While Dobrynya remains relatively unknown in the west, he is still a popular hero in Russia, where he continues to serve as the subject of numerous artworks. In 2006 an animated movie, Dobrynya Nikitich and Zmey Gorynych, was released in Russian cinemas.
DRAGONSLAYERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD
In the main, the study of the development of the dragonslayer narrative is a study of European myth, legend, and folklore. Of the hundreds of dragonslaying stories that exist today, the vast majority come from the Christian and folkloric traditions, which grew out of earlier European and middle eastern mythology. That said, there are exceptions, and, depending on how far one is willing to stretch the definition of ‘dragon’, stories of gods and heroes fighting giant serpents or lizard-like monsters can be found in nearly every culture on earth.
It should be noted, however, that even tales from other parts of the world, which may seem like classic dragonslayer stories, have often in fact been coloured by European thinking. It has often been the case that early folklorists and translators, when encountering a strange or rare foreign word that they know only to mean some variety of monster, have ended up using the word ‘dragon’, or at least borrowing elements of the dragon to try and explain these foreign concepts. It is unlikely, for example, Native Americans or Japanese thought of dragons in anything like the same terms as Europeans.
That aside, no discussion of dragonslayers would be complete without at least a nod to these other great heroes, who battled their own variety of dragons in the far corners of the earth. Contained here is a quick summary of four such heroes, two Native Americans, one Japanese, and one Maori.
Manabozho and the Fiery Serpents
In 1839, Henry Schoolcraft released a two-volume book entitled Algic Researches which collected some of the myths and legends of Algonquian, Wiyot, and Yurok tribes of Native Americans. Included in these stories is the tale of Manabozho, a Native American dragonslayer.
According to Schoolcraft, Manabozho was something of a Native American Hercules. He was the great-grandson of the moon, possessed of great strength and cunning wit, and could wield magical powers, including the ability to shape-shift into numerous different animals.
Hiawatha slaying the Kenabeek from his canoe. (North Wind Pictures Archive / Alamy)
In one of Manabozho’s numerous adventures, he is tracking down an evil wizard in his canoe, when he encounters a pair of serpents of ‘enormous length and a bright colour’, which blocked the way and ‘hissed fire’. The serpents inform Manabozho that he cannot pass, so, falling back on trickery, the wily warrior points and shouts ‘look behind you!’ When the serpents turn and look, Manabozho paddles his canoe past them. He then draws out his bow and shoots the confused serpents from behind, killing them.
While the name Manabozho is nearly forgotten today, his adventures formed the basis for much of the narrative in The Song of Hiawatha, the epic poem by Henry Wordsworth Longfellow. In this poem, it is Hiawatha who goes on a series of adventures, including battling the fiery serpents, which Longfellow described as follows:
Soon he reached the fiery serpents,
The Kenabeek, the great serpents,
Lying huge upon the water,
Sparkling, rippling in the water,
Lying coiled across the passage,
With their blazing crests uplifted,
Breathing fiery fogs and vapors,
So that none could pass beyond them.
OUATOGA AND PIASA, THE DRAGON-BIRD
In 1673, a French Jesuit priest named Father Jacques Marquette led an expedition into an unexplored region of the middle Mississippi. During his journey, he discovered a rock-painting of a creature that looked something like a scaled lion, with the face of a man, antlers like a deer, and a long serpent-like tail. Over the years, many explorers passed by the site and mentioned the image in their writings, but none offered any explanation for its existence. That changed in 1836 when Professor John Russell wrote an article about the creature. He named it Piasa, ‘the bird that devours men,’ and told a story supposed to have come from the folklore of the Illinois tribe of Native Americans.
According to Russell, the Piasa was a large, winged creature that lived in the cliffs. For many years it lived peaceably with men, carrying off deer and buffalo. Then one day, after a great battle, the Piasa flew down from its cliffs and began to eat the corpses of the dead. Finding it liked the taste of human flesh, it began to attack the local villagers, carrying off small children. When this had continued for many moons, Chief Ouatoga sought advice from the Great Spirit. After nearly a month of meditation, the chief came up with a plan. Using himself as bait, the chief lured the Piasa down from the cliffs. Then his warriors, who had been in hiding, sprang up and shot poisoned arrows at the creature’s unprotected wings. The arrows tore through its wings and prevented the Piasa from flying away. The braves then rushed in and finished it off with tomahawks and knives.
The Piasa as it appears in its current incarnation.
In all likelihood, this story is completely the creation of John Russell. The name ‘Piasa’ is taken from a local stream, and there is no indication that the word means anything like what John Russell says. In fact, it is not clear if the original creature even had wings, as Father Marquette doesn’t mention them. They don’t appear in anyone’s description until a sketch in the 1820s labelled ‘dragon-bird’.
Unfortunately, the original painting is long gone. At some point, either the Native Americans or the European settlers adopted the destructive custom of shooting at the painting with firearms, and eventually the whole rock face was destroyed by quarrying. There have been several modern attempts to bring back the Piasa, which have met with varying degrees of success. Today, a large version of the painting can be seen on a rock face near Alton, Illinois.
The word ‘Kenabeek’ is Longfellow’s version of the native word ‘genábik’. Schoolcraft admits that this word is a generic one that can apply to ‘amphibious animals of large and venomous character’, which is probably as close as most Native American languages came to having a word for dragon.
Pitaka and the Taniwha
According to the myths and legends of the Maori people of New Zealand, creatures called taniwha used to inhabit the waters in and around the island. The ocean variety of the monster looked like a giant shark of whale-like proportions, while the fresh water type more closely resembled giant lizards or dragons.
The role of these New Zealand dragons varied greatly in the different legends. In some stories, the taniwha served as loyal protectors of individuals, families or tribes. In others, they took the role of terrifying monsters that attacked from their watery lairs and dragged men down to their doom.
In one such tale, travellers on a road between two villages began to disappear. The men of one village, thinking the men of the other must be to blame, formed a war party and set off to attack their enemies. However, halfway to their destination, the warriors were attacked by a giant taniwha named Hotupuku. The dragon-lizard killed most of the men and sent the rest scampering back to their village. When the warriors related their story, a man named Pitaka came forward with a plan to kill Hotupuku. Taking a group of hunters and a great deal of rope, they went hunting for the dragon. When they got near its lair, they tied one end of their rope around a tree and made a noose out of the other end. Pitaka then went forward and lured the taniwha out. While Pitaka distracted it, the other hunters looped the noose around the dragon’s tail, preventing it from escaping. Then they took another noose and managed to throw it around the dragon’s neck. Lassoed from both ends, the dragon could only thrash about until it strangled itself on the rope. Pitaka then cut open the dragon’s belly and found the remains of all the missing people, as well as weapons, jewellery, and sharks’ teeth.
After this incident, Pitaka gained a reputation as a great dragonslayer, and sometime later, another tribe called on him for help. These people had been attacked by a taniwha named Pekehaua who lived in a large stream
. Pitaka travelled to the village and observed the stream where the dragon lived. He then ordered the villagers to construct a large basket and fill it with rocks. When this was done, Pitaka and a few of his companions also got into the basket, and Pitaka ordered the basket be lowered into the stream. As the basket sank into the deep stream, Pitaka saw the dragon asleep at the stream bottom. Quietly, he swam out of the basket and slipped a noose around the dragon’s neck. Then he tugged on the rope as a signal to the people back on land. The whole village was waiting there, and when they saw the signal, they all pulled upon the rope, pulling the dragon out of the stream onto land. The villagers then jumped upon the dragon, clubbing it to death.
Agatamori
Japanese dragons, like most Asian dragons, are usually gods or benign creatures and thus there are very few tales of Japanese dragonslayers. One notable exception is the legend of Agatamori, which supposedly occurred in the sixty-seventh year of the reign of Emperor Nintoku (around 379 AD). In that year, a mizuchi, a water-dragon, took up residence in a fork in the Kahashima River and began attacking passers-by with its poison breath. As the death toll mounted, a local man named Agatamori set out to deal with the problem. When he reached the river, he waited for the dragon to emerge from its watery lair. When it did, he tossed three calabashes, a type of gourd, into the water. Agatamori then said to the dragon, ‘If you can sink these three calabashes, I will go away. If you cannot, I will take my sword and kill you.’
An example of a Japanese style dragon.
The dragon agreed to this challenge and attempted to sink the calabashes, even turning into a deer at one point to try and push them under the water, but try as he might, the calabashes kept bobbing to the surface. As the dragon’s failure became clear, Agatamori charged into the river and drew his sword, lopping off the dragon’s head in one single motion. Then, to be sure that the river was clear, he dove down to the river bottom. There he found a whole family of mizuchi and slaughtered them all. So great was the killing that the river was stained red with dragons’ blood, and forever afterward the spot in the river was known as Agatamori’s Pool.
The story of Agatamori is found in the Nihon Shoki, ‘The Chronicles of Japan’. Written in the Classical Chinese language around the year 720 AD, the Nihon Shoki is a collection of myths, legends, and early history of Japan. The inclusion of the Agatamori tale is really just a minor aside. The story falls into the classic folktale tradition of using an event, such as the slaying of a dragon, to explain a place name. It also doubles to give one family a heroic, dragonslaying ancestor, as Agatamori is stated to be an ancestor of the Kasa-no-omi clan.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Apollodorus, The Library of Greek Mythology, Robin Hard (trans.), Oxford World Classics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008
Appollonius of Rhodes, The Voyage of the Argo, E. V. Rieu (trans.), Penguin Classics, Penguin Books, London, 1971
Bailey, James and Ivanova, Tatyana, An Anthology of Russian Folk Epics, M. E. Sharpe, London, 1999.
Byock, Jesse L (trans.), The Saga of the Volsungs, Penguin Classics, Penguin Books, London, 1999
Edwards, Cyril (trans.), The Nibelungenlied, Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010
Evans, Johnathan, Dragons: Myth & Legend, Apple, London, 2008
Grammaticus, Saxo, The History of the Danes, Books I – IX, Peter Fisher (trans.), D. S. Brewer, 2008
Hargreaves, Joyce, A Little History of Dragons, Wooden Books, Glastonbury, 2006.
Hasluck, F. W., ‘Dieudonné de Gozon and the Dragon of Rhodes’, The Annual of the British School at Athens, Vol. 20 (1913/1914) pp. 70-79
Orbell, Margaret Rose, A Concise Encyclopedia of Maori myth and legend, New Zealand: Canterbury University Press. 1998.
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe, Algic Researches, comprising inquiries respecting mental characteristics of the North American Indians, Vol. 1, Harper and Brothers, New York, 1839
Shuker, Karl, Dragons: A Natural History, Evergreen, 2006
Siculus, Diodorus, Library of History, Books II.35 – IV.58, C. H. Oldfather (English trans.), Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, London, 2006
Simpson, Jacqueline, British Dragons, B.T. Bratsford Ltd, London, 1980.
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Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Jim and Karen McCullough for a magic-filled childhood.
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