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The white dragon (Welsh : Y Ddraig Wen) is a symbol associated in Welsh mythology with the Anglo-Saxons. [1]
The earliest usage of the white dragon as a symbol of the Anglo-Saxons is found in the Historia Brittonum . The relevant story takes place at Dinas Emrys when Vortigern tries to build a castle there. Every night, unseen forces demolish the castle walls and foundations. Vortigern consults his advisers, who tell him to find a boy with no natural father, and to sacrifice him. Vortigern finds such a boy, but on hearing that he is to be put to death to solve the demolishing of the walls, the boy dismisses the knowledge of the advisors. The boy tells the king of the two dragons. Vortigern excavates the hill, freeing the dragons. They continue their fight and the red dragon finally defeats the white dragon. The boy tells Vortigern that the white dragon symbolises the Saxons and that the red dragon symbolises the people of Vortigern.
The story is repeated in Geoffrey of Monmouth's fictional History of the Kings of Britain (c. 1136). In this telling the boy is identified as the young Merlin. The Historia Brittonum and History of the Kings of Britain are the only medieval texts to use the white dragon as a symbol of the English.
A similar story of white and red dragons fighting is found in the medieval romance Lludd and Llefelys, although in this case the dragons are not used to symbolize Britons or Saxons. The battle between the two dragons is the second plague to strike the Island of Britain, as the White Dragon would strive to overcome the Red Dragon, making the Red cry out a fearful shriek which was heard over every Brythonic hearth. This shriek went through people's hearts, scaring them so much that the men lost their hue and their strength, women lost their children, young men and the maidens lost their senses, and all the animals and trees and the earth and the waters were left barren. Lludd finally eradicated the plague by catching the dragons and burying both of them in a rock pit at Dinas Emrys in Snowdonia, north Wales, the securest place in Britain at that time. He captured the dragons by digging a pit under the exact point where the dragons would fall down exhausted after fighting. This place was at Oxford, which Lludd found to be the exact centre of the island when he measured the island of Britain. The pit had a satin covering over it and a cauldron of mead in it at the bottom. First, the dragons fought by the pit in the form of terrific animals. Then they began to fight in the air over the pit in the form of dragons. Then, exhausted with the fighting, they fell down on the pit in the form of pigs and sank into the pit, drawing the satin covering under them into the cauldron at the bottom of the pit, whereupon they drank the mead and fell asleep. The dragons were then wrapped up in the satin covering and placed in the pit to be buried at Dinas Emrys. [2]
Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) mentions the white dragon in his poem "The Saxon War Song":
Whet the bright steel,
Sons of the White Dragon! Kindle the torch,
Daughter of Hengist!
In February 2003 during his enthronement at Canterbury Cathedral Archbishop Rowan Williams wore hand-woven gold silk robes bearing a gold and silver clasp that showed the white dragon of England and the red dragon of Wales. [3] [4]
In 2014 the Royal Wessex Yeomanry adopted the white dragon as the centrepiece of their new capbadge. A dragon or wyvern is often used to represent Wessex, and a flag featuring a gold wyvern on a red field is used to represent Wessex. [5]
In the present era, the white dragon symbol is sometimes associated with St Edmund, and those who commemorate him. St Edmund is sometimes regarded as the patron saint of England during the Anglo-Saxon era, until he was displaced by St George, who is famous for having slain a dragon. [6]
A version of the white dragon symbol was embraced by Geoffrey Dunn (also known as Wulf Ingessunu), [7] : 136 a far-right activist whose organisation Woden's Folk regards Adolf Hitler to have been "the incarnation of Wotan upon Earth." [7] : 139 In the 1980s, Ingessunu adopted the image of a white dragon on a red background as a symbol, and presented the white dragon's mythological opponent of the red dragon as "the Red Dragon of Juda-Rome".The symbol chosen by Ingessunu of a white dragon on a red background briefly became widespread amongst far-right English ethno-nationalists in the early twenty-first century, leading to it being described by historian Ethan Doyle White as "arguably... Ingessunu's foremost contribution to the white nationalist milieu." [7] : 140–141 Far-right English nationalist organisations that adopted Ingessunu's white dragon flag include the Steadfast Trust and the English Shieldwall. [7] : 144–145
Ambrosius Aurelianus was a war leader of the Romano-British who won an important battle against the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th century, according to Gildas. He also appeared independently in the legends of the Britons, beginning with the 9th-century Historia Brittonum. Eventually, he was transformed by Geoffrey of Monmouth into the uncle of King Arthur, the brother of Arthur's father Uther Pendragon, as a ruler who precedes and predeceases them both. He also appears as a young prophet who meets the tyrant Vortigern; in this guise, he was later transformed into the wizard Merlin.
Hengist and Horsa are Germanic brothers said to have led the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in their supposed invasion of Britain in the 5th century. Tradition lists Hengist as the first of the Jutish kings of Kent.
The Kingdom of the West Saxons, also known as the Kingdom of Wessex, was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom in the south of Great Britain, from around 519 until Alfred the Great declared himself as King of the Anglo-Saxons in 886.
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The European dragon is a legendary creature in folklore and mythology among the overlapping cultures of Europe.
Vortigern, also spelled Vortiger, Vortigan, Voertigern and Vortigen, was a 5th-century warlord in Britain, known perhaps as a king of the Britons or at least connoted as such in the writings of Bede and Gildas. His existence is contested by scholars and information about him is obscure.
Dinas Emrys is a rocky and wooded hillock near Beddgelert in Gwynedd, north-west Wales. Rising some 76 m (250 ft) above the floor of the Glaslyn river valley, it overlooks the southern end of Llyn Dinas in Snowdonia.
The flag of Wales consists of a red dragon passant on a green and white field. As with many heraldic charges, the exact representation of the dragon is not standardised in law.
Welsh mythology consists of both folk traditions developed in Wales, and traditions developed by the Celtic Britons elsewhere before the end of the first millennium. As in most of the predominantly oral societies Celtic mythology and history were recorded orally by specialists such as druids. This oral record has been lost or altered as a result of outside contact and invasion over the years. Much of this altered mythology and history is preserved in medieval Welsh manuscripts, which include the Red Book of Hergest, the White Book of Rhydderch, the Book of Aneirin and the Book of Taliesin. Other works connected to Welsh mythology include the ninth-century Latin historical compilation Historia Brittonum and Geoffrey of Monmouth's twelfth-century Latin chronicle Historia Regum Britanniae, as well as later folklore, such as the materials collected in The Welsh Fairy Book by William Jenkyn Thomas (1908).
Lludd Llaw Ereint, "Lludd of the Silver Hand", son of Beli Mawr, is a legendary hero from Welsh mythology. As Nudd Llaw Ereint he is the father of Gwyn ap Nudd. He is probably the source of king Lud from Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain.
The Treason of the Long Knives is an account of a massacre of British Celtic chieftains by Anglo-Saxon soldiers at a peace conference on Salisbury Plain in the 5th century. The story is thought to be pseudohistorical as the only surviving records mentioning it are centuries later in the semi-mythological histories of the Historia Brittonum and the Historia Regum Britanniae. Though a popular cautionary tale in medieval Europe, there is no other historical evidence for The Treason of the Long Knives. Most historians interpret the story as a purely literary construction.
The Welsh Dragon is a heraldic symbol that represents Wales and appears on the national flag of Wales.
Octa was an Anglo-Saxon King of Kent during the 6th century. Sources disagree on his relationship to the other kings in his line; he may have been the son of Hengist or Oisc, and may have been the father of Oisc or Eormenric. The dates of his reign are unclear, but he may have ruled from 512 to 534 or from 516 to 540. Despite his shadowy recorded history Octa made an impact on the Britons, who describe his deeds in several sources.
The Crystal Cave is a 1970 fantasy novel by Mary Stewart. The first in a quintet of novels covering the Arthurian legend, it is followed by The Hollow Hills.
Llefelys is a character in Welsh mythology appearing in the medieval Welsh tale Cyfranc Lludd a Llefelys. In the tale, Llefelys is king of Gaul while his brother Lludd is king of Britain. The tale appears in the Red Book of Hergest and the White Book of Rhydderch, the source texts for the Mabinogion, and embedded into various versions of the Brut y Brenhinedd, the Welsh adaptation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae.
Rowena in the Matter of Britain was the daughter of the purported Anglo-Saxon chief Hengist and wife of Vortigern, "King of the Britons". Presented as a beautiful femme fatale, she won her people the Kingdom of Kent through her treacherous seduction of Vortigern. Contemporary sources are nearly non-existent, so it is impossible to know if she actually existed.
Events from the 5th century in England. Note that many of these dates may only be approximate.
Lludd and Llefelys is a Middle Welsh prose tale written down in the 12th or 13th century; it was included in the Mabinogion by Lady Charlotte Guest in the 19th century. It tells of the Welsh hero Lludd Llaw Eraint, best known as King Lud son of Heli in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, and his brother Llefelys.
A number of royal genealogies of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, collectively referred to as the Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies, have been preserved in a manuscript tradition based in the 8th to 10th centuries.
The Battle of Guoloph, also known as the Battle of Wallop, took place in the 5th century. Various dates have been put forward: 440 AD by Alfred Anscombe, 437 AD according to John Morris, and 458 by Nikolai Tolstoy. It took place at what is now Nether Wallop, 15 kilometers southeast of Amesbury, in the district of Test Valley, northeastern Hampshire. The battle was an internal conflict between the rival Britonnic forces of Ambrosius Aurelianus and Vortigern (Vitalinus).
