Book IV. of the treatise is devoted to the consideration of serpents and insects. Amongst serpents and insects the dragon naturally takes the place of honour. The writer evidently has his doubts, and carefully qualifies his description by a free use of the responsibility evading formula “it is said.” He gives three illustrations. One of them represents a biped monster, crested and winged; the second has lost his legs, though he retains crest and wings; while the third creature is of serpentine nature, has neither wings nor legs, and only differs from the serpent forms in the book by the addition of his crest. The description runs as follows:—“The dragon, as described in the numerous fables and stories of several writers, may be justly questioned whether he really exists. I have read of serpents bred in Arabia, called Sirenas, which have wings, being very swift, running and flying at pleasure; and when they wound a man he dieth instantly. These are supposed to be a kind of dragons. It is said there are divers sorts of dragons or serpents that are so called, which are distinguished partly by their countries, partly by their magnitude, and partly by the different form of their external parts. They are said to be bred in India and Africa; those of India are much the largest, being of an incredible length; and of these there are also said to be two kinds, one of them living in the marshes, which are slow of pace and without combs on their heads; the other in the mountains, which are bigger and have combs, their backs being somewhat brown and their bodies less scaled. Some of them are of a yellow fiery colour, having sharp backs like saws. These also have beards. When they set up their scales they shine like silver. The apples of their eyes are (it is said) precious stones, and as bright as fire, in which it is affirmed there is a great virtue against many diseases. Their aspect is very fierce and terrible. Some dragons are said to have wings and no feet; some, again, have both feet and wings; and others neither feet nor wings, and are only distinguished from the common sort of serpents by the combs growing upon their heads and by their beards. Some do affirm that the dragon is of a black colour, somewhat green beneath and very beautiful, that it has a triple row of teeth in each jaw, that it has also two dewlaps growing under the chin, which hang down like a beard of a red colour; and the body is set all over with sharp scales, and on the neck with thick hair, much like the bristles of a wild boar.” It will be seen by the foregoing that the imagination of our ancestors was allowed free play, abundant variety of form, magnitude, colour, and so forth being possible.
The dragon or winged serpent has formed a part in many creeds, and the dragon-slayer has been the hero of countless legends. The legend varies with climate and country, and with the development of the race in which it is found; and yet the prophecies of the Bible of the ultimate bruising of the serpent’s head and the final victory over the dragon (“That old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan” Rev. xx. 2); the legends of classic days, such as that of Perseus and Andromeda; the still older struggles recorded in the slabs of Nineveh and Persepolis; the stories narrated to awed rings of listeners in the stillness of the Eastern night, or listened to by our children with eager eyes and rapt attention in the homes of England; the mass of legend that in mediæval times clustered around the names of God’s faithful ones; and the local traditions of every land, from the equator to the poles, all dwell on the mischievous presence of some evil principle and record the ultimate triumph of good. Beneath the mass of ever-varying fable stands the like foundation, the strife between the two antagonistic principles; and thus the wide world over, in every age and in every clime, the mind of man, in broken accents, it may be, and with faltering tongue, records with joy its upward struggle, feels the need of help in the sore conflict, registers its belief in final triumph. Though the dragon-conflict occurs in many literatures, the same incidents occur over and over again, and we find in almost all the power and subtlety of the monster, the innocence and helplessness of his victims, the suddenness of his attack on them, and the completeness of his final overthrow, the dragon-slayers being the conquerors over tyranny and wrong, over paganism and every form of godless evil.
In Egypt he was Typhon, in Greece, Python. In India he is Kalli Naga, the thousand-headed, the foe and the vanquished of Vishnu. In Anglo-Saxon chronicles he is Lig-draca, the fire-drake or godes-andsacan, the denier of God—always unsleeping, poison-fanged, relentless, the terrible enemy of man, full of subtlety and full of power.
On the advent of Christianity these ancient legends were not wholly discarded, but suggested others of a like character, and a slight alteration transferred to saint or martyr those feats and victories which had formerly been ascribed to gods and demigods. It only remained for the new religion to point out the analogy, and to incorporate into itself the lessons they taught, the conflict won, the abnegation of self for the good of others.
It would take up far too much space if we were to endeavour to give many of these legends in detail. In some cases they were doubtless intended as descriptions of an actual conflict, by force of arms, with some real monster; but in others the conflict is allegorical; thus St. Loup, St. Martin of Tours, St. Hilary, and St. Donatus are all notable dragon-slayers, though the conflict was a mythical one, and their claim to regard on this score is based really on their gallant fight with either the heathenism of those amongst whom they laboured or the heresy of false brethren. The popular saint, too, receives often more than his due at the hands of his admirers, and legends gather thickly round his name, and his so-called biography is often romance and hero-worship from beginning to end. St. Romanus at Rouen, St. Veran at Arles, and St. Victor of Marseilles are all accredited with feats of dragon-slaying; but leaving them, St. Martial, St. Marcel, and many others to other chroniclers, we content ourselves with referring to two illustrious saints alone—the first because she is a lady, and may therefore well claim our courtesy, the second because he is our own patron saint.
It may not be generally known that the sister of Lazarus, the St. Martha of our legend, together with Mary Magdalene and two companions, Maxime and Marcellus, wandered so far away from Palestine as the shores of France. How much farther they may have intended to go the history does not tell us, but the untoward accident that stranded them on the shores of Languedoc was a most fortunate circumstance for the people of the district. The inhabitants of that region had been for some time tormented by a monster who fed on human flesh and had a most draconic appetite, and they at once appealed to these strangers to help them. This alone would seem to indicate the extremity in which they found themselves, or they would scarcely have applied to four shipwrecked strangers, half of them women, for aid in the hour of their necessity. St. Martha, however, in pitying consideration for their sad plight, at once agreed to help them. She had hardly entered the wood where the monster dwelt before the most frightful bellowings were heard, at which all the people sorely trembled and naturally concluded that this unarmed woman had fallen a victim to her temerity; but this alarming bellowing shortly ceased, and soon after St. Martha reappeared, holding in one hand a little wooden cross, and in the other a ribbon, with which she led forth her interesting captive. She then advanced into the middle of the town and presented the people with the dragon, as embarrassing a present as the proverbial white elephant; but they seem to have risen to the occasion, for we find afterwards an annual festival held in honour of the Saint, while good King Réné of Anjou instituted an Order of the Dragon for the more effectual keeping alive of the memory of the event. As St. Martha is more especially set down in the “Lives of the Saints” as the patron saint of good housewives, she might well have been excused had she declined a service in itself so dangerous and so far removed from the daily round, the trivial task; but the overthrowing of the mighty by an instrument so weak gives additional point to the story, and vindicates triumphantly the power of faith over evil.
The “Legenda Aurea,” written by Jacobus de Voraigne, Archbishop of Genoa, in the year 1260, is what Warton termed “an inexhaustible repository of religious fable.” For some centuries it was considered to have an almost sacred character, and its popularity was so great that it passed through an immense number of editions in the Latin, Dutch, German, and French languages. It should have the more interest to us, too, from the fact that it was one of the earliest of English printed books, Caxton publishing the first English edition in 1493. This was followed by other editions by Wynkyn de Worde in the years 1498, 1512, and 1527. The following account of our patron saint is taken from this source, a much less favourable history being found in Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”[4]
Once upon a time the neighbourhood of the city of Sylene was infested with an enormous dragon, who, making a “ponde, lyke a sea,” which skirted the walls, his usual residence, was accustomed to envenom the miserable citizens with his pestiferous breath, and therefore they gave him every day two sheep for his dinner, and when these were spent they chose by lot a male and female, daily, whom they exposed to the monster. At length, after many of the rich had been compelled to sacrifice their offspring, the lot fell upon the king’s daughter, a lovely maiden, and the idol of a fond father, who, in the bitterness of his grief, entreated his subjects for the love of the gods to take his gold and silver, and all that he had, and spare his child; but they replied that he had himself made the law, and that they had suffered in obeying it, and concluded by telling him that unless he complied with his own mandate, they would take off his head. This answer only increased the king’s affliction; but being anxious to defer, if he could not avert, his daughter’s death, he craved that a respite of eight days might be given her; and his people, moved, apparently, by the groans and tears of the sorrowful old man, granted his request. When the stipulated time had elapsed, they came and said to him, “Ye see how the city perisheth!” So the monarch bade his child array herself in her richest apparel, and led her forth to “the place where the dragon was, and left her there.”
It chanced that St. George, who, like a true knight-errant, was travelling in quest of dangerous adventures, arrived at the spot not long after the king’s departure, and was much astonished when he beheld so fair a lady lingering there alone and weeping bitterly, and riding up he asked the cause of her sorrow. But she, unwilling to detain him in a place so perilous, entreated him to leave her to her fate. “Go on your way, young man,” she said, “lest ye perish also.” But St. George would know the truth, so the maiden told him. Then was the knight’s heart merry within him, and he rejoined, “Fayre doughter, doubte ye no thynge hereof, for I shall helpe thee in the name of Jesu Christe.” She said, “For Goddes sake, good knyght, goo your waye, and abyde not wyth me, for ye may not deliver me.” St. George, however, was of a different opinion, and indeed, had he resolved, upon second thoughts, to escape, he could not have done so, for the dragon, smelling human flesh from afar, emerged from the lake while the lady was speaking, and now came running towards his victim. Not a moment was to be lost, so St. George crossed himself, drew his sword, and placing his lance in the rest, rushed to meet the monster, who, little expecting such a rough greeting, received the weapon “in his bosom,” and rolled over in the dust. Then said the victor to the rescued virgin, “Take thy girdle, and bind it round the dragon’s neck;” and when the lady had obeyed her champion, the monster followed her as if it had been “a meek beeste and debonayre.” And so she led him into the city; and when the people saw her coming they fled with affright, expecting to perish all of them; but St. George shouted, “Doubt nothing, believe in God Jesus Christ, consent to be baptized, and I will slay the dragon before your eyes.” The citizens immediately consented, so the Saint attacked the monster, and smote off his head, and commanded that he should be thrown into the green fields, and they took four carts with oxen, and drew him out of the city. Then were fifteen thousand men baptized (without reckoning the women and children), and the king erected a church, and dedicated it to Our Lady and St. George, in which floweth “a founteyne of lyuying water which heleth seeke people that drynke therof.” After this the prince offered the champion incalculable riches, but he refused them all, and enjoining the king to take care of the church, to honour the priests, and pity the poor, he kissed him and departed.