THE DRAGON'S TONGUE - AN EASTER QUIZ
Dragons
There are no dragons in the Bible story of the death and resurrection of Jesus, but dragons were sometimes included in paintings of the story because they symbolised the power of evil and darkness. Sometimes they were painted under Judas — waiting, like the Devil or Hell — to swallow him! Sometimes they were shown whispering in his ear, tempting him to betray Jesus, just like the snake that tempted Adam and Eve to eat the apple in the Garden of Eden.
In some eastern countries, the dragon is associated with guarding the pearls of wisdom. However, the association of dragons with demonic power was particularly strong in a country like England. Here dragons featured in Anglo-Saxon and Viking folk tales as the supreme enemy that a warrior might fight with. In the great early-English poem Beowulf, the hero kills (and is killed by) a terrifying dragon. J.R.R.Tolkein, who knew this poem well, recreates this beast as the dragon Smaug at the end of The Hobbit.
The dragon's tongue
The idea of pulling a dragon's tongue is derived from a 12th century carving made for Reading Abbey. The carving was made for the top of one of the pillars in the cloister there. There are four sides to the carving; in each scene the little figure gradually pulls the tongue out further. The craftsman who made it was probably drawing on folk-stories that feature humankind struggling to defeat a dragon, which he would have interpreted as symbolising the Christian's struggle against the forces of evil. The original carving can still be seen in the Museum of Reading.
Try your hand at pulling out the dragon's tongue in our quiz. We hope you will succeed in your struggle with it. But, beware — every wrong answer earns you a scorching!
Click here for a longer, downloadable text version of the quiz (20 questions).
