Arts and Humanities Commons^™

What The Riddle-Makers Have Hidden Behind The Fire Of A Dragon, Laurence Smith

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Classical mythology, folklore, and fairy tales are full of dragons which exhibit fantastic attributes such as breathing fire, hoarding treasure, or possessing more than one head. This study maintains that some of these puzzling phenomena may derive from riddles, and will focus particularly on some plausible answers that refer to a real creature that has for millennia been valued and hunted by man: the honeybee.