Firedrakes in English folklore (also written uncompounded: fire-drake; ) are obscure, but still appear in various old stories, poetry, and even Shakespeare. Firedrakes are dragon-sightings stemming from shooting stars and will-o'-the-wisps, said to appear as dragon-shaped fireballs or sparking streaks of fire in the sky, and the term also appears as a synonym for the above, including "fiery dragon" and "fiery meteor". While not unique to English folklore, the firedrake have often been thought to be the Devil himself in dragon shape.
Etymology The term firedrake utilizes the inherited indigenous form drake (), instead of the more common French borrowing dragon (). The construction appears as early as Beowulf from the 8th to the 9th century, :
This has been rendered "firedrake" elsewhere, an early example being John Josias Conybeare's 1826 translation of Beowulf.
Cognate or analog terms to "fire-drake" also exist for the same phenomenon in other languages, for example , (), (, see Zmei), (, see Zmiy).
Description As dragons Firedrakes are quite obscure in English context. The lexicographer James Murray wrote the following definition for firedrake in volume 5 of the Oxford English Dictionary (1901):
This description presumably includes the foregoing example of from Beowulf, for although this work is an example of Old English (Anglo-Saxon) poetry, its cast of characters, including the titular hero are Scandinavian, therefore, the material itself is more widely "Germanic".
Shakespeare in Henry VIII comically describes a tinker or brazier (who works with fire) as a red-nosed "firedrake", and the extended analogy to a fire-breathing dragon is clear from the further description below:
“that fire-drake did I hit three times on the head, and three times was his nose discharged against me; he stands there, like a mortar-piece, to blow us.”
As meteors Around the Renaissance period, the term "fire drake" acquired the meaning of a "fiery meteor" or else a "will-o'-the-wisp" (). Note that the term "meteor" originally designated "any atmospheric phenomenon", and was not specific to a type of heavenly body.
16th-century Puritan theologian William Fulke in his book Meteors (1563) dedicates a section on what he interchangeably calls "fire-drake" and "flying dragon", presumably describing the will-o'-the-wisp:
Fulke is possibly alluding to the fact there are analog names in other languages (for example, the Swedish term for firedrake is , "fly-dragon"), as he specifies that "firedrake" is the term used by "Englishmen".
Note that Fulke actually remarks on the ignis fatuus separately shortly after, providing a similar yet somewhat different explanation that it ("foolish fire") is caused by "Exhalation kindled by meanes of violent moving, when by cold of the night, in the lowest region of the ayre..", etc. Fulke remarks that this fire is harmless, and only fools are afraid of it.
Folklore Connection with the Devil Dragons are primarily evil beings in European folklore, more than often shapeshifted demons or spirits, and in English context firedrakes have often been thought to be the Devil himself in dragon shape ( Flogdrake).
Fulke, in his book Meteors (1563), also tells of an event from around 1515 when a firedrake-phenomenon was thought by locals to be the Devil flying over London:
Various poets have used the term firedrake as a kenning or noa-name for Satan or other personification of evil and deceit, etc:
John Gower (1393):
John Skelton (1522):
George Wilkins (1607): Who should be lamps to comfort out our way,And not like firedrakes to lead men astray.
"Tom o' Bedlam" (): When I short have shorn my sow's face / And swigged my horny barrel, / In an oaken inn I pound my skin / As a suit of gilt apparel;The moon's my constant mistress, / And the lowly owl my marrow; The flaming drake and the night crow make / Me music to my sorrow.
George Chapman (1631): So have I seen a fire drake glide at midnight / before a dying man to point his grave, / and in it stick and hide.
Topsell's exemplum Naturalist Edward Topsell in his The History of Serpents (1608), writes on the fire-drake phenomenon, occurring on both land and sea, which commentators interpret to be a description of the will-o'-the-wisp.
Topsell also inserts a piece of English folklorical exemplum under the "Of Dragons" heading of this work, which relates that a "fire-drake" (the meteor ) appeared before a certain old fisherman and his crew, based in the west coast of England. The alarmed seamen hurried to leave, remembering a ship had been recently lost at this same spot, but the net felt snagged and took an effort to recover, until finally they dragged up a golden chair. The two crewmen overtaken by greed murdered the captain and tried to flee to France thinking they had wealth enough to live out their lives. But they ignored the warnings of a man-of-war to approach for a search, were fired upon by cannons, to their deaths. The story is recognized as cognate to "The Pardoner's Tale" in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
See also Drak (mythology) Fiery serpents in Slavic folklore Firedrake (folklore) Flogdrake Kobold#Fire phenomena
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