about the origin of wyver/wyvern

[y***@gmail.com]

Hello.

Some books published in Japan (I live in) says "in England, only a member of the royal family could use the four legged dragon in his coat of arms, so the nobility who wanted use a monster like a dragon invented and used the wyvern, two legged dragon, instaed of the four legged dragon."

It just seemed groundless theory to me, so I started to investigate the origin of the wyvern.
I read books on heraldry written in English.
What I knew about the origin is shown below.

* In the middle age, the wyver, lizard-like dragon, was used as a heraldic symbol.
* The wyver is not necessarily regarded as the origin of the present wyvern.
* In Tudor times, the present wyvern came into existence.
* But there is disagreement about the reason why the wyvern was born among the heralds and the scholars.

I knew various theories on the origin of the wyvern, but I could not find one that the nobility invented the wyvern instead of the dragon at all.

Do you know about this theory on the origin of the wyvern?

[for Nicolai]

Loading Image...

http://lalanguedublason.blogspot.de/2012/06/le-dragon-heraldique.html

http://www.letempsdesherauts.com/t533-fantastique-et-composite-le-dragon

[daigo yamamoto]

Sorry for my late reply.
I can't read French, so It could be a quite long time to finish reading.

Thank you for your recomendation.

[Peter Howarth]

The wyvern has a long history in England since one appears in the Bayeux tapestry on an English standard, perhaps representing the dragon of Wessex. It also appears very often on thirteenth-century seals and later as a decorative filling between a shield of arms and the legend round the edge, but it rarely appears on the shield itself. The only mediaeval English examples I can find are John de Fulbourn, 'gules, three wyverns argent' (Galloway Roll 1300 GA 11) and William de Wermington, 'sable, a wyvern or' (County Roll (temp Ric II) CY 50).

Dragons don't seem to appear in real-life mediaeval heraldry. There are several mentions in romances. For example, a dragon is mentioned in 'Le Roman d'Aquin', a chanson de geste from Brittany c.1170-90, vv. 68-9:
Thehart de Rennes qui portoit ung dragon
En son escu vermail comme leyon.
And in 1450, 'argent, a dragon vert' is attributed to Judas Maccabeus in Armorial le Breton LBR 42 (elsewhere he is supposed to have borne a griffin). There may possibly be genuine examples from seals, but I cannot find any in mediaeval rolls of arms. Gerard J Brault, the authority on early blazon, recommends Hugh Stanford London, 'Royal Beasts' pp 43-6 for a good history of the heraldic dragon.

So, as you suspected, the story about the nobility being forced to invent the wyvern is as mythical as the wyverns and dragons themselves.

Peter Howarth