The Green Dragon

Isn’t this one of the prettiest little village pubs you’ve ever seen? It’s the Green Dragon at Wymondham and it goes back to the fourteenth-century. I believe there are 46 similarly named establishments across the land, but why this name was chosen, I cannot tell. Whether it refers to St George and a dragon’s slaying, or the arms of some medieval lord whose good will the publicans sought, I know not. According to Kimberly Hickok, writing for LiveScience.com:

Medieval theology aside, few people today believe in the literal existence of dragons in the way they may believe in the existence of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster, for example. The dragon (or at least the dragon version most familiar to Westerners) is simply too big and too fantastic to take seriously or literally. In the modern age of satellite imagery and smart phone photos and videos, it's simply implausible that any giant, winged fire-breathers inhabit Earth's lands or skies unseen.

And yet she concedes ‘dragon tales are known in many cultures, from the Americas to Europe, and from India to China.’ It’s remarkable that people from so many different cultures and continents, out of touch with each other, should simultaneously make up the mythological creature. I wonder if the townsfolk of Wymondham, far from being aristocratic flatterers or unimaginative patriots, named their inn after real creatures with which so many ancient and medieval people seemed familiar.

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay