Call a Pegasus a Hippogriff: Difference between revisions

 

== Literature ==

** Actually Pliny the Elder mentioned Pegasi living in Aegypt. So the idea of numbers of Winged Horses existing is [[Older Than Print]].

* An older example is Frank Stockton's short story, ''The Griffin and the Minor Canon'' from 1885, in which the eponymous monster -- by its description -- is [[Our Gryphons Are Different|clearly a dragon]]. The story might actually be considered a [[Lampshade Hanging]] on this trope, as the dragon sees a statue of a griffin and assumes that (since it also has four legs, wings, ''etc''.) he must be of the same species and that "griffin" is what humans call him. Got all that?

** Actually, it's more accurately a [[Our Dragons Are Different|wyvern or wyrm]] , as it has only two legs:

{{quote| It had a large head, with enormous open mouth and savage teeth; from its back arose great wings, armed with sharp hooks and prongs; it had stout legs in front, with projecting claws; but there were no legs behind,--the body running out into a long and powerful tail, finished off at the end with a barbed point. This tail was coiled up under him, the end sticking up just back of his wings. <ref> Oddly enough, though, in a later passage, "The monster had just awakened, and rising to his fore-legs and shaking himself, he said that he was ready to go into the town." It has fore-legs and no hind-legs?</ref>}}

* One of the stranger examples is in the book ''Thorn Ogres of Hagwood''. A character wanders into the action about halfway through the story. He is a short humanoid with a big, big beard and he carries a lot of different tools and has a great talent for metalwork. He is [[Our Dwarves Are All the Same|identified as a dwa...]] no, wait, he is a Pooka. [[Trickster Mentor|Pookas]] technically can [[A Form You Are Comfortable With|appear as dwarves]] but, as you may recall from ''[[Harvey]]'', they also tend to be a lot weirder.

*** The original pooka was known for transforming into a large black horse that would give anyone foolish enough to mount it a terrifying ride, which is probably the origin for that bit of lore.

* Similarly, mythical Veela are closer to Sirens, not the Succubi in the ''[[Harry Potter (Literature)|Harry Potter]]'' books.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

** Ditto for ''[[Heroes of Might and Magic]] III''.

** Incidentally, the word "Gorgon" literally means "horror".

** The use of the name "gorgon" for a bull-like creature comes from a particular medieval bestiary, which used that name for the catoblepas as a reference to the whole "kill with a glance" thing.

* At least one article in ''Dragon'' magazine has suggested that game masters use this trope in-game to screw with their players' expectations, perhaps justifying it as disinformation spread by [[Genre Savvy]] monsters.

* ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade (Tabletop Game)|Vampire: The Masquerade]]'' calls vampires' mortal servants "ghouls".

** Not to mention languages that conflate the two names.

* The chimera is often portrayed as being similar in body structure to cerberus, with the goat head, lion head (which is often depicted as a male lion's head in modern media as opposed to the original female lion's head where the beast was generally considered in Greek mythology to be a female), and a dragon head all together in the front http://anwoanimalworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/new-chimera-dragontoy-miniature-has-3-heads/. In original Greek mythology the chimera had the body and front head of a lioness, a snake for a tail (which is still present in modern depictions), and a goat's head on its BACK at the center of the spine http://cs.fit.edu/~ryan/chimera.html

 

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[[Category:Index of Fictional Creatures]]

[[Category:Call A Pegasus A Hippogriff]]