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I’m not Welsh. I arrived here about five years ago with no knowledge whatsoever of Welsh history or culture.

What I did do immediately, however, was buy a UK registration plate for my car with an image of the Welsh dragon.

Not for a moment did I consider the reasons for that decision, but it was an aspect of Welsh culture to which I was able to relate.

A few months later, having driven my car to the continent to visit relatives, I was waiting in front of a red light.

The driver of the car in front of me suddenly got out and raced to his boot. I was slightly puzzled, until he revealed... a Welsh flag!

Excitedly, he waved it around in between our cars, until beeping cars behind me made him jump back in his car and drive off.

Fleeting though this moment was, somehow the image of the Welsh flag was able to create an immediate sense of connection between two strangers.

Identity is a strange thing.

In Cymraeg, “Cymru” means “land of fellow countrymen”; in English, “Wales” means “land of foreigners”: two contrasting definitions; one nation.

In a country divided by its languages, football allegiance, politics, and geography, few symbols seem able to unite the nation – among these, the dragon spans the crown.

So, in a country which incorporates both community and foreignness, perhaps it is not wholly inappropriate for a foreigner to discuss its most iconic object and symbol.

In order to understand the object of the Welsh flag, we will need to dig deep in Welsh and indeed world history, beginning thousands of years ago, with dragons. Before we dig, however, we need to understand what it is we are digging for.

An introduction to Welsh History Month

What’s in a name?

The English word “dragon” and the Welsh “draig” are both derived from the ancient Greek word drakon, which basically means “large serpent”. This does not mean that there were no stories of dragons before the ancient Greeks, but that this particular word merely became common in many languages.

To us, the Welsh dragon seems quite typical in its dragon-like appearance with four legs and wings, but in many cultures, what we call dragons were essentially large serpents, as iconography from ancient Mesopotamia, Greece, and Egypt suggests.

Other words in English attest to this serpent-like original nature of the dragon.

One alternative to the word “dragon” is worm.

There are many folktales featuring worms in Britain, and a famous Welsh example is Worm’s Head at Rhossili on the Gower, which – incidentally – looks more like a giant sea serpent than a stereotypical dragon.

Another Welsh term is the gwiber: nowadays used for a viper, in former days this term was used for flying serpents particularly prone to terrify people in the Glamorgan area. Other English terms include basilisk (literally “the king of serpents”), wyvern (a cognate of the gwiber), and knucker.

As belief in dragons faded in the 19th century, however, so did these exotic terms.

From the Middle Ages, dragons were increasingly represented along the lines of the Welsh flag, whether four-legged or two-legged, and often with wings. It is in this context that we need to look for the origins of the Welsh flag.

The Welsh flag and the Union Jack

The flag in its current format – with “a red ffyry dragon peyntid upon white and greene sarcenet” (“a red fiery dragon painted upon white and green silk”) – first saw the light of day on August 22, 1485, at the battle of Bosworth Field, when Henry Tudor defeated Richard III.

In this flag, Henry combined the dragon – already a symbol associated with the Welsh – with the green and white colours which had been used as Welsh military colours independently of the dragon from the 13th century onward.

Since this first appearance of the Welsh flag, its prominence in Welsh history has fluctuated greatly.

While it was held in great esteem during the Tudor reign, it was forgotten by the Stuarts whose arms contained a unicorn instead.

The red dragon was not in any way included in the first Union Flag designed in 1606 to mark the union with Scotland, nor in 1801 when the British flag was redesigned to include Ireland.

In fact, it was not until 1807 that the British parliament decided that “a red dragon passant standing on a mound” would be the king’s badge for Wales (the term “passant” means it walked with the right forepaw raised).

As political pressure from an increasingly nationalistic Wales grew, Queen Elizabeth, in 1953, decreed that the badge for Wales was to be augmented (meaning it was modified, as a mark of honour) with the motto “Y ddraig goch ddyry cychwyn”, which translates as “the red dragon advances”.

The Welsh refusal of this new flag, however, was absolute, and the Tudor flag continued to be used by the people at sports and cultural events.

When officials refused to grant its appearance on St David’s Day on the grounds that “there is no such thing as a Welsh national flag”, the Western Mail rebuked with the title “The Red Dragon banned again!”.

Protest flared up, and after a forceful campaign by the Gorsedd (the unofficial assembly of Welsh bards), the Queen was forced to intervene: in 1959, she finally conceded that, without needing to seek permission from the crown, “only the Red Dragon on a green and white flag should be flown on Government buildings in Wales”.

The earliest Welsh flags

This is a summary version of events leading up to the acknowledgement of the Welsh flag.

What the motto and the Western Mail’s headline emphasise is the prominence of the red dragon on the Welsh flag: both suggest that, for the Welsh people, the flag was equated to the dragon. In other words, the flag was the dragon.

As pointed out, however, Henry Tudor cleverly united the background colours with the red dragon, both of which had been connected with the Welsh independently before.

The earliest Welsh uses of the heraldic dragon, however, were most likely a Roman import. In the Roman army, the dragon was the traditional symbol of the cohort, the basic military unit which was used throughout the Roman Empire (the Romans themselves borrowed this custom from the Indians and Parthians).

The Welsh did not have a monopoly on the heraldic use of the dragon, and many Celtic and Germanic tribes used this image.

Indeed, contradictory though it may sound, in several campaigns, the English bore the Red Dragon against the Welsh, for example by Henry III in Snowdonia in 1245.

It was only when the image of St George slaying the dragon became increasingly popular in England – it had come over from the Near East where the legend originated – that the English abandoned the dragon flag.

It is clear, however, that the dragon was not only a Roman import, but also native to Britain: dragon-like iconography can be found on objects from prehistoric times onwards.

It has long been thought that the connection of Wales to the dragon stems from Arthurian times: according to Geoffrey of Monmouth (a Welsh historiographer from the 12th century), Arthur bore a golden dragon standard in battle.

There is little evidence to support this, though the colour of the Welsh dragon does seem to have varied between gold and red: Owain Glyndwr famously bore a golden dragon at the siege of Caernarfon in 1401, thereby explicitly connecting his ancestry with the Arthurian tradition.

To find the earliest traces of a Welsh connection to the dragon, we tread firmer ground looking at the language: the first mentions of the Welsh word draig (in the sixth century) do not refer to the mythological creature, but rather to a human “leader”.

This suggests a strongly developed metaphor of fierce warriors as dragons.

Indeed, Welsh poets long talked about a deliverer who would free the Welsh from the English yoke, and described him as draig.

It is noteworthy that no Welsh royal families had a dragon in their arms. The dragon seems to have developed as a symbol of the Welsh as a people, and perhaps that is the reason for its endurance.

From flag to dragon

The heraldic use of the dragon was, as discussed, common throughout Europe, though Wales is the only nation that sustained the image on its national flag.

While popular opinion may equate the Welsh flag to the dragon, however, we cannot equate the dragon to the flag.

The flag as object has remained relatively unchanged in its imagery since Tudor times.

The Welsh dragon, in contrast, has existed in a variety of stories and images for centuries, and continues to do so, whether in sports logos, food and drinks branding, or toys.

It seems reasonable to believe that the modern branding of things as “Welsh” by means of the red dragon stems back to the flag, and to some extent, this might be so.

However, we could also argue that the flag contains merely one manifestation of y ddraig goch, which has symbolised the Welsh as a people for centuries – even if it was not even always red.

In its function as national flag, the image may have become iconic, but ultimately does not encompass the symbol of the Welsh dragon itself.

Most Welsh people will know the story of the red dragon fighting the white dragon as symbolism of the Welsh defeating the English – few, however, seem to know the context.

Let us move on, then, to the story underlying the heraldic imagery which, as we will see, is entirely unique.

The earliest sources of the story are the ninth century Historia Brittonum, attributed to a Welsh monk called Nennius, and two medieval texts: Geoffrey of Monmouth's “History of the Kings of Britain” and the Mabinogion, a famous Welsh collection of medieval manuscripts.

All three texts are believed to be based on much earlier tales and oral tradition.

If we combine the sources, the story can be summarised as follows. Llud and Llefelys are brothers, and kings of Britain and France respectively.

When three plagues descend upon the British kingdom, Llud seeks out his brother for help.

The second plague is described as a terrifying shriek, and Llefelys tells his brother that the source of the shriek is a dragon being attacked by a foreign dragon.

In order to rid the country of the plague, Llud needs to dig a pit in the centre of the land and put a cauldron of mead in it.

The two fighting dragons will fall into the pit, drink the mead, and fall asleep.

All happens as Llefelys predicts, and Llud buries the dragons in Snowdonia.

Centuries later, Vortigern, a Briton king who was ousted by the invading Picts, attempted to build a castle in Snowdonia, but every night the castle walls were torn down.

Advised by his magicians to find a boy without a father and sprinkle the castle walls with his blood, Vortigern finds the child and the boy asks him to dig a pit underneath the castle, hence releasing the dragons.

The king obeys, the dragons fly forth, and after a fierce battle, the red dragon defeats the white one.

The child then explains that the red dragon represents the Welsh, and the white dragon represents the English.

The child predicts that the Britons will rise and drive away the intruders.

It is clear that this story, which dates as early as the ninth century, already depicted the Welsh by means of a red dragon.

This tale, in combination with the Arthurian imagery of the golden dragon, ultimately led to the sustained use of the dragon in Welsh heraldry.

The story contains many elements that are similar to other tales throughout Europe: eyewitness reports of dragons fighting in the air, drugging dragons with alcohol, and imprisoning them, were common folklore themes.

The unique element in the Welsh story, however, is the release of the dragon.

This stands in stark contrast with the many stories of dragon-slaying heroes which abound in folklore around the globe: the Near Eastern St George, the ancient Greek Heracles, the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, the Norse Siegfried, and even Tolkien’s Bilbo Baggins – dragons exist to be slain by heroes, not released.

This is to a large degree due to the Christian ideology underlying much of European folklore: in Christian thought, the serpent was rapidly equated with the devil, and so the dragon became a key symbol of evil. Heroes slaying dragons thereby symbolised the Christian god overcoming the devil.

As I noted earlier, however, the heraldic dragon imagery originated in the East.

There, unlike in Europe, the dragon was and is a positive symbol, often associated with wealth and power – everyone is familiar with the dragon processions taking place during Chinese New Year.

Ultimately, it is impossible to trace precisely why the positive rather than the destructive image of the dragon prevailed in Wales as it did in the East, while it did not in other European stories.

What we can tell is that the Welsh dragon is unique in Europe in its positive role in the formation of a nation.

From legend back to reality

The ending of the red dragon tale is bizarre, and one cannot help but wonder what happened to the red dragon afterwards. Did it merely fly away? The sources are silent – the dragon has played its role in predicting the future of the Welsh, and disappears from the narrative, only to survive in imagery.

I have long been bewildered by the omnipresence of the dragon in everyday life in Wales.

St David’s Day gave me a perfect excuse to explore whether it is merely a stereotype, and as part of a community project, I have been running workshops on “The image of the dragon and Welsh identity” for local year 10 pupils from deprived areas, for the South West Wales Reaching Wider Partnership.

The workshops so far have revealed that Welsh pupils are very proud about the dragon and feel it strongly symbolises Wales.

They also felt that foreigners coming into Wales might be somewhat intimated by its aggressive stance, and this view was corroborated by a number of non-Welsh pupils.

When asked what the story is underneath the symbol, however, none of the pupils were able to dig deeper than “a red dragon fought a white dragon”.

To a certain extent, this is a typical example of not knowing what is at your own doorstep, of which everyone is guilty.

Nevertheless, at a crisis point in Welsh as well as global history, I am surprised not more attention is paid to this deep-rooted symbol and its history.

For it not only connects Wales with global symbolism, but also sets it apart as a unique and vibrant people.

Author profile: Dr Evelien Bracke

I was born in Belgium, where I studied Classical Philology at Ghent University.

An Erasmus Exchange programme in Ireland turned into PhD studies at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, where I researched the notion of cunning intelligence in Greek myth – this is where I became interested in dragon stories, as the ancient Greeks described dragons as particularly cunning creatures.

I am currently ancient Greek and Latin tutor in the Department of History and Classics (Swansea University), and have also developed a number of Outreach programmes, bringing ancient languages and cultures to local school children.

My favourite Welsh ‘object’ must be the ruins of Carreg Cennen Castle near Llandeilo.

The steep and windy climb to the castle, the breath-taking views upon arrival, the descent into the cave, and the many hours my son and I have played there as knights (I’m inevitably the baddy!) make this one hard to beat.

to find out more about Welsh history visit www.cadw.wales.gov.uk