The dreadful dragon of Hay Hill

by Sir Max Beerbohm

But for his bright red hair, perhaps you would not have recognised Thol at all. He was a great gawky youth now. Spiritually, however, he had changed little. He was still intent on slaying the dragon.

In the preceding years he had thought of little else than this, and as he never had said a word about it he was not accounted good company. Nor had he any desire to shine—in any light but that of a hero. The homelanders would have been cordial enough to him, throughout those years, if he had wished them to be so. But he never was able to forget how cold and unkind they had been to him in his early childhood. It was not for their sake that he had so constantly nursed and brooded over his great wish. It was for his own sake only.

An unsympathetic character? Stay!—let me tell you that since the dawn of his adolescence another sake had come in to join his own: Thia’s sake.

From the moment when she, in childhood, had called him a coward, it always had been Thia especially that he wished to impress. But in recent times his feeling had changed. How should such a lout as he ever hope to impress Thia, who was a goddess? Thol hoped only to make Thia happy, to see her go dancing and singing once more, with flowers in her hair. Thol did not even dare hope that Thia would thank him. Thol was not an unsympathetic character at all.

As for Thia, she was more fascinating than ever. Do not be misled by her seeming to Thol a goddess. Remember that the homelanders worshipped cherry-trees and rain and fire and running water and all such things. There was nothing of the statuesque Hellenic ideal about Thia. She had not grown tall, she was as lissom and almost as slight as ever; and her alien dark hair had not lost its wildness: on windy days it flew out far behind her, like a thunder cloud, and on calm days hid her as in a bush. She had never changed the task that she chose on the day of the dragon’s advent. She was still a goose-girl. But perhaps she was conscious now that the waddling gait of her geese made the grace of her own gait the lovelier by its contrast. Certainly she was familiar with her face. She had often leaned over clear pools to study it—to see what the homelanders saw in it. She was very glad of her own charms because they were so dear to all those beloved people. But sometimes her charms also saddened her. She had had many suitors—youths of her own age, and elder men too. Even Veo, thinking her almost as beautiful as the dragon, had laid his hands upon her shoulders, in the ritual mode. Even the intellectual Shib had done so. And even from such elders as these it was dreadful to turn away. Nor was Thia a girl of merely benevolent nature: she had warm desires, and among the younger suitors more than one had much pleased her fancy. But stronger than any other sentiment in her was her love for the homeland. Not until the dragon were slain or were gone away across the waters would Thia be wife of any man.

So far as she knew, she had sentenced herself to perpetual maidenhood. Even had she been aware of Thol’s inflexible determination, she would hardly have become hopeful. Determination is one thing, doing is another.

The truth of that old adage sometimes forced itself on poor Thol himself, as he sat watching the sheep that he herded near his cave on the way to the marshes; and at such time his sadness was so great that it affected even his sheep, causing them to look askance at him and bleat piteously, and making drearier a neighbourhood that was in itself dreary.

But, one day in the eighteenth summer of his years, Thol ceased to despond. There came, wet from the river and mossy from the marshes, an aged wanderer. He turned his dark eyes on Thol and said with a smile, pointing towards the thick smoke on the hill, ‘A dragon is here now?’

‘Yea, O wanderer,’ Thol answered.