The Penguin Book of Dragons

by The Penguin Book of Dragons (retail) (epub)

  The emperor immediately set out for the monastery of the great martyr Eugenios, not only with an imperial retinue but also as a suppliant, with his soul eager to humble itself. For already from his adolescence he had been filled with a divine devotion to this saint. Each and every day he deemed this monastery worthy of much consideration, support, and care, which is why he always called upon Eugenios as his benefactor and steady champion in war, in disaster and grief, and in severe diseases, if any came upon him. He frequently visited the church, fell before the saint’s holy relic that gushed with myrrh, embracing it with all his strength, kissing it, praising the saint, and singing hymns to celebrate his feats and victories, crowning him with speeches of thanksgiving. He did the same now too when he set out for the saint’s monastery, pleading with the saint as before and calling on him to be his staunch ally in the fight against the venomous dragon. He asked for swift aid and a speedy dispatch of this enemy.

  After praying, the emperor assembled his best officers and said this to them: “O men, for me the prospect of fighting the dragon induces no hesitation, lack of daring, or constriction of the heart. There is no other way for us to overcome the beast. God will provide and so will his saint, the powerful Eugenios, whose aid I have always requested from God in our wars. You too should pray, brothers, as is reasonable.” Thus he spoke, and he donned armor and weapons, especially the cross of Christ, and, mounting his horse, he immediately rode off in pursuit of his quarry, riding around in those parts searching for him.

  The dragon was now spotted, a huge thing breathing fire, as it were. The emperor stood opposed to it with steely resolve, fully a warrior, fully as if he were breathing fire back against it, brandishing his spear at it and his shining sword. Quickly he dared the dragon to attack him, trusting in God and the martyr. Seeing his opponent act like this, the beast charged him even more eagerly. But in his rush to kill him, the beast was mortally wounded by the emperor, and fell dead. His carcass was a magnificent sight, which had only slightly coiled in on itself. After this feat of valor, the emperor rejoiced and returned to the monastery of Eugenios, to repay his gratitude for victory, while his followers carried the dragon’s head in their arms, which is still preserved in the palace to this day. When news of this event spread, almost everyone, both lordly and humble people, flocked to the saint’s monastery and, seeing what had been done, they marveled, gave thanks to God, and sung hymns for the holy martyr. They celebrated the heroic emperor with speeches, praising him as a new and powerful giant and a divine general.

  THE OGRE-DRAGON’S PITILESS HEART1

  Kallimachos and Chrysorrhoe is a late Byzantine romance. This was a genre of literature in vernacular Greek strongly influenced by the traditions of the narrative French poetry popular in western Europe. Written between 1310 and 1340 by Andronikos Palaiologos, nephew of the emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos (r. 1259–81), it is a standard boy-meets-girl story: here the boy meets the girl when he rescues her from the clutches of a “dragon,” who is more like a hulking ogre than a reptilian beast. The story begins with the dilemma of a rich barbarian king with three sons. He loved them all equally, so he did not know to which of them to leave his throne. He sent them out with an army and declared that his heir would be the one who performed the greatest feat. After a long march, they came to a steep mountain, which the third son, Kallimachos, persuaded them to climb. At the top they found a pleasant valley with a terrifying “dragon-fort,” whose high walls were made of gold and whose gates were guarded by huge living serpents. Only Kallimachos was brave enough to leap over the walls (using a magic ring) and enter the verdant garden inside. The palace, as well as the “dragon’s” bedchamber, was empty, except for a beautiful woman named Chrysorrhoe, who was suspended from the ceiling by her hair.

  She said to him, “Oh man, who are you? Where are you from? Perhaps you are an apparition with human form? Are you brave, polite, a fool, or in despair? Who are you? Why are you silent? Why do you just stand there, staring? I hope that my evil fate has not brought you too to torment me. Have no fear, you could not bring me additional torment. My body, as you can see, has already been delivered over to torment. But if you see this and are pained at the sight of it, as you say, and if my evil fate has had its fill of the many tortures it has inflicted upon me for so many years, and has finally sent its deliverance today to set me free from my many afflictions, then I thank my fate: Butcher me! Kill me! . . . Say something, why are you silent? Let me breathe, even if briefly. This is the house of a dragon, the dwelling of a man-eater. Do you not hear the thunder, do you not see the lightning? He comes. Why are you just standing there? He comes. Go now, hide. He has the power of a dragon, this man-eater’s offspring. If you hide and guard yourself, you might just survive. Do you see that silver basin over there? If you get inside it and cover yourself up, it might just happen that you escape the dragon’s irresistible power. Go, climb in there, hide, and be quiet. He’s almost here.”

  He took her advice and trusted in the words of the maiden, who hung there suspended from her hair, and he quickly covered himself in the basin.

  The dragon arrived, full of malicious intent. Who could describe the dragon’s malicious rage with a cool mind and steely heart? Who could tell of his cold-hearted mind and pitiless heart? Who could put into words the dragon’s stony guts? Taking up a slender branch that was there, he whipped the hanging maiden for some time, from her head down to her feet, to the very ends of her fingers. The painting of Eros that was there, Eros who sets men on fire and tames their cruel hearts, was unable to light a fire in the dragon’s heart, was unable to soften the dragon’s cruel mind; instead, the dragon’s harshness escaped the fires of passion, for a dragon does not fear the fire or the bow of Eros. After that horrific lashing, he inhumanly brought up a golden stool beneath the maiden’s golden feet. She stepped on the stool, in great pain, but even then her hair remained attached above. He brought a small amount of bread and gave it to her, and water as her only drink, nothing more than that, in a cup made of precious stone, an emerald. In truth, he was saving her for another torture session. She, swollen from the pain, drank the water, in pain, after the torture, hanging from her hair. The dragon immediately removed the stool from under her feet, and again the maiden was hanging from her hair. There was a small bed there, luxurious you might call it, in the dragon’s wondrous chamber, which was also the maiden’s room of ordeals and prison-cell. If you called it a chamber of torture, you would not be wrong.

  There was a small bed there, close to the ground, low-lying, made of precious stones. The dragon sat upon it alone, gave a command, and immediately a table came, of its own accord, bearing delicious delicacies for his insatiable mouth. He ate most of them and, as soon as he was full, moved by no pity for the hanging maiden, he lay down to sleep, heavy with food.

  Now, the maiden saw the dragon sleeping, satisfied as he was after his heavy drinking and gorged with food, snoring as he slept, stretched out from end to end—this was sleep brought on from great drinking and feasting—so, when Chrysorrhoe saw the dragon sleeping so deeply and altogether senseless, she said to the hidden man: “Oh man, are you in fear of your life? Have you died already? Have no fear! Now you should man-up. Come out of there. Don’t be afraid, for you might still survive my many ordeals and the fear of the beast. Come out quickly and slay the beast even faster!”

  When he heard her voice, he came out in great fear. The maiden said to him, “Show no hesitation at all. This is your chance, kill the beast while he slumbers. Thus, you will save both your body and soul. You carry a sword: pull it out and let the man-eater have it! Butcher him who has slain so many souls of men, and kill the one who had darkened my very heart.” He stood up, drew a deep breath, and wielded his sword in good form, with a brave heart, and struck the sleeping one as hard as he could. But the dragon did not even wake up from the blow. The maiden groaned and said to Kallimachos, “Put down that wooden toy, lest we are both killed
. Now, take the key from the headboard, and you see the dragon’s wall-cupboard over there? Open the wall-cupboard, and you will find the dragon’s sword inside. It has a fine hilt, a ruby stone. If you have the strength to draw it and are not trembling with fear, stand and have at him with that, you will slay the beast.”

  And so he took the key from the headboard, and opened the dragon’s wall-cupboard. Taking the dragon’s sword from inside, he struck him with it and immediately slew him. Then he untied the hanging maiden, and her tortured body was freed from its ordeal. Freed from captivity and those bitter afflictions, her body was fine, delightful, gorgeous, ripe.

  [Chrysorrhoe asks him who he is and, after telling her, Kallimachos asks her for her story.]

  Crying, she told him, speaking through her pain: “You see my humble body naked. Bring me first, so that I may cover myself, some of the clothes that are hanging inside, where they are kept, which he himself received from my parents. Also, take out the body of that voracious dragon, because I hate even the sight of its dead corpse. Light a fire, burn him all up, make him into fine dust, and then you will learn my family and homeland, my native country and where I come from.”

  Kallimachos immediately took up the dragon’s body on his shoulders and hauled it outside. Then he ran like an eagle to the furnace, and, taking fire, he burned up the loathsome body. He returned to her and opened the chamber; taking a fine woven cloak, he brought it to her. She put it on and sat down again, and she began at the beginning, telling him everything, her family, her upbringing, land, and native country, and all the other bitter tales of her unjust fate.

  “I was a noble and well-bred daughter, coming from money and an illustrious imperial parentage. This dragon fell in love with my beauty—where has that gone now, eh?—and he wanted to have me as his wife. He pressured and harassed my parents, the kings, to consent to this bitter transaction, this marriage against nature. They agreed out of fear of the beast. For he would not allow any water to flow down from the top of the mountain, water from that river, to the empire of my father, to his lands and castles. Such was my cruel fate. For in all the rest of the entire circuit of our empire, the land of my parents, there was no other water-source, except for this one river, which he, the dragon, controlled, in his furious rage. They said it, they agreed, but I would not consent, a terrible beast . . . or rather he became a dragon again, as he always was. He gulped down all the quadrupeds of my native land, as if they were but water through a straw, and again he wanted to have me and pressed his demand. My parents did not want to give me away and they fell into lamentation, which inflamed his draconian nature and made him rage. Threatening me, he forced the marriage through. As for myself, I refused to marry him, come what may. Not even in my dreams would I consent to live with a dragon. But then immediately he devoured everyone, the small and the large, men, women, the old and young together, he gulped them all down, leaving no one behind, stuffing them with his tongue into his gullet and stomach. And then he ate and swallowed my parents too, my lords, the emperors themselves, he utterly made them vanish. O what a calamity and sorrow, what a thing to endure! I am bereaved! How can I live, how might I endure? He caused me to be alone, without any hope. He did me only this one favor with respect to them, namely that he swallowed them separately, killed them apart from all the rest, from the commoners and the nobles. What a shame that he did not then split open, that the stinking stomach of the voracious dragon did not burst. So what happened next, after all the killing? He grabbed me and wanted to have me, for all that I was unwilling. I entirely refused, and so I have suffered all these torments, and yet through all these afflictions and so much pain I prevailed over the dragon’s pitiless heart, and remain to this day an undefiled virgin.”

  DRAGONS AND THEIR SLAYERS IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES

  By the twelfth century, dragons held a privileged place in the literature of medieval Europe. For a millennium, they had prowled the Christian imagination as avatars of the Devil, who had once tempted Eve in the form of a serpent with dire results for all humankind. The ultimate adversary, the dragon reached its full potential in the later Middle Ages as the enemy of the faithful in legends and songs celebrating the virtues of saints and heroes. In these stories, brave knights and holy maidens vanquished the Devil in his draconic guise with the power of sword and cross. Much like early Christian authors, later medieval storytellers and songsmiths rendered dragons with little texture or depth. The attributes of these monsters—their reptilian appearance; their powerful jaws, wings, and tails; their fiery breath and venomous bite—were commonplace by this period and thus required little elaboration. The symbolic power of the dragon was far greater than its physical threat. To be sure, readers may have shuddered at the thought of serpentine creatures larger and more dangerous than any animal they had ever encountered in their daily lives, but the literary value of the dragon lay primarily in its allegorical potential. When saints and crusaders slew these monsters, not only did they rid the countryside of a predatory menace but they also vanquished false beliefs contrary to Christianity, doused the fires of human lust, and escaped the snares of the Devil himself.

  THE DRAGON AND THE LION1

  Chrétien de Troyes was a French poet of the late twelfth century, whose Old French poems about King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table earned him respect at the court of Marie de France, the countess of Champagne (1145–ca. 1198). Among his poems was Yvain, the Knight of the Lion (composed ca. 1180). A companion of Arthur, Yvain stood out among the knights of the Round Table because he had a ferocious lion as his companion. He obtained this unusual pet when he happened upon a battle between a lion and a dragon in a dark forest. Choosing to take action, he sided with the lion because the dragon was “so full of wickedness.” Upon the defeat of the dragon, the noble lion recognized Yvain as his friend and savior and accompanied him faithfully on his chivalric adventures.

  Deep in thought, my lord Yvain rode through deep woods until he heard from the thick of the forest a very loud and anguished cry. He headed immediately toward the place where he had heard the cry, and when he arrived at the clearing, he saw a dragon holding a lion by the tail and burning its flanks with its flaming breath. My lord Yvain did not waste time observing this marvel. He asked himself which of the two he would help. Then he determined that he would take the lion’s part, since a venomous and wicked creature deserves only harm: the dragon was venomous and fire leapt from its mouth because it was so full of wickedness. Therefore my lord Yvain determined that he would slay it first.

  He drew his sword and came forward with his shield in front of his face, to avoid being harmed by the flame pouring from the dragon’s mouth, which was larger than a cauldron. If the lion attacked him later, it would not lack for a fight, but with no thought of the consequences Yvain was determined to help it now, since Pity summoned and urged him to aid and succour the noble and honourable beast. He pursued the wicked dragon with his sharp sword: he cut it through to the ground and then cut the two parts in half again; he struck it repeatedly until it was hacked into tiny pieces. However, he was obliged to cut off a piece of the lion’s tail, which the wicked dragon still held in its clenched teeth; he cut off only as much as he had to, and he could not have taken off less.

  Once he had rescued the lion, he still thought that it would attack him and he would have to do battle with it; but the lion would never have done that. Listen to how nobly and splendidly the lion acted: it stood up upon its hind paws, bowed its head, joined its forepaws and extended them toward Yvain, in an act of total submission. Then it knelt down and its whole face was bathed in tears of humility. My lord Yvain recognized clearly that the lion was thanking him and submitting to him because, in slaying the dragon, he had delivered it from death; these actions pleased him greatly. He wiped the dragon’s poisonous filth from his sword, replaced it in his scabbard, and set off again upon his way. Yet the lion stayed by his side and never left him; from that day on it
would accompany him, for it intended to serve and protect him.

  A DRAGON WITH THE DEVIL INSIDE1

  Composed between 1180 and 1220, the Old French epic poem The Captives (Les Chétifs) was a “chanson de geste” (literally “song of deeds”), a common medieval French literary medium for recounting historical events in a mythic or legendary way. Les Chétifs was part of the Old French Crusade Cycle, which comprised several chansons de geste that related the events of the First Crusade (1095–1101). It purported to recount what happened to certain crusaders taken prisoner after the disastrous Battle of Civetot (1096) and how those captives were eventually reunited with the main crusading army before the sack of Jerusalem (1099). Les Chétifs included a lengthy sequence in which a fictional crusader named Baldwin of Beauvais battled with the dragon called Sathanas. Baldwin’s brother, Ernoul of Beauvais, had set out first to slay the dragon, but was quickly killed. Fueled by rage and grief, Baldwin mounted a fearsome and vengeful attack on the monster. But Sathanas was no common dragon, for he was possessed by the Devil himself. Only with the aid of God, the archangel Michael, and a litany of saints could the holy knight defeat this demon-ridden drake in combat.