The national symbol of wales and the image on the welsh flag.

The Red Dragon, Draig Coch, Y Ddraig Goch, in the Mabinogion, fights an invading white dragon with such brutality the people are forced to fill a pit with mead to lure them in and then imprison them.

In the next tale a King Vortigen wishes to build a castle on a hill but each night the work of the day falls down. Vortigen's magical advisors convince him that sacrificing a boy with no father on the hill will cure the curse (either because their magic was flawed or they knew the boy would cause their own deaths). Such a boy was Merlin (possibly the same Merlin in Arthurian legends) who had a mother who had been made pregnant by an incubus. Merlin is brought to the hill but uses his powers of prophecy to determine the real cause, he says there is water under the foundations and tells Vortigen to dig. Eventually the two dragons are released from their imprisonment where they resume their fight, (sometimes they kill each other, others the red dragon wins) with the dragons gone Vortigen can build his castle and punish his original advisers whom had tried to deceive him.

The more distinguishing features of the Draig Coch include its arrow tipped tail and tongue, that and noticeable ears; unlike a snake, whom some other dragons' ears mirror.