I know that Disney's ';Sleeping Beauty'; is based on a number of fairy tales that are centuries old, including Briar Rose by the Brothers Grimm.
However, is the dragon at the end of the Disney movie original to Disney? Or does it appear somewhere earlier?Did Disney invent Sleeping Beauty's dragon?
Sleeping Beauty (';La Belle au Bois dormant'; (The Beauty asleep in the wood) is a fairy tale classic, the first in the set published in 1697 by Charles Perrault, Contes de ma M猫re l'Oye (';Tales of Mother Goose';).
The basic elements of Perrault's narrative are in two parts. Some folklorists believe that they were originally separate tales, as they became afterward in the Grimms' version.
Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm (the Grimms Brothers) were born on January 4, 1785, and February 24, 1786, almost 100 years after Perrault wrote the first Sleeping Beauty. They are among the best known story tellers for such tales as Rumpelstiltskin, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Cinderella, and Hansel and Gretel.
Earlier influences come from the story of the sleeping Brynhild in the 13th century Volsunga saga and the tribulations of saintly female martyrs in early Christian hagiography conventions. It was, in fact, the existence of Brynhild that persuaded the Brothers Grimm to include Briar Rose in latter editions of their work rather than eliminate it, as they did to other works they deemed to be purely French, stemming from Perrault's work.
Sleeping Beauty has been popular for many fairytale fantasy retellings. This include Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters novel The Gates of Sleep; Robin McKinley's Spindle's End, Orson Scott Card's Enchantment, Jane Yolen's Briar Rose, Sophie Masson's Clementine, and Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty Trilogy.
The most familiar Sleeping Beauty in the English speaking world has become the Walt Disney animated film (1959).
With all that background, it appears the dragon is only in the Walt Disney version where the Prince Phillip armed with the magical Sword of Truth and The Shield of Virtue, battles Maleficent when the sorceress turns herself into a gigantic fire-breathing dragon.
Godspeed.
Did Disney invent Sleeping Beauty's dragon?
Nope. No dragon in the original. In some other version of the story, it wasn't a kiss that woke her. It was the movement of twins in her womb that woke her. Apparently some prince went wandering in, raped her, and left.
There is no dragon in Grimms' Sleeping Beauty.