Carbuncle (legendary creature)

[1][1] The animal was called Añagpitán (emended spelling) in the Guarani language according to Barco Centenera who wrote an early record about pursuing the beast in Paraguay.

To the colonial Spaniards and Portuguese, the creature was a realization of the medieval lore that a dragon or wyvern concealed a precious gem in its brain or body (cf.

[1][17] As explained in the Book of Imaginary Beings, this explorer Barco Centenera "underwent many hardships hunting the reaches of Paraguayan rivers and jungles for the elusive creature; he never found it.

"[1] Barco Centenera had explained in marginal notes that the beast carbunculo was called anagpitan in Guarani approximately meaning "the devil that shines like fire".

[18]。 The mirror in the carbuncle's head was likened to two lights observed by Spanish explorers in the Strait of Magellan by another conquistador Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, who also commented the gem was reminiscent of the legend about a gemstone supposedly hidden in the brains of a dragon.

[1] In an account of the prodigious monster that appeared in the mountains of the Kingdom of Chile (published 1751), a group of men follow a moving source of light, which would dim and shine.

[23] Friar Feijóo's Teatro crítico universal (1726–1739) writes on the current myth about a supposed creature with a "carbuncle" on its head, better called a "Astro Elemental" since it purports to be worth ten times as much as diamond.

[24] He also read Louis Moréri's encyclopedia entry under Dolomieu village that in 1680 a flying dragon had been slain which carried a carbuncle on its forehead.

[25] Feijóo considered this a concocted old wive's tale or fable, but knows of a painting depicting the dragon of Dolomieu as cat-headed, and wonders if this might be the origin of the rumor, which he heard many times, of the animal with the carbuncle on its forehead bearing the shape of a cat.

[33][34] In the state Rio Grande do Sul of Brazil, the lore of the carbúnculo as a fabulous animal and provender of riches[l] had formed around the time of conquest, and was spread through missionaries.

[38] According to a letter from Oran, Algeria dated 29 August 1736, a Spanish soldier[o] who was stationed there at the fort (of Castillo de San Gregorio) claimed to have caught a carbuncle (carbunclo, annotated as what the Greeks call "Pyropos") with a shining gem lodged in its forehead.

Its was initially witnessed nightly by a number of men around 12 midnight, a short distance away from this fort, as a dazzling glow at Cubo de San Roque (apparently a hole or cave).

It was a "small animal like a weasel (comadreja), with dark brown fur that was very soft and smooth, a short tail a little less bushier than a squirrel's, its front or back paws and body like a weasel, its head long, its eyes large and beautiful, and between them, in the middle of the forehead, a singular Stone like a hazelnut in the shape of a diamond point, which is covered with a little cap, or hood of skin".

[33] The carbuncle is a stock monster character in the Final Fantasy series of RPG game-playing, and "appears as a small creature, fox- or squirrel-like, with green or blue fur, depending on the game".

Que hallado había, a mí me dijo, de uno hermoso; perdiolo por habérsele volcado una canoa en que iba muy gozoso.