“It wouldn’t be safe for you.”
“Much safer for both of us for me to be free, with a sword in my hand, than tied up and helpless. Do agree.”
He could refuse her nothing. So he agreed. And next day everything happened as she had said.
When he had cut the cords that tied her to the rock they stood on the lonely mountain-side looking at each other.
“It seems to me,” said the Prince, “that this ceremony could have been arranged without the dragon.”
“Yes,” said the Princess, “but since it has been arranged with the dragon —”
“It seems such a pity to kill the dragon—the last in the world,” said the Prince.
“Well then, don’t let’s,” said the Princess; “let’s tame it not to eat princesses but to eat out of their hands. They say everything can be tamed by kindness.”
“Taming by kindness means giving them things to eat,” said the Prince. “Have you got anything to eat?”
She hadn’t, but the Prince owned that he had a few biscuits. “Breakfast was so very early,” said he, “and I thought you might have felt faint after the fight.”
“How clever,” said the Princess, and they took a biscuit in each hand. And they looked here, and they looked there, but never a dragon could they see.
“But here’s its trail,” said the Prince, and pointed to where the rock was scarred and scratched so as to make a track leading to a dark cave. It was like cart-ruts in a Sussex road, mixed with the marks of sea-gull’s feet on the sea-sand. “Look, that’s where it’s dragged its brass tail and planted its steel claws.”
“Don’t let’s think how hard its tail and claws are,” said the Princess, “or I shall begin to be frightened—and I know you can’t tame anything, even by kindness, if you’re frightened of it. Come on. Now or never.”
She caught the Prince’s hand in hers and they ran along the path towards the dark mouth of the cave. But they did not run into it. It really was so very dark.
So they stood outside, and the Prince shouted: “What ho! Dragon there! What ho within!” And from the cave they heard an answering voice and great clattering and creaking. It sounded as though a rather large cotton-mill were stretching itself and waking up out of its sleep.
The Prince and the Princess trembled, but they stood firm.
“Dragon—I say, dragon!” said the Princess, “do come out and talk to us. We’ve brought you a present.”
“Oh yes—I know your presents,” growled the dragon in a huge rumbling voice. “One of those precious princesses, I suppose? And I’ve got to come out and fight for her. Well, I tell you straight, I’m not going to do it. A fair fight I wouldn’t say no to—a fair fight and no favour—but one of those put-up fights where you’ve got to lose—no! So I tell you. If I wanted a princess I’d come and take her, in my own time—but I don’t. What do you suppose I’d do with her, if I’d got her?”
“Eat her, wouldn’t you?” said the Princess, in a voice that trembled a little.
“Eat a fiddle-stick end,” said the dragon very rudely. “I wouldn’t touch the horrid thing.”
The Princess’s voice grew firmer.
“Do you like biscuits?” she said.
“No,” growled the dragon.
“Not the nice little expensive ones with sugar on the top?”
“No,” growled the dragon.
“Then what do you like?” asked the Prince.
“You go away and don’t bother me,” growled the dragon, and they could hear it turn over, and the clang and clatter of its turning echoed in the cave like the sound of the steam-hammers in the Arsenal at Woolwich.
The Prince and Princess looked at each other. What were they to do? Of course it was no use going home and telling the King that the dragon didn’t want princesses—because His Majesty was very old-fashioned and would never have believed that a new-fashioned dragon could ever be at all different from an old-fashioned dragon. They could not go into the cave and kill the dragon. Indeed, unless he attacked the Princess it did not seem fair to kill him at all.
“He must like something,” whispered the Princess, and she called out in a voice as sweet as honey and sugar-cane:
“Dragon! Dragon dear!”
“WHAT?” shouted the dragon. “Say that again!” and they could hear the dragon coming towards them through the darkness of the cave. The Princess shivered, and said in a very small voice:
“Dragon—Dragon dear!”
And then the dragon came out. The Prince drew his sword, and the Princess drew hers—the beautiful silver-handled one that the Prince had brought in his motor-car. But they did not attack; they moved slowly back as the dragon came out, all the vast scaly length of him, and lay along the rock—his great wings halfspread and his silvery sheen gleaming like diamonds in the sun. At last they could retreat no further—the dark rock behind them stopped their way—and with their backs to the rock they stood swords in hand and waited.
The dragon grew nearer and nearer—and now they could see that he was not breathing fire and smoke as they had expected—he came crawling slowly towards them wriggling a little as a puppy does when it wants to play and isn’t quite sure whether you’re not cross with it.
And then they saw that great tears were coursing down its brazen cheek.
“Whatever’s the matter?” said the Prince.
“Nobody,” sobbed the dragon, “ever called me ‘dear’ before!”
“Don’t cry, dragon dear,” said the Princess. “We’ll call you ‘dear’ as often as you like. We want to tame you.”
“I am tame,” said the dragon—“that’s just it. That’s what nobody but you has ever found out. I’m so tame that I’d eat out of your hands.”
“Eat what, dragon dear?” said the Princess. “Not biscuits?” The dragon slowly shook his heavy head.
“Not biscuits?” said the Princess tenderly. “What, then, dragon dear?”
“Your kindness quite undragons me,” it said. “No one has ever asked any of us what we like to eat—always offering us princesses, and then rescuing them—and never once, ‘What’ll you take to drink the King’s health in?’ Cruel hard I call it,” and it wept again.
“But what would you like to drink our health in?” said the Prince. “We’re going to be married today, aren’t we, Princess?”
She said that she supposed so.
“What’ll I take to drink your health in?” asked the dragon. “Ah, you’re something like a gentleman, you are, sir. I don’t mind if I do, sir. I’ll be proud to drink you and your good lady’s health in a tiny drop of”—its voice faltered—“to think of you asking me so friendly like,” it said. “Yes, sir, just a tiny drop of puppuppuppuppupetrol—tha—that’s what does a dragon good, sir—”
“I’ve lots in the car,” said the Prince, and was off down the mountain in a flash. He was a good judge of character and knew that with this dragon the Princess would be safe.
“If I might make so bold,” said the dragon, “while the gentleman’s away—p’raps just to pass the time you’d be so kind as to call me Dear again, and if you’d shake claws with a poor old dragon that’s never been anybody’s enemy but his own—well, the last of the dragons’ll be the proudest dragon that’s ever been since the first of them.”
It held out an enormous paw, and the great steel hooks that were its claws closed over the Princess’s hand as softly as the claws of the Himalayan bear will close over the bit of bun you hand it through the bars at the Zoo.
* * *
—
And so the Prince and Princess went back to the palace in triumph, the dragon following them like a pet dog. And all through the wedding festivities no one drank more earnestly to the happiness of the bride and bridegroom than the Princess’s pet dragon—whom she had at once named Fido.
And when the happy
pair were settled in their own kingdom, Fido came to them and begged to be allowed to make himself useful.
“There must be some little thing I can do,” he said, rattling his wings and stretching his claws. “My wings and claws and so on ought to be turned to some account—to say nothing of my grateful heart.”
So the Prince had a special saddle or howdah made for him—very long it was—like the tops of many tramcars fitted together. One hundred and fifty seats were fitted to this, and the dragon, whose greatest pleasure was now to give pleasure to others, delighted in taking parties of children to the seaside. It flew through the air quite easily with its hundred and fifty little passengers—and would lie on the sand patiently waiting till they were ready to return. The children were very fond of it, and used to call it Dear, a word which never failed to bring tears of affection and gratitude to its eyes. So it lived, useful and respected, till quite the other day—when someone happened to say, in his hearing, that dragons were out-of-date, now so much new machinery had come in. This so distressed him that he asked the King to change him into something less old-fashioned, and the kindly monarch at once changed him into a mechanical contrivance. The dragon, indeed, became the first aeroplane.
Notes
THE HYDRA OF LERNA
1. Apollodorus, The Library 2.5.2, trans. Sir James George Frazer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921), pp. 187–89 (slightly modified).
2. Located on the eastern shore of the Peloponnese in Greece, Lerna was famed for its many springs.
3. Amymone was the daughter of Danaus and Europe. After Poseidon rescued her from a satyr, he wooed her by showing her the sacred springs of Lerna, which later authors associated with her name.
MEDUSA, MOTHER OF MONSTERS
1. Lucan, Civil War 9.777–924, trans. Matthew Fox (New York: Penguin Books, 2012), pp. 273–77.
CADMUS AND THE DRAGON OF ARES
1. Ovid, Metamorphoses 3, trans. Mary M. Innes (New York: Penguin Books, 1955), pp. 74–77.
THE DEATH OF LAOCOÖN
1. Virgil, The Aeneid 2.256–88, trans. Robert Fagles (New York: Viking, 2006), pp. 81–82.
THE DRAGON OF BAGRADA RIVER
1. Silius Italicus, Punica 6.140–286, trans. J. D. Duff, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934), vol. 1, pp. 293, 295, 297, 299, 301, and 303.
DRAGONS AGAINST ELEPHANTS
1. Pliny, Historia Naturalis 8.11–13 and 37.57, trans. J. Bostock and H. T. Riley, 6 vols. (London: Henry J. Bohn, 1890), vol. 2, pp. 259–62; and vol. 6, p. 447 (updated and modified).
BIBLICAL BEASTS
1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from the Latin Vulgate version of Genesis 3:1–15.
2. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from the Latin Vulgate version of Job 40:20–21 and 41:4–25.
3. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from the Latin Vulgate version of Daniel 14:22–27.
4. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from the Latin Vulgate version of Revelation 12:1–17 and 20:1–3.
THE GUARDIAN OF HEAVEN’S LADDER
1. “The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity” 3–4, trans. Carolinne White, in Lives of Roman Christian Women (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), pp. 6–8.
DESCENDANTS OF DARKNESS
1. The Acts of Philip 8–9, trans. M. R. James in The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924), pp. 446–48 (slightly modified).
2. A cubit was a unit of measurement based on the distance between a grown man’s fingertips and elbow (about eighteen inches).
3. The Acts of Philip 11, trans. François Bovon and Christopher R. Matthews, in The Acts of Philip: A New Translation (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012), pp. 81–84.
4. Genesis 3:1–15.
5. Genesis 4:1–18.
6. The Watchers are known from the apocalyptic Book of Enoch, which was written around 300–200 BCE.
7. Exodus 7:8–13.
8. The Acts of Philip 13, trans. Bovon and Matthews, in The Acts of Philip, pp. 87–88.
9. The term “Monad” refers to the “oneness” of God.
THE DRAGON BECAME HER TOMB
1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from Venantius Fortunatus, Vita sancti Marcelli 10, ed. Bruno Krusch, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Auctores antiquissimi 4.2 (Berlin: Apud Weidmannos, 1885), pp. 53–54.
2. For a later medieval account of Pope Sylvester’s encounter with a dragon in Rome, see pp. 157–58, below.
COILED COURIERS OF THE DAMNED
1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from Gregory the Great, Dialogorum libri quattuor 2.25 and 4.38, ed. J. P. Migne, in Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina 66 (Paris: Apud editorem, 1859), col. 182; and ed. J. P. Migne, in Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina 77 (Paris: Apud editorem, 1896), cols. 389 and 392–93.
2. Modern Konya in south-central Turkey.
THE MONSTER OF THE RIVER NESS
1. Adomnán of Iona, Life of St. Columba 2.27, trans. Richard Sharpe (New York: Penguin Books, 1995), pp. 175–76.
GUARDIANS OF THE HOARD
1. Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, trans. James Steven Stallybrass, 4 vols. (London: George Bell & Sons, 1883), vol. 2, p. 689.
THE TERROR OF NATIONS
1. Translated by Paul Acker from Beowulf, lines 874–97, 2208–31, 2270–354, 2397–427, 2508–610, 2661–846, 2900–2913, 3028–57, and 3129–82, ed. Fred C. Robinson and Bruce Mitchell, in Beowulf: An Edition (Oxford: Blackwells, 1998), pp. 77–78, 125–26, 127–31, 133–34, 137–50, 155–56, and 159–61.
2. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1937), p. 33.
3. The hero Sigmund corresponds in Old Norse to Sigmundr and his son Sigurðr, descendants of Völsungr. Sigurðr was famous for slaying the dragon Fáfnir (see pp. 74–77, below).
4. A byrnie is a tunic made out of chain mail.
5. Beowulf’s sword Naegling takes its name from the Old English word for “nail” (nægl).
SIGURD, THE SLAYER OF FÁFNIR
1. Translated by Paul Acker from Völsunga saga 18, ed. R. G. Finch (London: Nelson, 1965), pp. 31–32.
WINGED DRAGONS OF THE NORTH
1. J. R. R. Tolkien, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” Proceedings of the British Academy 2 (1936): 245–95, at p. 253.
2. Translated by Paul Acker from Ketils saga hængs 1, ed. Guðni Jónsson, in Fornaldar sögur Norðurlanda, 4 vols. (Reykjavík: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan, 1950), vol. 2, p. 153.
3. Translated by Paul Acker from Þiðreks saga af Bern 105, ed. Guðni Jónsson, in Fornaldar sögur Norðurlanda, 4 vols. (Reykjavík: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan, 1950), vol. 1, pp. 156–58.
A TREASURY OF ANCIENT DRAGON LORE
1. Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, 12.4.4–5 and 16.16.7, trans. Ernest Brehaut, in An Encyclopedist of the Dark Ages: Isidore of Seville (New York: Columbia University Press, 1912), pp. 227–28 and 255 (modified).
DARK AGE CREATURE CATALOGUES
1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from De rebus in Oriente mirabilibus 15–16; and Liber monstrorum 1.49 and 3.13, ed. Andy Orchard, in Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-Manuscript, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), pp. 178, 284, and 312.
2. The Brixonte is a fictional river that appears only in the Wonders of the East. The headless creatures described here are known as Blemmyes. Roman authors identified them as natives of Libya, Ethiopia, or India.
YOU CRUSHED THEIR HEADS UPON THE WATERS
1. Translated by Benjamin Bertrand and Scott G. Bruce from Hrabanus Maurus, De universo 8.3, ed. J. P. Migne, in Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina 111 (Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1844), cols. 229–30.
2. Up to this point, Hrabanus has quoted verbatim the chapter on dragons from Isidore’s Etymologies (see pp. 85–86, above).
3. Psalms 74:13.
4. Psalms 74:14.
REMEMBERING A PANNONIAN DRAGON
1. Translated by Benjamin Bertrand and Scott G. Bruce from Arnold of St. Emmeram, De miraculis sancti Emmerammi libri duo 2, ed. J. P. Migne, in Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina 141 (Paris: Apud editorem, 1880), cols. 1039–41.
2. Cf. 2 Peter 3:5–7.
3. Cf. 2 Peter 3:12–13.
4. Cf. Jude 6.
5. Job 41:6. For the description of Leviathan in the Book of Job, see pp. 32–33, above.
6. The specificity of Arnold’s recollection of the date does not help us to isolate the day in late spring or early summer on which he saw the dragon, because Pentecost is a moveable feast day that falls on the seventh Sunday after Easter, the exact date of which changes from year to year.
7. Revelation 12:12. Further on the dragon in the Book of Revelation, see pp. 34–35, above.
8. Here Arnold quotes verbatim the chapter on dragons from Isidore’s Etymologies (see pp. 85–86, above). As Patrick Geary has noted, the monk “presumably copied from the manuscript of Isidore we know to have been in St. Emmeram’s at the end of the tenth century.” See Patrick J. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millenium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 158–76, at p. 161.
GOD’S FIERY VENGEANCE
1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce and W. Tanner Smoot from Herman of Tournai, De miraculis beatae Mariae Laudunenis 2.11, ed. J. P. Migne, in Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina 156 (Paris: Apud editorem, 1853), cols. 981–82.
2. A stade (stadium) is a Roman unit of measurement roughly equivalent to 125 paces.
3. During their tours, the canons processed with their relics of the Virgin (locks of her hair and threads from her chemise) on a litter.
The Penguin Book of Dragons Page 29
