Chapter III: Of Dragons in Early Christendom

There were numerous dragons in early Christendom, “gorgons and hydras and chimæras dire,” and all the best saints had at least one apiece to their credit; but they were a confusing and unfriendly lot, and we will confine ourselves to the central legend of St. George.

“St. George is one of that numerous class of Saints about whom nothing authentic is known”: but, piecing together the _Golden Legend_ and the Portuguese and Balkan variants, we arrive at the following:

“The people of Troyan were sunk in all manner of iniquity, which greatly shocked Our Lady, who happened to visit the place. Returning to Heaven, she protested to God, who sent bears to frighten them into righteousness. This proved of no avail, and, on the suggestion of Elijah, God then sent them all manner of plagues and poxes for seven years, but without result; he then sent a drought for a similar period, and, as they still remained unconverted, he created a lake in the neighbourhood and in it a dragon which visited the city three times a day and devoured three hundred inhabitants at each visit; in addition to these ‘hearty meals’ it demanded a virgin nightly, and at last the lot fell upon the king’s daughter; after obtaining eight days’ grace for lamentation, he was finally forced to abandon her with his blessing; but the blessed George (a child of supernatural birth, induced by his mother’s eating a peculiar fish), passing by on his dappled courser with his mortal lance, greeted her in the name of God and inquired why she was there; after hearing her story and satisfying himself as to her faith and morals (‘Had her heart always been pure?’ etc.) he dismounted and planted his lance in the earth. He then laid his head in her lap, saying: ‘Pray examine my head a little, for I feel strangely sleepy.’ Under the soothing influence of her gentle fingers he fell asleep, and the abrupt transitions of a traditional ballad do not enable us to judge whether the damsel was long occupied in removing the consequences of his saintly disregard for cleanliness; while he rested, the lake rose in waves and the dragon emerged. The bashful maid was ashamed to waken her deliverer, but her tears rolled down upon his face and he leapt up like one possessed, and, fortified with the sign of the Cross, heavily wounded the dragon. ‘Pass thy girdle round its neck, nothing doubting (said he) and lead it into the city, and bid them be converted: if they refuse, set free the insatiable dragon and he will destroy the people of Troyan.’ The argument thus presented on his behalf by the Princess proved irresistible and they were converted to the number of 20,000 excluding women and children. The fate of the dragon is uncertain, but one version tells, in some detail, how it was then killed and how four pairs of oxen were required to remove it. The grateful monarch erected a Church to Our Lady and St. George (whose promotion appears to have been remarkably rapid) and offered him money and his daughter to wife. But that holy and unambitious man replied, ‘Give the money to the poor, care for the Church, honour the priests, and diligently attend divine worship.’ As to the daughter, the difficulty is that George, by virtue of vows he has taken, cannot marry. At this critical moment his brother sees by a magical life-token that George is in danger, and, hurrying off, arrives in time to accommodate his tender conscience by taking the lady himself and leaving George the honours of canonization.” Virtue always triumphs in fairy-tales.

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Such is the early Christian legend: A dragon, a supernatural birth, a helpful horse, a faithful brother, a life-token, and a rescued maiden; and “the Church may be congratulated on having converted and canonized the pagan hero Perseus.” But before passing on to more modern evidence, it will be well to give some account of the popular variants which circulated all over the world as fairy-tales, superstitions, or romances, almost down to our own day. The point in this case is not so much who told or believed or guaranteed them, but the simple fact of their having been told.

They consist almost invariably of four incidents: the supernatural birth, the life-tokens, the helpful animals or the magic weapons, and the rescued maiden.

(The most recent I believe to be the poem on the “Jabberwock,” which occurs in _Through the Looking Glass_. The hero, though evidently somebody’s child (“Come to my arms, my beamish boy”), has no undoubted sire. The tum-tum tree (“So rested he by the tum-tum tree”) is probably a life-token. His vorpal sword (“His vorpal blade went snicker-snack”) is without doubt a magic weapon, and the “slithy toves,” “mome raths,” and “borogroves” may well be helpful animals. The rescued maiden is not specifically mentioned, but it is difficult to explain in any other way the behaviour of the monster (“manxome,” “whiffling,” “burbled”) or the motives of the hero).

_The Supernatural Birth._ “Heroes of extraordinary achievement or extraordinary qualities were necessarily of extraordinary birth. The wonder or the veneration they inspired seemed to demand that their entrance upon life, and their departure from it, should correspond with the impression left by their total career.” It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that every old Oriental tale begins with the words: “There was a king who had no children,” and the means adopted by them for achieving their pious purpose may be the eating of fish, fruit, barleycorns, eggs, saltpetre, or a dragon’s heart. There are dangers in all these unusual methods, as in the case of the man who was given a male and a female fish of which his wife was to eat one according to the sex desired. Wanting a son, and to guard against accident, the rash man ate the female fish himself, “with the wholly unexpected result that he himself gave birth to a daughter.” In another case, the dragon’s heart, while being cooked, “began to emit a pitch-black smoke so powerful in its effects that the condition not merely of the queen (who tasted the heart) but of the maiden who cooked it, as well as of every article of furniture in the room, became interesting. The old four-post bedstead gave birth to a cradle,” and so on and so forth――a very economical method of furnishing. In European tales, on the other hand, “the medicine is more frequently used to gratify spite against an unfortunate maiden” by putting her unwittingly in blessed circumstances. In every case at least one child is born “of powers, it need hardly be said, as remarkable as his parentage.” Other substances which are “sovran against barrenness” are water, wind, sun, and a magic touch.

_The Life-tokens._ Very commonly the hero has one or two brothers born with him in the same miraculous way, and they set out on their fortunes together. What enables them to keep in touch when they part is a magic life-token, also born with them in the same way――for instance, a tree which grows from part of the fish planted in the garden at the time that their mother ate her part. Each one of them will have such a tree or branch which thrives or withers according to his own fortunes, and by this token each knows when the other is in danger, and comes to his rescue as in the case of St. George. Sometimes it is a magic mirror, in which only the party concerned can see the fate of his brother――“no doubt the eye of faith was required to see anything in it.” By this means the brothers invariably rescue each other, or, if they come too late or if a witch has turned the unlucky one to stone, either the witch thoughtfully provides the elixir of life or she is killed and it is found among her effects, or the faithful animals find it. Safely reunited, they commonly agree upon the division of their very considerable spoils; but in some cases they fall out and one kills the other, in which case the “elixir of life” comes into play again and they all live happily ever after. It may well be that the repentant brother will see two snakes fighting: one kills the other, but in remorse brings it to life again with a magic herb: the sagacious fellow takes the hint, and all is well again.

_The Helpful Animals._ These are often begotten together with and in the same miraculous way as the heroes and the life-tokens. Arranged according to what we may now call “the Bovril principle,” they come in the following order: horses, dogs, hawks, lions, wolves, falcons, bears, foxes, eagles, ants, dog-fishes, bulls, calves, hares, boars, cats, winged horses, and deer.

_The Magic Weapons._ These are an obviously later variant of the same idea and, on the same principle, stand in the following order: lance, shield, sword, pistol, gun, magic wand, stick, bow and arrow, knife, beer, stole, magic water, powder-horn, air-gun, iron staff, 500-lb. club, mace, and crucifix.

_The Rescued Maiden._ In every case the function of the hero and all his apparatus is to rescue a distressed maiden from a monster to whom she is being sacrificed to appease the Gods. Often the hero, having rescued the lady, “ungallantly refuses to see her home, saying that he wishes to see a little more of the world.” But, before departing, he takes some token――the dragon’s tongue or eye or other part, or the lady’s handkerchief or other ornament. His desertion leaves her a prey to the first impostor who comes along, claims the victory for himself and the lady in marriage. In the nick of time the hero returns and shows up the impostor “and poetical justice is completed by his marriage with the lady” (who has always fallen in love with him at first sight), while her sisters (for she has two sisters) are commonly given to the two other princes (for he has two brothers).

As I have said, all the best Saints performed feats of this nature, including the Holy Apostles Philip and Matthew, St. Michael, St. Margaret, St. Hilarion, St. Donatus, St. John, St. Sylvester, Pope Leo IV, and a man named Smith (at Deerhurst in Gloucestershire). It is also told of a boy who was carried off by a dragon that, after long years, he was found in its cave “alive and reading the Gospel, which was held up before him by St. Friday, while St. Sunday further contributed to his convenience by holding the candle.”

Scarcely ten miles from Glastonbury a terrible dragon lived once on Aller Hill over beyond High Ham. His fiery breath destroyed the people and their flocks and herds, and he was particularly partial to maidens. The climax came when a young man called one morning to fetch his bride away to Church: her home

Was levelled to the ground,
And on its ruins, now a funeral pyre
Smouldered the ashes of her aged sire

and the foul monster had carried her off to his cave. The bridegroom swore, in his despair, that “earth should no longer hold a thing so vile,” and, marching off with his friends, killed the dragon and rescued his bride; but the story ends on a classical note of tragedy, for she died of horror in his house that very day.

_Reference_: E. Sidney Hartland, _The Legend of Perseus_, 3 vols. (London, 1896).