Yeah, Dragons are awesome. While not a box office success, the 1996 fantasy film
DragonHeart (starring the late Sean Connery) and the 2002 post-apocalyptic film
Reign of Fire are two of my all-time favourite movies:
DragonHeart Trailer
(Since the
Reign of Fire trailer is pretty misleading, I'll show this clip from the film after the first Dragon is awakened)
Reign of Fire - "The Dragons Take Over"
When it comes to stories and mythology, there's two in particular that spring to mind.
The first is a story from Northumberland, England called
The Dragon of Mordiford (also known as
Maud and the Wyvern) - which was a story about a poor girl named Maud finding a baby Wyvern; a type of Dragon which has four limbs, with its arms/front legs and wings been connected together rather than separate like the classic European Dragon.
Despite been told by her parents to get rid of it, she takes it to the forest and feeds it milk every day; helping the little dragon grow into an adult and with the dragon imprinting on her - seeing Maud as its mother. Sadly, it grows too big for Maud's milk to satisfy its hunger and it begins to attack livestock and other human beings, with the story having a sad ending as a knight ends up killing the dragon - much to Maud's dismay.
This story got adapted as part of the film
Dragons 3D (also known as
Dragons: Real Myths and Unreal Creatures), which covered several Dragon stories from mythology:
The second is the tale of the Welsh Red Dragon (Y Ddraig Goch) - which is told in two stories; the first been the story "Lludd and Llefelys" from the
Mabinogion and later been followed up with another story in the
Historia Brittonum.
In the first part of the story, the Red Dragon is a native creature to Britain that battles against a foreign White Dragon that invades the land. Ultimately, neither dragon is able to prevail over the other and - due to Dragons in Celtic mythology been highly attuned to the "Ley of the Land" (and to
the supernatural energies that flowed through them) - every time the Red Dragon was badly hurt in the fight, its pained cries would negatively affect it's surroundings; causing the land to become barren, with crops failing and the animals fleeing in fear. Humans too were affected by the Red Dragon's pained cries - becoming consumed with fear, with men losing their hue and strength while pregnant women would suffer miscarriages.
Needing advice for how to deal with this (along with two other "plagues"), King Lludd went to his brother Llefeys in Gaul for advice. His brother's advice involved him digging a deep pit and filling it with mead - with the weakened Dragons turning into pigs and drinking the mead before falling asleep. They were then wrapped up in a satin covering and buried under a hillock in Wales.
The second part of the story takes place years later, when King Vortigern - fleeing to Wales to escape the Anglo-Saxon invaders - attempts multiple times to build a castle on the same hillock; only for it to be shaken to pieces each night. At the request of his wise men, Vortigern calls for a fatherless boy to be found and brought to him so he can be killed and his blood spread across the area; the wise men believing this will "lift the curse".
However, the young boy in question (implied in some version of the story to be Myrddin Emrys, or "Merlin" for those of you who've read some King Arthur stories) reveals the truth about why the castle is falling down; stating the best thing to do is to dig down, release the dragons and let them finish what they started.
This is done and the freed Dragons resume their battle, with the White Dragon bringing the Red Dragon down three times but with the Red Dragon refusing to give up. Eventually, the Red Dragon wins the fight - with the White Dragon (depending on the version you read) either fleeing or been killed; the Red Dragon either flying away or returning to the hillock to recover from its wounds.
Merlin then explains to Vortigern that the White Dragon represents the invading Saxons while the Red Dragon represents him and his people; stating that Vortigern will eventually prevail over the Saxons but he'll need to build his castle elsewhere.
Vortigern would put his wise men to death for their failure and the hillock was renamed "
Dinas Emrys". The Red Dragon itself would not only be seen as a symbol of the Welsh People, but Welsh cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth would - in his book Historia regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) - use the Dragon as a prophecy for the coming of King Arthur.
As an extra bit of fun, the story of the Dragon's fight is told in the song "Tale of Two Dragons" by Calan:
The last thing Dragon-related that sticks up is the docufiction
Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real - which speculates on how Dragons might have evolved if they had ever truly existed: