Neville's role

[grey_wolf_c]

No: HPFGUIDX 32816

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Jennifer Boggess Ramon <boggles at e...> wrote:
>Th. 2: Neville's role in the books
><snip: my yellow-bird theory>
> I find this unconvincing, for a number of reasons:
> 
> (1) There's no such thing as "Oriental mythology;" there's Chinese, 
> Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, etc. mythology.  The dragons of 
> these mythologies are related, as are the dragons of the Western 
> mythologies, but they're not all the same, just as a dragon in the 
> ancient Greek myths is not the same as the one in the legend of St. 
> George.

My sources in this case are not the best authority in mythology, but 
making a little investigation, I arrive to the conclusion that the 
legend is part of the Japanese folklore.  I said "Oriental" mythology 
to place more or less the legend in it's proper place, since I didn't 
have the sources with me at that moment.
 
> (2) In many Chinese dragon tales, at least, the enemy of the dragon 
> is the phoenix (itself different from the Western one).  Different 
> dragons have different enemies.  I've never heard the "yellow bird" 
> theory, so I suspect it's attached to a particular strain of Eastern 
> dragon.

The quote is (translated by me) "the dragon fears only one animal, the 
small yellow bird, for only that small bird is capable of killing him". 
I think it's an allegory about how small things can overcome poweful 
beings, which is why I used it in the first place.
 
> (3) Most of the dragons of the Far East are not evil.  (As a 
> dedicated dragon fan, I would stop here and point out that many of 
> the dragons of the West are also not evil, but unfortunately that 
> does not hold in Britain, so I'll skip it.)

Interestingly enough, we've got no dragons in my country's folklore, 
even though it's in Europe. Anyway, I never said that dragons are evil 
(or good; it's irrelevant for the theory). If you're offended by me 
drawing a pararelism between Draco and dragons, sorry, but it fit's 
quite well.
 
> (4) While the snakelike, wingless dragon with the forked horns and 
> the mane is often called "Draco orientis" in the faux-Linnean 
> classification of dragon fans, if Draco had been named after it, his 
> name would be Lung.  He is almost certainly named after "Draco 
> europa".  (Although perhaps we should re-vamp the species names after 
> the species given in FBaWTFT - Draco hebrideae, Draco norweii, 
> Quetzalcoatlus peruvii, Lunga sinesis, etc.  Yes, my dog-Latin is 
> bad, but so is it on most genus-species names.)

Canon says Draco's name means dragon (PS/SS). This is the true origin 
of the pararelism of my theory. Nothing else was intended.
 
> (5) There's no connection between yellow birds and any of the the 
> European dragons.

I didn't know that. But then again, I never said that, either.
 
> Okay, so I'm a dragon geek.  Sorry about that . . .
>   - Boggles, aka J. C. B. Ramon

Nah, don't woory. I'm a (Tolkien's) dwarf fan myself

Hope that clears thing a bit,

Grey Wolf