Don't you know this is the New, Improved Eyrie, the quarterly Gryphon Newsletter? (If you don't know what a gryphon is, look at the picture. Actually, if you don't know what a gryphon is, I'd say you were on the wrong web page.)
"Of the animals in mythology the griffin or gryphon is the most magnificent," writes Margaret Young in A Dictionary of Chivalry. "The lion is the king of the beasts and the eagle the king of the birds, but in the griffin the majesty of the two creatures is joined together."
Majestic as they are, little is said of these half-eagle, half-lion beings in the legends and myths of the world. Yet this symbol of power and mystery is known from Burma to Scotland, from the northern steppes of Russia to the scorching sands of Egypt. Older than Dragons, more magnificent than Unicorns, they are like the remnants of a lost world, a forgotten myth-cycle.
Gryphons appear in folktales, rumors, and myths that touch upon Greek, Russian, Indian, Mongolian, and Chinese legend without belonging wholly to any culture. Perhaps these are the merest tatters of an ancient tapestry of gryphon-tales. The New, Improved Eyrie is dedicated to tracking down these half-remembered legends as well as presenting more modern manifestations of everyone's favorite bird-beasts.
Just don't ask what the old, unimproved Eyrie was like.
-- Michael D. Winkle, Editor
Eyrie 1:1, Winter 2001: "The Coming of the Gryphons," "Older than Dragons"
Eyrie 1:2, Spring 2001: "Ears of the Gryphon"
Eyrie 1:3, Special Spring Fever Issue: "The Brentford Griffin"
Eyrie 1:4, Summer 2001: "The Ring of Nestor," "Griffin's Egg," "Shortest Gryphon Article Yet"
Eyrie 1:5, Fall 2001: "Gryphons and The Odyssey," "American Gryphons?", and a note about escapism
Eyrie 2:1, Winter 2002: "Matters Philological," "Other People's Griffinage"
Eyrie 2:2, Spring 2002: "Jersey Devil," "Why Did You Say 'Burma'?", "It's All About as Curious as it Can Be," "A Missing Chapter from 'Journey to the Center of the Earth'" (fiction)
Eyrie 2:3, Summer 2002: "A Gryphon Goddess?", "The Gryphon Crown," "Aristeas, the Eternal Wanderer"
Eyrie 2:4, Fall 2002: "The Official Beast" and "Gryph-Zilla!"
Eyrie 3:1, Winter 2003: "Another Tie to Alice," "Hungry, Hungry Gryphons," and "The Thirty-Nine Steps"
Eyrie 3:2, Spring 2003: "The Piasa," "The Zen Gryphon," "Griphosaurus!"
Make sure to visit James Scott Spaid's amazing
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