[HPforGrownups] Draco, draconis (Re: Arthurian Allusions in "Harry Potter")

[Jacob Lewis]

No: HPFGUIDX 46406

First Iris, in her clear-headed way, wrote:
"And tell me, for I don't know Arthurian world as well as you do; didn't
Uther Pendragon asked Merlin to awaken a dragon that would help him to win a
battle (sorry if I'm wrong; that's a remote and very wolly memory of John
Boorman's "Excalibur")?............

Then sang Sian, swift with respect to his feet:
If I remember that movie correctly, Uther asked Merlin to wake the Dragon to
help him get to Irgaine in Tintagel.  While Gorlois was off fighting with
Uther's men, Merlin woke the dragon and used the "Dragon's Mist" to allow
for
passage of Uther transformed into Gorlois to reach the caste.  I remember
Uther asking Merlin whether the mist was going to hold him and Merlin
replying that yes "your lust will hold you up".   Hope that helps.

Said I:
Actually, there's a myth that I think crops up first in Geoffrey of
Monmouth, and is expanded in Mallory:

"There he assembled stonemasons from different parts of the country and
ordered them to build a tower for him. The masons gathered and began to lay
the foundations of their tower. However much they built one day the earth
swallowed up the next, in such a way that they had no idea where their work
had vanished to."
Merlin, then a young boy, promised to solve the problem of the castle
foundations himself. He told the King that the foundations fell every night
because there was a pool beneath the earth they were lain on. He also told
the King that beneath the pool, two dragons lay sleeping. And when Vortigern
dug under the foundations, he found the pool. And when he drained the pool,
the two dragons awoke, and began to fight, and Merlin began to prophesy:
"Alas for the Red Dragon, for its end is near. Its cavernous dens shall be
occupied by the White Dragon, which stands for the Saxons which you have
invited over. The Red Dragon represents the people of Britain, who will be
overrun by the White One..."

Then Merlin told Vortigern that he was pretty much doomed, because there was
this Arthur kid coming along, and he'd drive out the Saxons and be king of
all the British, etc. etc.

Lifted wholesale from: http://dragonsunlimited.tripod.com/index-231.html
------
I /do/ remember the whole Gorlois-Ygraine-Utor story, but I don't recall
there being /dragons/ in it, just Merlin, and a polyjuice-like episode,
including getting hair from Gorlois...

Hope I'm helpful today. (grin)

Jacob,
whose previous post on grammar included a bit on the iota, (hah!) which was
intended as an example of how little things can drive a community apart, but
may just have been one of his usual unconnected-to-anything ramblings.