I has a "Grype" (Google's spell-checker is probably so pissed off at me, after today)

[capri0mni]

So -- just now, for want of something to read, I went back to that Griffin / Gryphon / Grype page I linked to, earlier: http://www.theoi.com/Thaumasios/Grypes.html

The neat thing about the pages at theoi.com is that most of the content is compiled of translated literature from the period. And that's how I found this passage, which is (at this moment, at least) my favorite description of gryphons as animals (Aelian, On Animals -- Second Century C.E., Greek):

(Quote)
I have heard that the Indian animal the Grupa (Gryphon) is a quadraped like a lion; that it has claws of enormous strength and that they resemble those of a lion. Men commonly report that it is winged and that the feathers along its back are black, and those on its front are red, while the actual wings are neither but are white. And Ktesias (Ctesias) records that its neck is variegated with feathers of a dark blue; that it has a beak like an eagle's, and a head too, just as artists portray it in pictures and sculpture. Its eyes, he says, are like fire.
(Unquote)

Ooh -- "eyes like fire" -- could that be feline (i.e. lions') "eye shine"?

I mean: Dude! That level of detail is worthy of a description by John James Audubon...

(Other sources on that page say gryphons are native to the northern region of Europe, and are the size of wolves... could there be several species of gryphon?)

Comments

[raze]

Oooh, thanks for sharing! Such vivid detail - makes you wonder what they were actually observing. Interesting stuff.

[capri0mni]

*nod*

The author goes further into their breeding and nesting habits, too: Says that their beaks are hard and strong enough to dig out the veins of gold from the sides of mountains, and line their nests with it (in a time when most human mining for gold was restricted to panning in rivers).

Humans in the region follow after, and a) take whatever gold falls from the nests, b) sometimes take the young from the nests (though the adults are too fierce to capture), and c) follow the gryphons to their gold-digging grounds and dig out more gold with human tools, which (if they're lucky enough to survive a gryphon attack) return home with great wealth, and make the gold artifacts for which their culture is famous.

Now, in all the myths, gryphons are noted for the fierceness with which they guard their "hoard" but this guy Aelin writes:

(quote)
The Indians however deny that they guard the aforesaid gold, for the Grypes have no need for it (and if that is what they say, then I at any rate think that they speak the truth), but that they themselves come to collect the gold, while the Grypes fearing for their young ones fight with the invaders.
(unquote)

And that is altogether so like how human beings interact with large wild animals, that I'm half-inclined to believe that gryphons were, in fact, ordinary flesh and bone creatures driven to extinction just because humans have this weird obsession with one shiny, yellow mineral.

Oh, and all the contemporary writings on that page talk about gryphons as "four-legged birds," whose talons are shaped like lion's claws, rather than a beast with the body of a lion, and the head of an eagle...