in the arms of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. Frequently when used as a supporter it rests on its tail alone, termed sejant, with both forelegs supporting the escutcheon]]
A wyvern or wivern () is a legendary winged reptilian creature with a dragon's head, wings and often two legs or sometimes none, and a barbed tail. The wyvern is often found in heraldry. There exists a purely sea-dwelling variant, termed the Sea-Wyvern which has a fish tail in place of a barbed dragon's tail. Two of these mythical sea beasts form the supporters of the arms of West Dorset District Council. Wyverns are mentioned in Dante Alighieri's Inferno (Canto XVII) as the component body for the poem's Geryon.
The wyvern is a frequent mascot of athletic teams, colleges and universities, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States, and is the mascot of the Korean Baseball Organization team SK Wyverns, established in 2000. The Wyvern is the symbol of, or is used in the crest of, Wesley College, Dublin, Magdalene College, Cambridge, and Woodbridge College in Woodbridge, Ontario, and wyverns appear as both supporters in the arms of Leyton Orient F.C., one of London's oldest professional football clubs. Similarly, a wyvern is the crest of Newington College in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and is the symbol of the Trinity Residents' Club in Perth, Western Australia. It is employed, too, by The LLVM Compiler Infrastructure and is also the background logo for BackTrack Linux.
A white (argent) wyvern formed the crest of the Borough of Leicester as recorded at the heraldic visitation of Leicestershire in 1619: A wyvern sans legs argent strewed with wounds gules, wings expanded ermine. The term sans legs may not imply that the wyvern was "without legs", rather that its legs are not depicted, being hidden or folded under. This was adopted by the Midland Railway in 1845, when it became the crest of its unofficial coat of arms. The company asserted that the "wyvern was the standard of the Kingdom of Mercia", and that it was "a quartering in the town arms of Leicester". However, in 1897 the Railway Magazine noted that there appeared "to be no foundation that the wyvern was associated with the Kingdom of Mercia".
The Kings of Aragon of the House of Barcelona since Peter IV used a wyvern as a crest on their helmets. Nowadays this symbol has been officially adopted as the coat of arms of the Generalitat Valenciana (Valencian Parliament and Government). Wyverns are also an important part of the mythological animals in many traditional local festivals of Catalonia.
A wyvern fighting with a wolf. Relief, Trento Cathedral, Italy | A golden wyvern is believed to have been the symbol of the ancient kingdom of Wessex | Arms of Midland Railway at Derby station, 2006, showing as crest the Wyvern sans legs of Leicester |
Category:Dragons Category:Heraldic beasts Category:Medieval European legendary creatures Category:Mythological hybrids ca:V%C3%ADbria cs:Wyverna de:Wyvern es:Dragón heráldico eo:Viverno fr:Vouivre ko:와이번 it:Viverna he:ויוורן la:Vivernus nl:Wyvern ja:ワイバーン pl:Wiwern pt:Serpe ru:Виверна fi:Traakki th:ไวเวิร์น tr:Wyvern zh:飛龍 (傳說生物)
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