[split] f25v little dragon parallels

[-JKP-]

I'm with Diane on this one. The iconography of the beast is completely wrong. I also like the comparison she made. 
The trouble is that there is no reason for a 'dragon' to appear there. The image had a specific tradition and those meanings just aren't conveyed bya dragon nibbling a leaf. 
It's got to be some other animal, and we're projecting a dragon into it.

What image has a specific tradition? Are you talking about the plant? The plant is probably not mandrake.

As for projecting a dragon onto it, the "tail" (rather than two back legs) is probably what gives it a dragony look. Dragons of every possible description were popular in the middle ages. I've been calling it "dragony critter" because I don't know what it is and DON'T want to assume it's a dragon.

No one seems to like my suggestion that it might be a camel nibbling on camel grass:

  

Left: Juncus (camel hay)        Right: Cymbopogon (squinantum - camel grass)


The critter is certainly not recognizable as a specific animal in the way that the sheep, bulls, and other more naturalistic critters are drawn elsewhere in the manuscript so, either it's a bad drawing (perhaps intentionally so), or a mythical creature (with a dragon as one possibility). It doesn't look like a dog. Dogs don't have humps or manes/spines/bumps or peculiar back ends. It might be something woolly (sheep and camels are woolly when it gets cold). Or it could be St. Martha's famous turtle monster, the tarasque (which is drawn a zillion different ways), but I haven't been able to find any botanical references to this beast.

        


When I You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. about this plant, I was obliged to mention a dog as a possibility (assuming it's REALLY badly drawn) because so many people assume at first glance that it's mandrake and a dog, but I strongly doubt that it's either mandrake or a dog.