos by AEGNydam, 2026.]

Unique Named Dragons

        Did you know that according to a 13th century monk, you had to watch out and repel the dragons that liked to be abroad in the eve of Midsummer?  We should be safe by now, so let's look at some dragons today.

         Modern fantasy generally considers dragons to be a species (or lots of related species), but during the early days of dragon folklore, it was more common that each dragon was its own individual monstrous thing.  I introduced a number of these one-of-a-kind dragons in my prior post O is for One-and-Only, where you can find Yamata no Orochi, Azi Sruvara, Tarasque, and a number of unique non-dragonoid monsters.  (Sometimes it’s pretty hard to tell whether something should be classed as a dragon or not.  What about the Velue and the Oillepheist, for example?)  Today I present you with a few more unique, named dragons to add to the list.

        France has been remarkably prone to unique monsters over the centuries.  Luckily it was also remarkably prone to saints.

        In Metz, France it was the Graoully, a dragon who took up residence along with a huge swarm of snakes in the Roman amphitheater.  (This was in the 3rd century when the Roman Empire was still a thing.)  They poisoned the whole area.  The Graoully was driven away by St Clement, or possibly drowned by him in the River Seille.

        In Rouen, France the Gargouille was a bat-winged, long-necked dragon who lived in a cave by the Seine and could breathe fire or spout water, and who flattened crops with the flapping of his wings.  Despite his size and ferocity, he was easily tamed by St Romanus and the sign of the cross.  Despite his new tameness, he was then burned, except for his unburnable head.  This was hung on the cathedral, where it inspired some medieval architect to invent the gargoyle.

        In Vaucluse, France it was the Coulobre.  Her name comes from Latin coluber, meaning simply “snake,” and today the colubridae are a family of snakes that are mostly harmless and non-venomous (except the boomslang).  But this one was different: huge, with spiny wings, and so ugly that even other dragons despised her.  She lived in a deep spring, where she gave birth to poisonous salamanders.  It was St Veranus who hunted her down and forced her to fly away into the wilderness in the Alps.  (I should note that the Coulobre might not actually be unique.  Another attacked Petrarch when he was staying in the area, and another was defeated in Dordogne by St Front.  It’s unclear whether these are all the same species, or different unique individuals with the same name.)

        In Poitiers, France the dragon to beware was the Grand’Goule, with a gaping mouth and a tail with a scorpion sting.  It lived in the tunnels that ran under the Gallo-Roman walls near the Sainte-Croix Abbey, and it devoured the occasional nun.  St Radégonde killed it with a weaponized prayer that shot the beast like a crossbow bolt.

        Moving lastly to Italy, the Tarantasio was a pestilential dragon that lived in Lake Gerundo, and particularly enjoyed eating children.  It had large horns and webbed feet, and was killed by someone, although there is a great deal of disagreement over who did the deed.  It is said to be the origin of the coat of arms of the Visconti family, even though that’s simply a large anthropophagus snake called the “biscione.”  Another image said to depict the Tarantasio is a carving on the facade of the Duomo in Milan, even though it’s hornless and looks like a cross between a dinosaur and a puppy.

        These stories all have a pretty similar plot, which also appears with any number of unnamed run-of-the-mill dragons all across Europe.  Another common element of the story is that after the offending monster is destroyed, some relic or effigy of the beast gets paraded around town on an annual basis, and/or displayed in the local church/castle/town hall.  Although this plot may not seem terribly interesting to us today, it’s important to consider how vital it is always to remember that oppression can be resisted, cruelty can be defeated, and virtue can triumph.

[Pictures: Procession of the Graoully, engraving(?) from Dembour et Gangel, 1840/1852 (Image from limédia galeries);

La Gargouille de Rouen, engraving by Guillaume Cabasson, 1885 (Image from New York Public Library);

St-Romain with the Gargouille, stained glass at the church of Saint-Romain in Wy-dit-Joli-Village, neo-Gothic (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

Saint-Véran and the Coulobre, sculpture - can’t find any info about artist or date (Image from The Wyrm’s Lair);

La Grand’Goule, wooden sculpture by Jean Gargot, 1677 (Image from Alienor.org);

Biscione, coat of arms of the House of Visconti on the Archbishop’s Palace, Milan, mid-14th c. (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

Tarantasio?, sculpture on facade of  Duomo di Milano, by Carlo Pellicani, early 19th c. (Image from Yes Milano).]

Saint George Strikes Again

         I previously did a post about Saint George slaying the Dragon, which you should go ahead and see here: St George’s Day.  In it I have a wide variety of wood block prints of the scene, ranging from around 1504 to 1941.  But in the more than ten years since that post, I’ve collected a bunch more prints on the theme, so here’s another collection.

        Knights killing dragons has long been a very popular theme for artists, with Saint George being the most popular one of all.  The iconography tends to be fairly standardized: George is most often riding a horse and plunging his lance down the throat of the dragon on the ground below.  Often the damsel in distress is shown in the background.  Sometimes you can see George’s shield or pennant with his cross on it, although of course in most wood block prints it’s black-and-white instead of red.

        Today’s first three examples are all very standard, but they have some interesting details.  Number one, by Albrecht Dürer, has the princess peering out from behind a boulder, plus some bones scattered around the ground to demonstrate just how dangerous the dragon is.  I love its feet and long tail corkscrewing away into the distance.  The dragons are often quite small, as in today’s second piece, but Dürer’s dragon is as large as the horse, which is quite respectable.  As for the second piece, it shows the princess safely away on a clifftop, praying for the knight’s victory, but the most interesting thing about this one is the background.  Wood block prints of this era seldom have dark backgrounds, but this one does a great job using the characteristics of relief printing for a nicely speckled dark ground and a patterned background that is reminiscent of the the patterns in hand-painted illuminations.  These first two are both from the early sixteenth century, so you can see by the comparison why Dürer was considered such a master!

        As for the third piece, it’s quite small and rough, with flaws in the image where the wood block presumably was cracked and damaged.  The dragon, however, is kind of adorable, with wide, happy eyes and a big grin.

        The next examples are also quite crude.  Here are a series of three woodcuts from an eighteenth century chapbook, and they show three stages in Saint George’s battle: he rides up and greets the princess as the dragon rushes in from the left.  The center is the standard iconography as George delivers the fatal thrust, and then the third image shows George having cut off the dragon’s head to bring back as a trophy.  There’s a continuity error where his horse has changed color, and I think it would have looked better if it were black all along for a punch of contrast.

        Next to those is a modern ikon in an interesting skritchy carving style.  I like the saint’s halo and the glow of little lines making a sort of halo around the entire horse.  The dragon is another funny one, but it’s got its tail around the horse’s leg so if it can survive just a few minutes longer it might bring George down!

        The last two pieces today are the most dramatic of all.  I particularly love the dragon in piece #6.  He looks like he’s actually giving George a serious fight, having broken off the lance and spewing smoke.  He’s got an interesting forked tail, as well.  As for the knight, he doesn’t seem to be wearing armor or using a saddle, although he’s got quite the extravagantly plumed helmet.  And the final piece puts a modern twist on the whole thing by mounting Saint George on a motorcycle.  To balance that touch, the rest of the composition is very traditional, although carved in a rough expressionistic style.  I love this twist on the traditional version.

        As I said in my previous post on this topic, I’d rather see happy healthy dragons than glory in the violence of slaughter, but if I set aside my love of dragons and remember them as the representations of evil that they used to be, I’ll leave you once again with the quotation from G.K. Chesterton: Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

[Pictures: Saint George, woodcut by Albrecht Dürer, 1504-5 (Image from The British Museum);

Saint George on horseback, wood block print by anonymous Italian artist, 1519 (Image from The Met);

Saint George of England, frontispiece of The most illustrious History of the Seven Champions of Christendome by Richard Johnson, 1661 (Image from Yale University Library);

Three woodcuts from “The Life and Death of St. George,” 18th c., from Chapbooks of the Eighteenth Century by John Ashton, 1882 (Images from Internet Archive);

Ikon, wood block print by Michael Aggelaki (Image from eikastikon);

Saint George and the Dragon, wood block print by Guiseppe Scolari, 1550-1600 (Image from Art Institute Chicago);

Victory. Saint George on motorcycle, woodcut by Igor Koutsenko, 21st c? (Image from Saatchi Art).]

#WyrdAndWonder 2024

         Wyrd And Wonder is a month-long celebration of all things fantasy.  If you want to know more, you can find out all about the idea and about its noble and heroic hosts here.  Of course my blog is a celebration of fantasy (and block prints) not just for the month of May but all the time, which is why each year I like to make a post that points out where any intrepid travellers from Wyrd And Wonder can find prior posts that connect with this year’s various Wyrd And Wonder prompts.  So let’s dive right in!

Lists of Books

     Bite Sized Islands (Short Stories and Novellas)

            Books for Hope

            Fantasy Tales of Frank R. Stockton

     Clockwork Castle (Subgenre: Steampunk)

            Technofantasy

     The Road Less Travelled (Underrated Books and Small Press Publications)

            A Few Lesser-Known Treasures

            The Last Three Read-Alouds

          I would be remiss not to mention just a couple more lesser-known treasures that I haven’t had a chance to write posts about yet: Lumina and the Goblin King by Cari Lyn Jones and The King of Next Week by E.C. Ambrose.  The latter could also have been filed under “Bite Sized Islands” above.  The former could probably be filed under “Zone in on Comfort” below.

         I also have to mention my own books in this category!  You can see them all listed here, or read blog posts about a few particular books:

            On the Virtues of Beasts of the Realms of Imagination: Introduction plus An Entire Series of Posts

            Turn the Page… Open the Door… Enter the Adventure (The Extraordinary Book of Doors)

            The Cheesemonster Cometh!  (Kate and Sam and the Cheesemonster)

            Introducing: Ruin of Ancient Powers

            Kickstarter Campaign (Bittersweetness & Light)

     Dragon’s Pass (Dragons, of course!)

            Why Dragons Are Cool

            Creature Collections: Dracopedia

            Creature Collections: The More the Merrier

            Creature Collections: Encyclopedias

            Creature Collections: Artists’ Edition

            Field Guides to the Creatures of Fantasy

            More Field Guides

Information on Creatures of Fantasy

     The Fountain of Youth (Immortal Characters)

            R is for Regeneration

     Here Be Monsters (the Darker Creatures of Fantasy)

            V is for Vampirism

            U is for Undead

            D is for Demonic

            A is for Anthropophagus

            How to Summon a Giant Skeleton

            N is for Ninki Nanka

            They Run Again

            Words of the Month - Ghosts

            Gruss vom Krampus

            I Don’t Do Vampires

            Words of the Month - Things That Go Bump In the Night

     Dragon’s Pass

            W is for Wyvern

            P is for Pyrallis

            D is for Dragon

            O is for Oracle

            Kircher’s Dragons

            A Short History of Dragon Lore

Fantastic Fives: Zone in on Comfort

       The Golden Key

       Psalm for the Wild-Built and Once More Upon a Time: Books for Hope

       My list of fantasy comfort reads probably should also include

       The Lord of the Rings, suitable for Conflict Bay (Battles or Great Rivalries - something I don’t always have much interest in)

       The Phantom Tollbooth, suitable for Standalone Isle

            assorted Terry Pratchett, and… well, that’s five so I guess I should stop.  For more comfort reads you could also check out the books in my post Random Books of Kindness.

        For me, the ingredients for a good comfort read include

1. Characters I love, who are genuinely trying to do what’s right, without too much angsty whining.

2. Settings I long to be immersed in - including epic landscapes, magical palaces, mysterious libraries, enchanted gardens, and wonders to be seen all around!

3. Happy endings.

        That should be enough content to keep you busy for a while!

[Pictures: Wyrd & Wonder orange dragon by Elena Zakharchuk;

Fire on the Wind, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2024 (Image from NydamPrints);

Bigger than a Breadbox, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2022 (Image from NydamPrints).]