The Helpful Animals. These are often begotten together with and in the same miraculous way as the heroes and the life-tokens. Arranged according to what we may now call “the Bovril principle,” they come in the following order: horses, dogs, hawks, lions, wolves, falcons, bears, foxes, eagles, ants, dog-fishes, bulls, calves, hares, boars, cats, winged horses, and deer.
The Magic Weapons. These are an obviously later variant of the same idea and, on the same principle, stand in the following order: lance, shield, sword, pistol, gun, magic wand, stick, bow and arrow, knife, beer, stole, magic water, powder-horn, air-gun, iron staff, 500-lb. club, mace, and crucifix.
The Rescued Maiden. In every case the function of the hero and all his apparatus is to rescue a distressed maiden from a monster to whom she is being sacrificed to appease the Gods. Often the hero, having rescued the lady, “ungallantly refuses to see her home, saying that he wishes to see a little more of the world.” But, before departing, he takes some token—the dragon’s tongue or eye or other part, or the lady’s handkerchief or other ornament. His desertion leaves her a prey to the first impostor who comes along, claims the victory for himself and the lady in marriage. In the nick of time the hero returns and shows up the impostor “and poetical justice is completed by his marriage with the lady” (who has always fallen in love with him at first sight), while her sisters (for she has two sisters) are commonly given to the two other princes (for he has two brothers).
As I have said, all the best Saints performed feats of this nature, including the Holy Apostles Philip and Matthew, St. Michael, St. Margaret, St. Hilarion, St. Donatus, St. John, St. Sylvester, Pope Leo IV, and a man named Smith (at Deerhurst in Gloucestershire). It is also told of a boy who was carried off by a dragon that, after long years, he was found in its cave “alive and reading the Gospel, which was held up before him by St. Friday, while St. Sunday further contributed to his convenience by holding the candle.”
Scarcely ten miles from Glastonbury a terrible dragon lived once on Aller Hill over beyond High Ham. His fiery breath destroyed the people and their flocks and herds, and he was particularly partial to maidens. The climax came when a young man called one morning to fetch his bride away to Church: her home
Was levelled to the ground,
And on its ruins, now a funeral pyre
Smouldered the ashes of her aged sire
and the foul monster had carried her off to his cave. The bridegroom swore, in his despair, that “earth should no longer hold a thing so vile,” and, marching off with his friends, killed the dragon and rescued his bride; but the story ends on a classical note of tragedy, for she died of horror in his house that very day.