Richard H. Fay

My fantasy artwork "Fire Drake at Rest" now appears on several items available for purchase through the Azure Lion Productions Zazzle Store. This time around, I opted to draw a wingless dragon. It's still a standard western European dragon, just minus the wings. Some dragons of fantasy, such as Tolkien's Glaurung, were flightless. Not to mention, medieval artists sometimes depicted their dragons sans wings. A wingless dragon appears in Friedrich Herlin's "St George and the Dragon", now in the collection of the Nordlngen Town Museum.

As for the use of the term "fire drake", that seems to come from a Middle English term for fire dragon, "firdrake", which came from the Old English "fyrdraca" (fire + dragon). Perhaps, to follow the etymology of the word more closely, I should have used "firedrake" without a space, but I've seen it both ways. I've also seen it hyphenated. It probably doesn't really matter that awfully much (says the wordsmith who often spends hours searching for just the right word when composing poetry).