Gormagon
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A mythical beast.
This monster is known to have been described in print just twice,
in each case in an improper riddle. Its sole appearance in this
spelling is in the 1785 first edition of Captain Francis Grose's
Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: "A monster with six eyes, three
mouths, four arms, eight legs, five on one side and three on the
other, three arses, two tarses, and a *** upon its back".
"Tarse" is worthy of attention in its own right, since it is an old
Germanic term for the penis. You will not be surprised therefore to
learn that the "***" should be expanded to the c-word and that the
monster is a distant cousin of the beast with two backs.
A sighting in North America twenty years earlier suggests the fame
of the riddle and this beast in the oral tongue was both widespread
and ancient. A notice in the New York Mercury of 16 February 1761
announced that an example had been caught in Canada and had been
brought to James Elliot's tavern at Corlear's Hook, where "it will
be exhibited at said House till the Curious are satisfied":
This MONSTER is larger than an Elephant, of a very uncommon
shape, having three Heads, eight Legs, three Fundaments, two
Male Members, and one Female Pudendum on the Rump. It is of
various Colours, very beautiful, and makes a Noise like the
conjunction of two or three Voices. It is held unlawful to
kill it, and is said to live to a great Age. The Canadians
could not give it a Name, 'till a very old Indian Sachem
said, He remembered to have seen one when he was a boy, and
his Father called it a GORMAGUNT."
Captain Grose gave the game away in his entry by explaining that it
was "a man on horseback, with a woman behind him." (His "five legs
on one side" description is easily explained - the woman was riding
side-saddle.) Jonathon Green suggests in Cassell's Dictionary of
Slang that, in the form "gormagon", the word is a blend of "gorgon"
and "dragon".
In the interests of completeness, it should be noted that a word of
the same spelling was applied to a member of a society imitating
the Freemasons that had been founded in London in the eighteenth
century. There is no suggestion that the two senses are linked. The
Oxford English Dictionary proposes that in this sense "gormagon" is
meaningless and probably pseudo-Chinese, since the first reference
to it says "The Venerable Order of Gormogons" had been brought into
England by a Mandarin.
