Bilious Fire Drake/Dragon

Connections

• One of Sir Roland's myriad titles is "Slayer of the Bilious Dragon"; bards wrote songs about the song he  wrote commemorating his victory over the Bilious Fire Drake

Context

We are assuming that "Bilious Dragon" and "Bilious Fire Drake" are one and the same. The word "drake" comes from Middle English (the time of Chaucer/Canterbury Tales) and meant "dragon." Nowadays (ever since about the 13th century), "drake" means "male duck." In fantasy terms, "drake" is often used to mean "young dragon."

As for "bilious," it comes from the same Latin root that gives us the word "bile." A couple of interesting things about the "bilious" and the idea of bile:

• One modern definition is "spiteful" or "bad-tempered," which would certainly fit the bill for a fire dragon.
• Back in the medieval times (and even up to the time of Shakespeare), people believed in what were known as the "four humors." These "humors" dominated scientific, medicinal, and cosmological ideas at the time. Each of the four humors was associated with a certain element, season, age, organ, planet, and set of qualities. Yellow bile is one of those humors, and it is associated with fire, childhood, and Mars. Little wonder, then, that a "bilious fire dragon" would be "spiteful" or "bad-tempered."
• Black bile is associated with earth, but this isn't an "earth dragon," so we're assuming yellow bile here.

Oh, you wanted to hear about dragons instead? Well, in the medieval period, dragons in Europe were generally considered to be symbols of treachery and disaster, and they generally all breathed fire. Here's a fun fact: The heraldic symbol for the English county of Somerset is a wild red dragon holding a mace. Could Sir Roland Somerset Montgomery's victory over the Bilious Dragon have something to do with that?