Talk:Wyvern/Archive 1

Archive 1

Mythology

As far as I'm aware, the wyvern is only found in heraldry. I'm not aware of any myths or legends involving them and understand that they're a stylised dragon.

Given that dragons/worm/serpent confusion, I wouldn't have thought that number of legs was any means of differentiating save for in heraldry. Mon Vier 16:31, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm aware of at least one wyvern legend from the UK: the story of Maud and the Wyvern in the town of Mordiford.

Well I think we probably won't find any mythology to it, because I seen a lot books that says dragon are actually the misconception of dinosaur bones. There was even a Japanese blogs that said it may have been possible that they thought apatosaurus is a dragon. I use Altavista Babelfish, because I don't understand Japanese. = = --Ramu50 (talk) 23:53, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Confusing Passage

Paragraph 3 of the current version contains the following sentence:

   In some fantasy works, wyverns are said to be the one of the 4-legged dragons.

The bold text doesn't make sense. It looks like a 'visible edit' where parts of two versions of a sentence are still visible. The 'one' could be removed and replaced with something like 'relatives' or 'cousins'.

The author's intentions aren't clear enough to be certain that's what they meant, however.

Any other useful guesses as to the missing word/s?

I don't think there are missing words so much as a bit of a muddle.

The sentence is, I think, referring back to the earlier statement "The wyvern is similar to a European dragon, but it differs in that it has only two legs, cannot breathe fire, and has a barbed or snake-like tail." That is, a wyvern is traditionally a type of two-legged dragon, but some fantasy works treat it as a type of four-legged dragon. If this interpretation is correct, then the reference to "one" would mean "type", "kind" or "species". An analogous statement might be "The concord is one of the delta-winged aircraft." Not as clear as it might be, but I think understandable.

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You know, being able to edit comments would be a nice feature. Those responsible for the this site really should think about adding it. Also, separating comments so they don't run straight off one another would also be useful.

For the record, the last sentence of the initial comment was "Any other useful guesses as to the missing word/s?" The first sentence of my response is "I don't think there are missing words so much as a bit of a muddle." If the preview had indicated that the new comment was going to run straight off the bottom of the old one and look like it was part of it, I would have put in a dividing line. Similarly, if I could edit my comment, I would have gone back and put in a dividing line. As it is, all I can do is append this statment and repeat the comment with a dividing line.

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I don't think there are missing words so much as a bit of a muddle.

The sentence is, I think, referring back to the earlier statement "The wyvern is similar to a European dragon, but it differs in that it has only two legs, cannot breathe fire, and has a barbed or snake-like tail." That is, a wyvern is traditionally a type of two-legged dragon, but some fantasy works treat it as a type of four-legged dragon. If this interpretation is correct, then the reference to "one" would mean "type", "kind" or "species". An analogous statement might be "The concord is one of the delta-winged aircraft." Not as clear as it might be, but I think understandable.

Wyvern and Wyvern (Online Game)

The dablink to Wyvern the online game should stay, as Wyvern is used to refer to that game, and someone might come hearing of this game and become confused upon not seeing a relevant article or a link to one.

Garble

If you disagree with something so dearly that you need to put a 'citation needed' for every third sentence, it's better to remove it temporarily and discuss it here rather than mudding the article with all the disputing templates. Joffeloff 15:01, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

"Draconians" in Heroes III?

• In Heroes of Might and Magic III, wyverns are described as a dragon like creature with a pair of wings, two legs, no arms/front legs and some of them have a poisonous stinger tail. Wyverns belongs in the order of Draconians along with Dragon, Drake and Wyrm.

The last sentence makes no sense. There is no "order of Draconians" in Heroes III. Also, there is no "Drake" and no "Wyrm". This sentence probably should be places someplace else (certainly not under Heroes III), but I don't know where, so I'm deleting it. SpectrumDT 10:58, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Too much popular culture

Really, is all that information necessary? It's much larger then the rest of the article itself. 83.252.141.112 15:39, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Then perhaps we should make it into a seperate article? You know like a "Wyverns in Popular Culture" like what was done for the Yeti article. Unknown Dragon

I think that's a good idea. 83.255.67.167 15:43, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

It's been done. Gurko 20:34, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Wyverns are dragons

In mythology, wyverns are a type of dragon. It was D&D that decided they were just dragon-like. Mythological dragons in Europe did not all have four legs. This was a modern fantasy idea. It seems that this article might have picked up a bit too much popular culture in its overall categorisation/introduction. Here are some citations. In Edward Topsell's work, amount of legs was not what decided if things were dragons. Several two-legged (and no legged) dragons are on the dragon pages:

http://info.lib.uh.edu/sca/digital/beast/pages.html?id=158 http://info.lib.uh.edu/sca/digital/beast/pages.html?id=159

The Concise Oxford Dictionary (Sixth Edition) also states that wyverns are dragons, not just 'like a dragon'.

wy'vern n. (Her.) Winged two-legged dragon with barbed tail. [f. ME wyver, f. OF wivre, guivre, f. L vipera; for -n cf. BITTERN]

The Encyclopedia Mythica may say they aren't dragons, but it's a site that can be a bit suspect in its accuracy and they don't give a citation for it. It's really the original sources that should come first. Most of the other links on the wyvern page call them dragons. I'd like to edit it to be more accurate, but obviously if I don't persuade people of my point it'd just be reverted. Polenth 03:44, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

See what Barron says (my addition). --Ant (talk) 11:14, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Wyverns, Wessex, Worcester

No mention that the flag of Wessex(English region and former kingdom) was/is a Golden Wyvern on a Red Background?83.67.75.213 19:30, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Is there any connection between the wyvern and the medieval Latin abbreviation "Wigorn" for Worcester or Worcestershire? --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 11:26, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Liber Floridus picture

With all due deference, this appears to be a regular dragon, not a wyvern. Wyverns are usually portrayed as having front legs and wings - this one clearly has back legs and shows a hint of a front leg as well. Jpaulm 00:33, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

It was only added recently, so I don't think there's tons of support for it being there. It was just one editor thinking it'd look good. It's not a standard wyvern (which the opening picture should be) and it mucks up the page formatting having it there. I'm all for deleting it. The heraldic crest makes a much better opening picture. Polenth 05:02, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

I have deleted it! Jpaulm (talk) 16:27, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Pronunciation

This article seems to have flipped back and forth between IPA and pronEng a few times - which is the current standard, or isn't there one? Jpaulm (talk) 16:29, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

If there's a difference what is it? A rhotic "R"? Is the "R" really not pronounced as currently stated via IPA? Maybe both should be added if there really is such a dialectal split in American versus British pronunciation. 4.255.55.29 (talk) 21:14, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

In British English it is usually pronunced wɪvən rather than wаɪvərn (I hope I've got my IPA symbols right there).Lew (talk) 14:26, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Although the pronounciation can be heard as given in the article, it seems that it is often pronounced "Wivern" with the"i" as in "him". 188.220.172.175 (talk) 11:08, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Removed needy edit

I removed some stuff from an edit by an anonymous IP editor because it was pretty needy. See below. If anyone wants to clean it up and re-add it, go for it. Here's the diff: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wyvern&curid=242246&diff=209128230&oldid=207086563

It is also a dragon in the book Dragonology and its companions that eats elephants. It also states that sightings of Rocs(giant mythical birds that eat elephants) may be mistaken sightings of wyverns.

-FrankTobia (talk) 01:26, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

If anyone does, they should keep in mind Dragonology is a fiction book. So it shouldn't go in the intro section. Polenth (talk) 00:08, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

wyverns conection to video games

wyverns are in a video game called monster hunter and still is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.30.254.112 (talk) 19:15, 27 July 2008 (UTC) wyverns are also in a mmorpg called mapelstory which within appear in 3 kinds red wyvern, blue wyvern and dark wyvern. those are found in leafre.

There are also wyverns (and the "wing of the wyvern") in the Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest games for NES, and I'm sure they receive a mention in countless other games. I don't think we should introduce a list of such trivia in the article, and I'm not sure how to mention the Wyvern's place in video games without opening it up to open-ended listcruft. I'm not even sure why it deserves a mention, because while the wyvern may have something to do with a few video games, it's depiction there does not seem to have any significant bearing on the popular conception of the Wyvern. Am I wrong? Find a source. Wilhelm_meis (talk) 05:32, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

I believe you may be making a biased decision that will only result in people continuing to alter the content. I would be wary of underestimating the desire on the part of gamers and swords and horses type fantasy buffs to detail the how the creature exists in that cosmology. Alternatively, there could be a disambiguation warning since the relationship between the two (mythical) creatures is weak, or rather, the interested parties are using such vastly different sources and criteria for citing. --MacKenzieWhitlock (talk) 21:53, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:Dragon logo wikipedia.gif

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This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --05:28, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Friar: "Burning dragon" of Cadwaladr

As promised, I looked into the matter of Cadwaladr's "burning dragon" to investigate the connection to the "gold dragon or Y Ddraig Aur of Wales" and see what bearing all this has on the Wyvern article. According to Arthur Charles Fox-Davies A Complete Guide to Heraldry (pp. 225-6), Cadwaladr had a great deal to do with the badge of Wales known as the red dragon of Wales (that would be Y Ddraig Goch), which was borne by the Tudor dynasty and was not made into a gold dragon until Queen Elizabeth. "Queen Elizabeth, however, whose liking for gold is evidenced by her changing the Royal mantle from gules and ermine to gold and ermine, also changed the colour of the dragon as her supporter to gold, and many Welsh scholars hold that the ruddy dragon of Wales was and should be of ruddy gold and not of gules," says Fox-Davies (p. 225), adding, "There is some room for doubt whether the dragon in the Royal Arms [of England] was really of Welsh origin... It was certainly in use by King Henry III." While all this is very illuminating, it should also be noted that this entire discussion is about dragons and appears in Fox-Davies discussion of dragons on pp. 225-6, while in his discussion of wyverns that follows on pp. 226-7, he mentions the Duke of Marlborough bears the wyvern as a supporter. To my knowledge, this is one of the most notable British heraldic uses of the wyvern aside from the badge of Wessex. In short, the discussion of Cadwaladr and the Welsh dragons should be moved to European dragon#Dragons in Celtic mythology, as this discussion clearly regards quadrupedal dragons and has nothing whatever to do with wyverns. Wilhelm_meis (talk) 02:40, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

You're right, the Red Dragon has 4 legs. I never thought to check! All this discussion, and it wasn't about wyverns at all! By the way, I wonder what happened to all the nice wyvern pictures that used to be here, and I have just had to add the Dragon School back - someone has been doing a bit of hacking... Jpaulm (talk) 01:55, 16 May 2009 (UTC)