Chapter XVII: The Rescue of Andromeda in Sagas

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How far the tale of the loving spirit, Vira, is accepted by the Tuscan peasant as a recital of facts may be disputed. We have little but internal evidence to guide us; and that hardly seems conclusive. It may perhaps be regarded as a saga once inspired by faith in the powers of a supernatural being, but now the subject of more or less scepticism. The effect of doubt on a story would be to sever its moorings and set it free on the vague waters of tradition, unhampered by any names of known persons or places, or to which a serious credit is intended to be attached. The tale, as it was found by Mr. Leland, had not yet reached entire freedom. It is therefore a convenient link between the true _märchen_ and the true saga,--neither wholly believed, nor recognised as merely told for pleasure.

That the story of the conquered dragon was believed, at least in classical times, we have already seen. Perseus, the slayer of the dragon and of Medusa, was one of the minor divinities of Greece; and the rescue of Hesione by Herakles seems to have been admitted among the achievements of a personage even more renowned and more generally worshipped than Perseus. Nor were these heroes alone in ancient Hellas. The Athenians honoured Theseus for a similar {37} deed. Minos, who reigned at Gnossos in Crete, having desolated Attica with war to avenge the treacherous death of his son Androgeos, made peace at last for an annual tribute of seven young men and seven virgins, chosen from the most illustrious families of Athens, to be thrown as victims to the Minotaur, a monster half-bull and half-man, the issue of Pasiphae, the queen of Crete. Theseus volunteered as one of the victims. When the devoted band arrived at Crete, Ariadne, Minos’ daughter, fell in love with Theseus, and furnished him with a sword to kill the monster, and a clew of thread to enable him to find his way out of the labyrinth wherein it was kept. The city of Thespia at the foot of Mount Helicon rejoiced in a legend which bears a somewhat closer resemblance to Herakles’ adventure. By command of Zeus certain youths were every year exposed to a dragon. The lot fell on one occasion on Kleostratos. Clad in brazen armour set with hooks he went boldly forth; and though he lost his own life, he proved the monster’s bane.[37.1]

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In later times the most famous name to which the exploit has been attributed is that of Saint George. Some versions of the legend reproduce one or other of the classical stories with more or less fidelity. Saint George is one of that numerous class of saints about whom nothing whatever authentic is known. It is indeed “very improbable that such a person ever lived.”[38.1] So much the greater scope has there been for the exercise of the pious imagination. The horrible details of his martyrdom, a subject on which ecclesiastical writers have expatiated with congenial extravagance and delight, have been grafted on those of the Rescue of Andromeda; and the Church may be congratulated on having converted and baptized the pagan hero, Perseus. The story of his fight with the dragon, as found at large in the _Golden Legend_ of Jacob à Voragine, relates that a great swamp or pool near the town of Silena in Libya, was the lurking-place of a dragon, against which the people had often taken arms, only to be driven back. When it approached the city walls its pestiferous breath poisoned every one. Rather than suffer these visits, the citizens gave two sheep every day to appease it. After a while their flocks began to fail; and to meet the deficiency it was determined to offer for the future one sheep and a human being. The children, sons and daughters of the citizens, were chosen for the purpose by lot, and none were exempted from the chance. Almost all had been thus sacrificed when the lot fell upon the king’s only daughter. Her afflicted father offered his treasures of gold and silver and half his {39} kingdom to purchase her exemption from so terrible a death. In vain. The people angrily, though justly, replied: “Thou thyself, O king, didst issue this edict; and now all our children are dead, and dost thou wish thy daughter to be saved? Unless thou obey the commands thou hast enforced upon others, we will deliver thee and thy house to the flames.” A delay of eight days, on the pretext of lamenting her fate, was all the monarch was able to obtain. At the end of that time the populace returned and said: “Why lose thy subjects for the sake of thy daughter? Lo! we are all dying from the breath of the dragon.” Then the king, seeing that there was no escape, caused the maiden to be clad in royal garments, and, folding her in his arms, bewailed her fate. At last, kissing her, he sobbed: “Would, my daughter, that I had died before thee, rather than to have lost thee thus!” She fell at his feet and besought his blessing, which, when he had bestowed amid his tears, she rose and went forth to the lake. Now it happened that the blessed George, a Cappadocian by birth, and a tribune, was passing by at that very time, and seeing her weeping he stopped and asked what was the matter. She replied: “Good youth, mount thy horse quickly and fly, lest thou die as well as I.” But the stranger answered: “Fear not, maiden, but tell me what thou awaitest here, with all the people looking on.” And she: “Thou hast a noble heart, good youth, I see, but why wilt thou die with me? Flee quickly.” “I will not stir a step,” quoth George, “until thou tell me what is the matter.” Then she explained it all to him. “Fear not, maiden,” he cried, “for in Christ’s name I will help thee.” “Good soldier, save thyself rather, lest thou perish too. Enough that I perish alone; for thou canst not deliver me--thou wouldst only die with me.” While they were thus {40} talking, the dragon, approaching, lifted his head above the water. The maiden, trembling, cried: “Fly, sir, fly quickly!” But George mounted his horse, and, fortifying himself with the sign of the cross, he boldly advanced to meet the monster. Brandishing his lance, and commending himself to God, he pierced it with a mighty wound and threw it to the ground. Then he called to the damsel: “Pass thy girdle round its neck, nothing doubting.” When she had done so the dragon followed her like a gentle hound; and she led it to the city. The people fled in terror; but the blessed George signalled to them to stop, saying: “Fear not, for the Lord sent me unto you for this very thing, that I should deliver you from the torment of the dragon. Wherefore believe in Christ, and let every one of you be baptized, and I will slay the monster.” Then the king and all the people were baptized, to the number of twenty thousand men, beside women and children. The blessed George unsheathed his sword, slew the dragon; and four pairs of oxen were required to take it out of the city. The king built in honour of the blessed Mary and the blessed George a great church, from beneath whose altar a living fountain flowed for the healing of all who were sick. Moreover the king offered the victor an immense sum of money; but _he_ commanded it to be given to the poor, and instructed the king in these four precepts (and here comes the moral), namely, to take care of the Church, to honour the priests, diligently to attend divine worship, and to be ever mindful of the poor. Then, having embraced the monarch, he departed.[40.1]

Such is the legend in its ecclesiastical shape; and in this edifying guise (though not to the same length) it seems to {41} have been given, at least in England, together with some equally valuable details of the saint’s martyrdom, every year by the priest at the proper moment during divine service, on the Sunday preceding the saint’s festival, as part of the notice of the feast. It thus came to the people stamped with the authority of the Church.[41.1] The Christian nations of the Balkan peninsula have preserved it in popular tradition, with some circumstances which more nearly recall the classic saga. The name of the city desolated by the dragon is given as Troyan. Its inhabitants were given up to various kinds of sin. The blessed Virgin, having paid a visit to the place, returns to heaven bathed in tears, and recites in an assembly of the saints a dreadful catalogue of iniquities whereof she declares the inhabitants are guilty. The thundering Elijah advises that God send them terrible maladies, the plague, the typhus and the small-pox, to convert them from their evil ways. After seven years, however, they are still unconverted. Unseasonable and severe frost and snow are then tried for seven years, and after that seven years of drought; but all in vain. Then God made a lake beside the city; and in it He placed an insatiable dragon, which entered the town thrice a day, and devoured on every visit three hundred of the people. Over and above these hearty meals the monster every night exacted a fair maiden from the white city of Troyan; and soon the whole place was depopulated. The turn of Sava, the king’s daughter, came at last. She was conducted by the nobility of Troyan to the cold waters of the lake, and there abandoned to her fate. Suddenly a youth appeared {42} upon a dappled courser, brandishing his mortal lance. Advancing to the shore, he greeted the maiden with the name of God; and she politely returned the salutation: “Life and health to thee, O hero on the dappled steed!” He goes on to inquire what she is doing there alone by the water; and she tells him her story. Then he catechises her as to her morals. Has her heart been always pure? Has she always been obedient to her parents? Has she ever adored the god of silver, or the god of gold, to which her people are in the habit of bowing down? When this highly orthodox knight has been satisfied on these points, he dismounts from his dappled steed, plants his lance in the grass, and says to the princess: “Pray examine my head a little, for I feel strangely sleepy.” Whereupon he lays his head in her lap, and she proceeds to perform for him a service doubtless highly appreciated by the peasants who sing the ballad. Under the soothing influence of her gentle fingers he falls asleep; and while he rests the lake rises in waves and the dragon emerges. The bashful maid was ashamed to awaken her deliverer; but her tears rolled down upon his face, and he leaped up like one possessed. He tore out the lance from the earth, and pricking his steed forward until it stood up to its knees in the lake, struck the monster in the jaw with his lance, dragged it ashore, bound it with a silken girdle, and put the girdle into the princess’ hand. He directed her to conduct it through the city, in the hope that the sight would at last convert the inhabitants, that they might desist from their infinite wickednesses, destroy the god of silver, worship the true God, and venerate himself, Saint George, as their patron. “If they will not be converted, set free,” he says, “the insatiable dragon, and he will devour the people of Troyan.” {43} The argument thus presented on his behalf by the princess was irresistible. The city was converted, and its harvests of corn and wine thenceforward prospered. Its patron, Saint George, became an object of reverence, as he is to this day; but whether the dragon also became a reformed character, or was put to death, the ballad omits to inform us.[43.1]

The Bosnian folk-song I have here summarised reappears with little change, both in Servia and in Bulgaria.[43.2] In the island of Lesbos, on the other hand, it has greater affinities to the _märchen_ discussed in previous chapters. A monster, having established himself near a fountain, is propitiated with a human being every morning and evening, otherwise he would stop the flow of water. The lot fell in due course on the king’s daughter. On one side wept the king; on the other wept the queen. They wept and cried: “Alas, our only daughter!” Saint George heard their lamentations, and drew nigh to save her. He did not stop to put her through her catechism; but having learnt in the briefest words from the maiden that the dragon was to eat her, he hurriedly called to her: “Come here, my dear; sit down and louse me; and when the water foams, then awaken me!” 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 of cleanliness; for her next exclamation is: “Rise up, rise up, O conqueror! The water foams, and the dragon is sharpening his teeth for me!” Her tears flowed like an impetuous river, and wetted the saint in his {44} armour of gold. He sprang at the winged monster, and with a thrust of his javelin stretched him dead. The king in his gratitude offered him his daughter in marriage. “Instead of marrying thy daughter,” the holy and unambitious man replied, “instead of calling me thy son-in-law, build a church in the name of Christ. In the midst of the church erect a knight; write on the knight this one word: _Saint George_, that all the world may come and pay him homage.”[44.1]

The name and legend of Saint George are known in Abyssinia, where the story is perhaps told in a fashion as pious as the foregoing. Unfortunately I am unable to give the edifying details. But at the Exhibition at Palermo a few years ago, some pictures were shown as specimens of native art. One of them represented Saint George on horseback, and another was thus described by an interpreter: “There was a dragon that slew all the virgins; Saint George killed it. Near the place where the dragon died was a euphorbia tree, wherein a virgin who was afraid of the beast had taken refuge. The virgin did not believe that the dragon was dead, and Saint George gave her the cord, saying: ‘Pull it, and thou wilt see that it does not move.’”[44.2]

We are not immediately concerned with the revolting legend of the saint’s martyrdom. It may be well, however, to point out that this appears to be the oldest part of the story. Mr. Baring-Gould, indeed, conjectures that the incident of the Rescue of Andromeda attached itself to his name in consequence of a misunderstanding--on whose part he does not specify--of the concluding words of {45} an encomium on the saint made by Metaphrastes, a Byzantine writer of the early part of the tenth century, in which he ascribes to his hero the feat of confounding and making a mock of the cunning dragon, meaning of course the Devil.[45.1] Such misunderstandings are not unknown in the legends of the saints. M. Maury enumerates forty-two saints, not including Saint George, to whom a victory over a dragon has been ascribed by a similar blunder; and it {46} would not be surprising to find that his list is far from complete.[46.1] Whatever may have been the cause of the appropriation of the incident to Saint George, it is certain that the belief in the story is to be found everywhere in Europe. In some places it has even been localised, as at Mansfeld, where the saint is declared to have been a knight named George, who was Count of Mansfeld, and whose own daughter was the damsel rescued from the maw of the dragon. His statue as he slew the monster stands over the church-door; and there can be little doubt that the statue, whether intended for Saint George or any other person, has caused the localisation of the tradition.[46.2]

The islanders of Sardinia have a Saint George of their own, who was bishop of Suelli. In the commune of Sant’ Andrea Frius, a village in the province of Cagliari, is a {47} tract called “the Plain of Blood,” where grew a reddish plant, said to have been tinged by the blood of the dragon, whom this very saint slew there.[47.1] This is an instance in which coincidence of name has been the cause of confusion.

Outside the legends of the saints, the deliverance of a maiden is, with one exception, hardly found in modern Europe. Tales of the conquest of a dragon or other monster are common enough, both in this island and on the Continent; but since there is no lady in the case it is needless to refer here more particularly to any save the remarkable story of the Pollard Worm. The tradition is that long ago a huge and savage wild boar--not a serpent--infested the woods of Bishop Auckland, and every effort to destroy it failed, the adventurers who had undertaken the achievement having all perished in the attempt. At length both the king and the prince-bishop of Durham, whose favourite residence was at Auckland Castle, offered rewards for its destruction. A member of the Pollard family, already an honourable and ancient one, rode forth in search of the monster, and after a desperate struggle succeeded in severing its head from the trunk. Having done this he cut out the tongue, which he placed in his wallet, and then, overcome with weariness (for he seems to have fought during the night), he stretched himself on the ground and fell fast asleep. Now the terms of the king’s proclamation were such that the reward was due to any one who would bring him the boar’s head to his palace at Westminster. While the victor slept, the lord of Mitford Castle, near Morpeth, {48} rode by on his way to London, and seeing the slaughtered boar and the sleeping man, he could not be in any doubt as to what had happened. So he played the charcoal-burner’s part, and stealthily dismounting took up the head, slung it at his saddle-bow, leapt again upon his steed, and made all haste to London, where he showed the head and won the reward. When Pollard awoke, to his dismay the head had disappeared. However, he made the best of his way to Auckland Castle, where he arrived at an unseasonable moment, for the bishop was just sitting down to dinner. When the message was brought to his lordship, he “sent the champion word that he might take for his guerdon as much land as he could ride round during the hour of dinner. Weary as he was, Pollard had all his wits about him. He turned his horse’s head and rode round Auckland Castle, thus making it, and all it contained, his own. The bishop could not but acknowledge his claim, and gladly redeemed castle, goods, and chattels on the best terms he could. He granted the champion a freehold estate, still known as Pollard’s Lands, with this condition annexed: the possessor was to meet every bishop of Durham on his first coming to Auckland Castle, and to present him with a falchion, saying, ‘My lord, I, on behalf of myself, as well as several others, possessors of Pollard’s lands, do humbly present your lordship with this falchion at your first coming here, wherewith as the tradition goeth he slew of old a mighty boar which did much harm to man and beast, and by performing this service we hold our lands.’ It may be added that the crest of the Pollard family is an arm holding a falchion.” Pollard’s next business was to go to London and urge his claims there. He pleaded that the head Mitford had brought was without {49} a tongue, but to no purpose. Mitford had fulfilled the terms of the royal proclamation, and to Mitford the reward had already been given.[49.1]

Before leaving the subject of European sagas one important Rescue story must, however, be mentioned. It forms part of the Irish tale of _The Wooing of Emer_, and is to this effect: Cuchulainn, coming to the house of Ruad, king of the Isles, on Samuin night (Hallowe’en), hears wailing in the dun of the king. Inquiring the cause of the lamentations, he is told that Devorgoil, the king’s daughter, has been taken as tribute to the Fomori, a monster race dwelling beneath the sea, and she is exposed on the sea-shore that they may fetch her. He goes down to the strand and there finds the maiden. “He asked tidings of her. The maiden told him fully. ‘Whence do the men come?’ said he. ‘From that distant island yonder,’ said she; ‘be not here in sight of the robbers.’ He remained there awaiting them and killed the three Fomori in single combat. But the last man wounded him at the wrist. The maiden gave him a strip from her garment round his wound. He then went away without making himself known to the maiden. The maiden came to the dun and told her father the whole story.… Many in the dun boasted of having killed the Fomori, but the maiden did not believe them.” So the king prepared a bath, to which every one was brought separately. Cuchulainn came, like everybody else, and the maiden {50} recognised him--doubtless by the strip of her garment on his wound. The king offered him the damsel to wife, but he said: “Not so. Let her come this day year to Erinn after me, if it be pleasant to her, and she will find me there.” “He ought of course to have married her,” as Mr. Nutt, commenting on the story, remarks; “but this would have conflicted with the purpose of the tale… which is to celebrate the heroic loves of Cuchullainn and Emer.” So the marriage is prevented by a device mentioned in one of our earlier chapters. Devorgoil came with her handmaid in bird-form, and Cuchulainn, not recognising her, struck her with a stone from his sling, which he afterwards sucked from the wound, thereby becoming her blood-brother.[50.1] Here it is plain, as has been noted by both Professor Rhys and Mr. Nutt, that we have a variant of the incident under consideration. The manuscript containing the story was compiled in A.D. 1300; and there are reasons for thinking that in its present form the story is at least as old as the early part of the eleventh century. It is probable that the incident is “a folktale arbitrarily altered in order to be introduced into the” saga of Cuchulainn. This at least is Mr. Nutt’s acute conjecture; and I scarcely know how else to account for the resemblance the incident bears to that found in stories of the _Herdsman_ type. The _Herdsman_ type, as we have seen, appears to have originated among the Celts, or rather perhaps among that Iberian race which overspread in far prehistoric times the whole of the west of Europe, and after the Celtic conquest of these islands formed the substratum of the population. We shall hereafter see the bearing of this fact on the question of origin. Meanwhile, we may turn to other variants.

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The tale of the Rescue of Andromeda is known to the farthest limits of Asia. Mr. J. F. Campbell describes a picture he saw in a temple at Shimonoshua in Japan. “A man with long black hair and a hooked nose, and a long straight sword, loose red trousers, a flowered white cloak, and curled-up shoes, like those of the Mikado and Laplanders. Eight round China vases, breaking waves and the sea; a weird tree, and a storm of wind and rain driving at the man; eight heads, like the head of the dragon of the fountain [previously described]. A woman crouched in a cago, behind the warrior, dressed in Japanese draperies; a great deal of unpainted wood to make the background of this curious old sketch by a very clever hand; a lot of Japanese writing, and a black frame which had remnants of gilding. That was the picture. The whole was much weathered and battered and in a bad light. It is at least three hundred years old.”[51.1] Mr. Campbell was not the man to look at such a picture without having his curiosity aroused to know its meaning; and he learned from Massanao, his youthful squire at Shimonoshua, a story substantially identical with the account I follow derived from a different source. Susa No, the tricksy son of Isanagi, the Japanese Creator, being forbidden to return to heaven after his exploits there, and reluctant to turn his steps to the Underworld, which he had of his own free choice inherited as his abode, wandered through the earth. From Corea he crossed the strait and landed at Idzumo in Japan. As he trod the shore eager to know who dwelt in that strange country he heard the sound of weeping and wailing. Passing onwards in the direction of the sound, he beheld in a little glen an old man and woman, and {52} between them was seated a lovely maiden whose bitter sighing and tears they were striving in vain to still. Susa No quickened his steps towards the group, and gently inquired the reason of this grief. “I am Ashinadzutchi, the god of this country,” said the old man, rising and bowing low before the stranger. “Peacefully I and mine tend the cultivation of rice; and there were nothing left for us to wish if only we were freed from one frightful, indescribably cruel calamity. Seven daughters have already been devoured by a hideous sea-monster. The creature came hither when my daughters were in the very flower of their beauty. It was incapable of compassion; it regarded not their screams of agony, but devoured them. This is the last of our daughters, our beautiful and good Inada; and of her too the monster will rob us; we know it only too well; and that is why we are mourning and weeping with our dear child.” The astounded Susa No inquired more particularly about the monster, and learned that it was a terrible dragon with eight heads, whose glowing eyes shone afar and were red as red berries. Its back was overgrown with downright forests; its belly was blood-red, and continually bedabbled in blood; its whole coiling length was as long as some winding valley. Undaunted, however, he promised help against the oppressor; only he prayed the old man and his wife to give him the fair Inada to wife if he succeeded in rescuing her from the dragon’s maw. His measures were soon taken. He requested Ashinadzutchi to prepare a great quantity of saki. He himself the while built eight small rooms or enclosures, open above; and in each room he put a large vat of saki. When the monster drew nigh he threw a woman’s robe around him and placed himself so that his reflection fell into the first vat. The hungry {53} dragon, seeing it, plunged its first head into the vat, deeming that its prey was there. With headlong speed it drained the saki to reach the maiden, but found her not. Her image was shimmering and beckoning from the second vat; and rashly and greedily it plunged another head into that. In vain it emptied the second vat; in vain it pursued the same false image into the depths of the remaining vats one after the other. By the time the eight vats were emptied the monster rolled over on the earth in a drunken sleep. Then Susa No stepped forward, flung off his disguise, drew his sword, smote off the heads of the ungainly brute, and hewed his mighty body into small pieces. But when he came to the tail his good sword was notched and blunted with the blows. Then he discovered in the dragon’s tail a sword even better than his own. He took the prize, called it Cloud-sword, because the dragon was ever girt with dense clouds, and sent it as a gift to his sister Amaterasu, the sun-goddess, up yonder in heaven. She held it ever in high esteem, and in after-days gave it to her grandson, the ancestor of the Mikado. By him it was bequeathed to his descendants, and it is still, if report lie not, among the most precious treasures of the imperial crown. Inada was not unwilling to be bestowed upon a wooer who had won her so nobly. They dwelt long and happily together in Idzumo, and became the parents of a race of heroes and rulers renowned in story. And Susa No made upon his conquest of the dragon and his marriage the oldest poem in the Japanese tongue, whence he is honoured as the inventor of the art of poetry.[53.1]

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I may pause here to observe that the device of rendering the dragon torpid by gorging it is not unknown in Western tales. To give a single example, it shall be one that Sir Robert Atkyns turns aside from his dreary genealogies and heraldic studies to mention, because the hero was the traditional founder of one of those innumerable county families whose exciting chronicle of births, marriages, and deaths is of such vast importance to the local historian, and of none whatever to the rest of the world. The story is that the neighbourhood of Deerhurst, in Gloucestershire, was plagued by “a serpent of prodigious bigness,” which poisoned the inhabitants and slew their cattle. The people petitioned the king; and a proclamation was issued in response, offering an estate, then belonging to the Crown, on Walton Hill in the parish of Deerhurst to any one who should kill the serpent. This was accomplished by one John Smith, “a labourer.” He put a quantity of milk in a place frequented by the monster; and the brute, having swallowed the whole, “lay down in the sun with his scales ruffled up. Seeing him in this situation, Smith advanced, and striking between the scales with his axe, took off his head. The family of the Smiths enjoyed the estate when Sir Robert compiled this account, and Mr. Lane, who married a widow of that family, had then the axe in his possession.”[54.1] Here for saki we have milk; and the Mikado’s sword is replaced by Mr. Lane’s axe. The church {55} at Deerhurst is one of the most ancient in the country. Its tower in particular is of singular interest; and it has been assigned to a date as early as the eighth century. Beyond doubt it witnessed the Norman Conquest, and was probably by no means a new building then. Immediately over the door projects a broken stone, roughly carved into the shape of a dragon’s head; and above a window higher up is a second stone of a similar form. It is quite likely that, as in the case of the statue at Mansfeld, so here, the carving on the church has caused the localisation of the legend.[55.1]

These examples stand by no means alone. The carving at Brent Pelham, referred to in a note on a previous page, appears to be the origin of a similar story. In the church of Mordiford, in Herefordshire, is a painting representing a winged serpent about twelve feet long, with a large head and open mouth. The tradition is that a dragon infested {56} the neighbourhood, and a condemned malefactor was promised pardon if he would destroy the creature. He fought and killed it in the river Lug, but fell a victim to the poison of its breath. Here again the representation probably suggested the tradition as a special appurtenance of the village; and among others of which we may suspect the same are the famous worms of Lambton in Durham, and Linton in Roxburghshire.[56.1] The dragon held a prominent place in the mythology of the northern nations, as it has done in many others, and was a favourite subject of both Teutonic and Celtic Art. To trace its somewhat complex artistic history is foreign to my purpose; but the briefest notice of local traditions could hardly be considered complete without some mention of the influence of sculptures and pictures whose meaning had been lost.

We may now return to sagas more properly coming within our ken. From Candahar is reported a Mussulman legend, which relates that in pagan times the king of Candahar found himself compelled to promise a young girl every day to a dragon. Accordingly a maiden mounted on a camel was daily sent to the monster. As soon as the camel arrived within a certain distance of the cavern where the dragon dwelt, the latter inhaled its breath with such force that its prey was inevitably drawn into its throat. One day the lot fell on the fairest maid of Candahar, when Ali, “the sword of the faith,” happened to pass through the country, and saw the victim in tears. Learning the cause of her distress, he placed himself in her stead on the camel, and at the moment of being drawn into the monster’s throat he cut off its head with his irresistible blade.[56.2] In Abyssinia {57} the tale is told with variations, due to Christian and Jewish influences. Axum, we learn, was the seat of a serpent-king, for whose appetite a virgin was daily provided. When it came to the turn of Saba, a virgin of high birth and pure spirit, she was rescued by a “celestial warrior in earthly form,” but not before the serpent’s saliva had fallen on her foot, causing her thereafter incurable ulcers and lameness. She was acclaimed queen; but her disease marred her joy. Wherefore she crossed the seas to seek for healing at the hands of the renowned King Solomon, from whom she obtained not only restoration to health but also a son, born after her return to Abyssinia. He was named Menelek, and to him the kings of Gondar have ever since traced their ancestry.[57.1] In the basin of the Upper Niger, the story concerns not the beginnings of a royal race but the destruction of a kingdom--that of the Bakiris whose capital was called Wagadu. It was said to be colossally rich; the kings possessed an immense treasure; but they owed their fortune to the protection of a serpent which dwelt within a well near the king’s village. Every year, by lot, one of the loveliest maidens of the country was chosen, and, arrayed like a bride, she was conducted to the well, when the serpent would come forth and, rolling his scaly folds around her, would carry her off to his den. Now, one year the lot fell on a damsel betrothed to the bravest warrior of the land, who, besides, was the king’s cousin. He swore to save her, and mounted on his steed, which he had tethered near the well, he awaited the dragon’s coming. Twice the serpent put forth his head, and twice drew back. {58} But the third time, the moment he stretched out to seize the prey the warrior lunged forward, cut the brute in two with a single blow of his sabre; and seizing his beloved he carried her off with all the speed of his courser, which no horse has ever surpassed. As he disappeared, a voice was heard from the well denouncing seven years of drought and every evil a country could suffer. The king sought his cousin and would have put him to death; but he could not be caught. Soon the predicted woes were accomplished; and forced by drought and sickness the population deserted the capital in a body for other lands. It is even said that the king, unable to carry off his riches, buried them, and that no man since has been able to find them, for the soil burns and bursts into flame beneath the hardy treasure-seeker. Certain it is that scourges of various kinds, which transformed the country into desert, caused the emigration of a once numerous people.[58.1]

Variants in east and west represent the maiden as her own deliverer. In the _Golden Legend_ of à Voragine we read that Saint Margaret was flung into a dungeon, after tortures of the kind that churchmen, with equal piety and delight, ascribed to their martyrs and inflicted on their opponents. In her cell she prayed to the Lord that the Enemy with whom she was fighting might appear to her in visible form. A huge dragon instantly assailed and attempted to devour her; but she made the sign of the cross, and it vanished. It is elsewhere stated, we are told, that the dragon had actually got her into its mouth and was about to swallow her, when she fortified herself with the sign of the cross: the dragon forthwith burst asunder {59} and the virgin came forth unharmed. Here, however, the pious author becomes critical. It was not incredible that the Devil should come in the shape of a dragon and should seek to devour her, nor that she should repulse him unaided save by the sign of the cross. But that he should have got her between his jaws, and that he should have burst asunder, was apocryphal and frivolous.[59.1] Obviously it would never have done to let people believe that the Devil had come to an end in this way: it would be killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.

In Germany the maiden’s victory is localised on the far-famed Drachenfels. While Rome was yet mistress of the left bank of the Rhine, and Christianity under her power had established itself there, the heathen hordes on the right bank continued to assert their independence, and made constant raids on the opposite side. On one of these freebooting excursions they captured a Christian king’s daughter. The son of the ruler of the Löwenburg fell in love with her, and would have wedded her had she not refused to give her hand to a worshipper of false gods. Whereupon it was decreed in a council of the chiefs that the damsel should be offered up to a ferocious dragon dwelling in a cave on that one of the Seven Mountains whose steep top looked down into the green waves of the surging Rhine. Early on the morrow, while the dragon yet slept, she was accordingly dragged up the rock and fettered to a tree near the cavern. At the foot of the mountain gathered an expectant crowd--among them her {60} heathen lover, who longed to hasten up and shield the maiden’s life with his own; but she was condemned to death by the nobles, and he durst not interfere. Meanwhile she stood unterrified; and as she quietly awaited the dragon, she drew from her bosom a crucifix and fixed her trustful gaze upon it. Out came the monster from his hole, and, catching sight of the sacrifice provided for him, he rushed upon her. The crucifix, however, proved too much for him. When he beheld it in her hands terror and stupefaction seized him; he fell down in the most natural way and rolled from the precipitous cliff right into the foaming flood below, there to find a watery grave. Nothing more of course was wanted to convert the heathen; and the legend winds up, in a manner somewhat more idyllic than orthodox, with the wedding of the pious maiden to the king’s son after he had received “the bath of regeneration.”[60.1] The story has clearly been provided with a religious and literary gloss; but there is no reason why in substance it may not be of traditional origin, and the conclusion indicates a strong probability that as originally told it was the king’s son who effected the maiden’s deliverance. The _Kwang-po-wu-chih_, a compilation of the end of the sixteenth century, furnishes a Chinese version also literary in appearance, the popular provenience of which cannot be doubted. “In the eastern regions of Yueh Min (the present Fuhkien) there exists a range of mountains called the Yung Ling, many tens of _li_ in height, in the north-western recesses of which there abode a mighty serpent, seven or eight _chang_ (seventy or eighty feet) in length and ten feet in circumference, which was held in great awe by the people of the country. At a certain time it signified, {61} either to some person in a dream or to those versed in the art of divination, that it lusted to devour a maiden of the age of twelve or thirteen; and the governors and men in authority of that region, equally alarmed respecting the monster, sought out female bond-servants and the daughters of criminals to satisfy the serpent’s appetite. In the morning of the day in the eighth moon, after offering sacrifices, the victim was taken to the mouth of the serpent’s cavern, and at night the serpent suddenly issued forth and devoured its prey. Year after year this happened, until at length nine maidens in all had been offered up; and a fresh demand was being made but no victim could be obtained. At this time Li Tan, Magistrate of Tsing Lo, had six daughters and no sons. His youngest daughter, named Ki, responded to the call and was ready to proceed (to the cavern), but her parents refused consent. She urged, however, that she was unable to be of use to her parents, as was Ti Ying (the faithful daughter of olden times), and being a mere source of useless expense might as well bring her life to a speedy close, and only requested to be supplied with a good sword and a dog that would bite at snakes. In the morning of the day of the eighth month she visited the Temple with the sword beside her and the dog provided. She had also previously prepared several measures of boiled rice mixed with honey, which she placed at the mouth of the cavern. At night the serpent came forth, its head as large as a rice stock and its eyes like mirrors two feet across--when, perceiving the aroma of the mess of rice, it began to devour it. Ki forthwith let loose her dog which seized the serpent in its teeth, and the maiden hereupon hacked the monster from behind, so that after dragging itself to the mouth of its cave it died. The {62} maiden entered the cavern and recovered the skeletons of the nine previous victims, whose untimely fate she bewailed. After this she leisurely returned home, and the Prince of Sueh, hearing of her exploit, raised her to be his Queen.”[62.1]

In the last chapter I summarised several _märchen_ wherein Andromeda was replaced by a youth of the opposite sex. Such examples are rare among sagas. Beside the cases of Kleostratos and Theseus already cited I am only aware of one other, which indeed appears to be merely one of the _märchen_ from the Panjáb with its hero identified as the celebrated Râjâ Rasâlu. The râjâ comes with his pet parrot of supernatural wisdom to Nîlâ City and finds an old woman, six of whose seven sons have been already sent by the king to feed a certain giant. It is now her seventh son’s turn, and he is to be sent that day for the giant’s dinner, together with a basket of bread and a buffalo. The râjâ offers himself in place of the youth. It turns out that there are in all seven giants, who are fated to be overcome by Râjâ Rasâlu. They candidly tell him, as these stupid monsters are accustomed to do, how to perform the feat. Taught by them, he looses the heel-ropes from his horse and drops the sword out of his hand. The ropes tie up the giants and the sword cuts them in pieces. But this is not enough to satisfy the conditions; and the giants, still living, are obliging enough to put seven frying-pans, one behind the other, and behind the frying-pans to arrange themselves one behind the other, so that their antagonist may conveniently loose an arrow from his bow to pierce them all through the frying-pans, and slay them at one blow in the predestined manner. A giantess, {63} their sister, however, escaped to a cave. The hero pursued her, and placed a statue of himself at the mouth of the cave, so that, being afraid to venture forth again, she was starved to death within.[63.1]

A few variants are also found, in which the maiden is rescued, not from death by the dragon, but only from thraldom. Such is the tale of Ragnar Lodbrog as developed in his _Saga_. As told by Saxo, Herodd, king of the Swedes, found some snakes in the woods and gave them to his daughter Thora to bring up. They grew and became such a nuisance to the whole country-side that at last the king was forced to issue a proclamation, offering his daughter in marriage to any one who would remove the pest. Ragnar procured a woollen mantle and thigh-pieces thick with hair that would protect him from snake-bites. To make assurance doubly sure he plunged into water on a frosty night and froze his clothing stiff. Thus defended, and armed with his sword and spear, he attacked and killed two serpents; the courtiers, meanwhile, flying from the struggle and hiding like frightened little girls. After the combat the king, laughing at his uncouth garb, nicknamed him Lodbrog, or Shaggy-brogues.[63.2] The _Saga_, however, gives a somewhat different version. It only mentions one worm, found when quite small in a vulture’s egg which Thora’s father had brought to her as a gift from Bjarmeland. She took a fancy to the creature and made a bed of gold for it in a little box. There it grew, and the gold with it, until at length it lay coiled round the house and allowed no one {64} to approach except the man who brought its daily food. The Jarl Herraud was moved to offer his daughter and the dragon’s hoard to any one who would kill it. Ragnar’s shaggy mantle and leggings were boiled in pitch and then rolled in sand. He attacked the monster with his lance early in the morning while all men yet slept, and drove the weapon home. So mighty were the worm’s death-struggles that the building shook with them and Thora was awakened. She cried out, inquiring the hero’s name. He replied by singing some verses in which he hardly gave her more than his age, and hastened away, leaving the iron spear-head imbedded in the carcase, but carrying the shaft with him. The Jarl forthwith summoned an assembly and passed round the spear-head, that it might be found who owned the shaft it would fit and who was entitled to the reward.[64.1] Note here the inveterate habit of the adventurer in these tales: the habit of running away after performing the deed and thus necessitating his discovery by a token. This is wanting in Saxo’s account; but we cannot infer that it was unknown to him. A careful examination of his narrative shows, in more than one place, evidence of omissions not unconnected, probably, with his purpose of turning popular traditions into serious history.[64.2]

A story of the deliverance of a maiden imprisoned by a dragon, still current in the mouths of the people, places the scene of the captivity on a little island, called Lindwerder, in the Lake of Dratzig, in Pomerania. After many knights had essayed the task in vain one came who, with a song, {65} threw a spell over the monster and slew him. The lady, however, refused marriage with her deliverer, having vowed her life to God; and she became a nun.[65.1] I might refer to other cases of rescue from the toils of a serpent or some such monster, but it is needless to pursue this form of the tale, since it seems connected rather with the myth of the Enchanted Princess, which I have studied elsewhere,[65.2] than with that of Perseus and Andromeda.