What a very fine fellow indeed! Of course, in the UK, the most famous dragon is the Red Dragon of Wales. Growing up, from the age of six to 18, on the Deeside of the Wirral, I was very aware of Wales. My best primary school friend was Welsh, as was a good friend of mine to this day from when I was a grammar school boy; and my grandmother was a Davies whose family came from the Lampeter area. Also, as a keen Cub Scout I was annoyed about how difficult it was to draw the Welsh flag as opposed to the flags of the other consituent elements of the UK. But, now, the English (well, a few of us) have (re-)discovered our own dragon, the White Dragon:
Another fine chap. Of course, the English have the Cross of St. George (which is, I think, the oldest continually used national flag in Europe), and the Three Lions (or leopards) flag. However, the latter is definitely Norman, and the St. George flag has the origins of its popularity with the Crusades, and can be seen to be yet another Norman symbol. We could argue about that, just as we could argue about the historical reality of our Anglo-Saxon (the fellows who, after all, created England) White Dragon. But I won't, and the White Dragon flies over my few square feet of England.
It does say 'ramblings' at the top of this blog, but just to compensate, here's a model aircraft photo, 1/72 Hurricanes:
Great post and very enjoyable. Fly those Dragons.
ReplyDeleteThank you, sir! They fly! But I would love a St. Edmund's banner - without the St. George cross.
DeleteYou transport one chap to some sort of Middle Eastern horror and you're branded some kind of monster. I mean really.
ReplyDeleteIndeed! Sadly, I wouldn't be surprised if some such comment wasn't made in the whitened sepulchres of Whitehall.
DeleteDragons are indeed evocative of something albeit I am not quite certain what...
ReplyDeleteA excellent flag to fly I think!
I used to listen to cds by a band from Ljubljana whose name currently escapes me .They did an amazing if odd rendition of a Queen song- One Vision I think...
Dragons - there and back again - Smaug - firesides - smoke rings. You're talking my language.
DeleteYou mean Laibach?
DeleteErm, I don't think so. But it could be, or, perhaps, Lubiana, or even Labacum. But, most of all, I wasn't making a political point, I was just using the city's current name.
DeleteWell done for flying the dragon. Having been involved fairly recently in Early Saxon re-enactment and with the Staffordshire hoard being found (some careless relative of Smaug lost that)it's interesting to see a renaissance of English pride slowly bubbling up, but sadly it seems a lot of folks can't understand that patriotism is different from nationalism.
ReplyDeleteYes, the Staffs hoard really seems to have struck a chord in places - there were very long queues to see it here in West Mercia. As I see it, we are living in a rather unpleasant age of globalisation where the centres of power are becoming more and more remote, and even more anonymous - that is not good for democracy (just look at how very little democratic accountability there is in the EU). Further, at a cultural level, there are far too many pressures that are driving us all to an undifferentiated mess (not a typo) that is only characterised by a) our willingness to labour for wages, and b) our willingness to buy stuff, and if on credit, so much the better. Both these pressures dislike a sense of real, localised, identity that is based on a sense of place and a sense of history. 'Englishness' for me is my sense of place and history. For me, the Anglo-Saxon political, linguistic and cultural project still has validity. Fly dragons, fly !!
DeleteVery succinctly put, and globalisation pretty much sums up the problem. I found at these Early English re-enactment events, the members of the public were roughly split into 3 camps.
ReplyDelete1. Interested families entertaining the kids on a day out.
2. English people who disregard there culture or think it not worthy of paying attention (eg. the English lady who stated that we all ought to speak Welsh because it was a language with a proper culture behind it, which it is of course, but the idea that the English language had a culture and history was beyond her)
3. People who are very well versed in early English history but are members of ultra Right wing organisations.
That's very interesting, because I found that, as a British battalion International Brigade living history type, the punters were much the same. The best, of course, were the 'interested families entertaining the kids on a day out'. As company commissar, I used to have a big old typewriter that the kids loved, and made me realise just how quickly yesterday's technology is forgotten. My pipes were popular too, with one little boy exclaiming in delight, 'That is a very old pipe!'. He was even more pleased when I told him I'd only bought it the week before - real living history!
DeleteThe English woman and Wales/Welsh business is interesting too - I have come across exactly the same thing, with English 'left-wingers' becoming very keen on all things Welsh and Welsh nationalist (nothwithstanding Plaid Cymru's origins), while decrying England and Englishness. Odd.