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white dragon
The white dragon is symbol associated in Welsh mythology with the Anglo-saxons.〔http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/wales/archive/bbc-north-west-wales-celts.pdf〕
==Origin of tradition==
In Welsh legend, the white dragon was one of two warring dragons who represented the ongoing war between the English and the Welsh. The white dragon represented England, as opposed to the red dragon of Wales.〔Geoffrey of Monmouth, ''Historia Regum Britanniae''〕
The battle between the two dragons is the second plague to strike the Island of Britain in the mediaeval romance of Lludd and Llefelys. The White Dragon would strive to overcome the Red Dragon, making the Red cry out a , north Wales, the securest place in Britain at that time. The dragons were caught by digging out a pit under the exact point where the dragons would fall down exhausted after fighting. This place was at Oxford, which Lludd found to be the exact centre of the island when he measured the island of Britain. The pit had a satin covering over it and a cauldron of mead in it at the bottom. First, the dragons fought by the pit in the form of terrific animals. Then they began to fight in the air over the pit in the form of dragons. Then exhausted with the fighting, they fell down on the pit in the form of pigs and sank into the pit drawing the satin covering under them into the cauldron at the bottom of the pit whereupon they drank the mead and fell asleep. The dragons were then wrapped up in the satin covering and placed in the pit to be buried at Dinas Emrys.〔"The Tale of Lludd and Llefelys" in ''The Mabinogion'', translated by Sioned Davies, 2007〕
The ultimate source for the symbolism of white dragons in England would appear to be Geoffrey of Monmouth’s fictional History of the Kings of Britain (c. 1136), where an incident occurs in the life of Merlin in which a red dragon is seen fighting a white dragon which it overcomes. The red dragon was taken to represent the Welsh and their eventual victory over the Anglo-Saxon invaders, symbolised by the white dragon.〔Geoffrey of Monmouth, ''op. cit.''〕 The tale is taken up by Nennius in the ''Historia Brittonum''. The dragons remain at Dinas Emrys for centuries until King Vortigern tries to build a castle there. Every night the castle walls and foundations are demolished by unseen forces. Vortigern consults his advisers, who tell him to find a boy with no natural father, and sacrifice him. Vortigern finds such a boy (who is later, in some tellings, to become Merlin) who is supposed to be the wisest wizard to ever live. On hearing that he is to be put to death to solve the demolishing of the walls, the boy dismisses the knowledge of the advisors. The boy tells the king of the two dragons. Vortigern excavates the hill, freeing the dragons. They continue their fight and the red dragon finally defeats the white dragon. The boy tells Vortigern that the white dragon symbolises the Saxons and that the red dragon symbolises the people of Vortigern. If Vortigern is accepted to have lived in the fifth century, then these people are the British whom the Saxons failed to subdue and who became the Welsh.
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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