The dreadful dragon of Hay Hill

by Sir Max Beerbohm

When everything had been told and heard, they stood for a while in silent mourning. The sun rose from the hills over the water, and with a common impulse they knelt to this great god, beseeching him that he would straightway call the dragon back beyond those hills, never to return. Then they looked up at the cave. To-day the dragon was wholly inside, his smoke rolling up from within the cave’s mouth. Long looked the homelanders for that glimmer of nether fire which would show that he was indeed moving forth. There was nothing for them to see but the black smoke. ‘Peradventure,’ said one, ‘the sun is not a god.’ ‘Nay,’ said another, ‘rather may it be that he is so great a god that we cannot know his purposes, nor he be turned aside from them by our small woes.’ This was accounted a strange but a wise saying. ‘Nevertheless,’ said the sayer, ‘it is well that we should ask help of him in woes that to us are not small.’ So again the homelanders prayed, and though their prayer was still unanswered they felt themselves somehow strengthened.

It was agreed that they should disperse to their dwellings, eat, and presently reassemble in formal council.

And here I should mention Shib; for he was destined to be important in this council, though he was but a youth, and on his cheeks and chin the down had but begun to lengthen. I may as well also mention Veo, his brother, elder than him by one year. They were the sons of Oc and Loga, with whom they lived in a cave near the valley. Veo had large eyes which seemed to see nothing, but saw much. Shib had small eyes which seemed to see much, and saw it. Shib’s parents thought him very clever, as indeed he was. They thought Veo a fool; but Mr. Roger Fry, had he seen the mural drawings in their cave, would have assured them that he was a master.

Said Veo to Shib, as they followed their parents to the cave, ‘Though I prayed that he might not, I am glad that the dragon abides with us. His smoke is as the trunk of a great tree whose branches are the sky. When he comes crawling down the hill he is more beautiful than Thia dancing.’

Shib’s ideas about beauty were academic. Thia dancing, with a rose-bush on one side of her and a sunset on the other, was beautiful. The dragon was ugly. But Shib was not going to waste breath in argument with his absurd brother. What mattered was not that the dragon was ugly, but that the dragon was a public nuisance, to be abated if it could not be suppressed. The spearmen had failed to suppress it, and would continue to fail. But Shib thought he saw a way to abatement. He had carefully watched throughout the night the dragon’s demeanour. He had noted how, despite so many wanderers’ clear testimony as to the taste of all dragons, this creature had seemed to palter in choice between the penned sheep near to him and the mobile people across the stream; noted that despite the great talons on his feet he did not attempt to climb any of the trees; noted the long rests he took here and there. On these observations Shib had formed a theory, and on this theory a scheme. And during the family meal in the cave he recited the speech he was going to make at the council. His parents were filled with admiration. Veo, however, did not listen to a word. Nor did he even attend the council. He stayed in the cave, making with a charred stick, on all vacant spaces, stark but spirited pictures of the dragon.

I will not report in even an abridged form the early proceedings of the council. For they were tedious. The speakers were many, halting, and not to the point. Shib, when his chance at length came, shone. He had a dry, unattractive manner; but he had something to say, he said it clearly and tersely, and so he held his audience.

Having stated the facts he had noted, he claimed no certainty for the deduction he had made from them. He did not say, ‘Know then surely, O homelanders, that this is a slothful dragon.’ Nor, for the matter of that, did he say he had furnished a working hypothesis, or a hypothesis that squared with the known facts, or a hypothesis that held the field. Such phrases, alas, were impossible in the simple and barbarous tongue of the homelanders. But ‘May it not be,’ Shib did say, ‘that this is a slothful dragon?’ There was a murmur of meditative assent. ‘Hearken then,’ said Shib, ‘to my counsel. Let the spearmen go slay two deer. Let the shepherds go slay two sheep, and the goat-herds two goats. Also let there be slain three geese and as many ducks. Or ever the sun leave us, and the dragon wake from his sleep, let us take all these up and lay them at the mouth of the cave that was Gra’s cave. Thus it may be that this night shall not be as the last was, but we all asleep and safe. And if so it betide us, let us make to the dragon other such offerings to-morrow, and on all days that are to come.’

There was prompt and unanimous agreement that this plan should be tried. The spearmen went hunting. Presently they returned with a buck and a roe. By this time the other animals prescribed had been slain in due number. It remained that the feast should be borne noiselessly up the hill and spread before the slumbering dragon. The homelanders surprised one another, surprised even themselves, by their zeal for a share of this task. Why should any one of them be wanting to do work that others could do? and willing to take a risk that others would take? Really they did not know. It was a strange foible. But there it was. A child can carry the largest of ducks; but as many as four men were lending a hand in porterage of a duck to-day. Not one of the porters enjoyed this work. But somehow they all wanted to do it, and did it with energy and good humour.

Very soon, up yonder on the flat shelf of ground in front of the cave’s mouth, lay temptingly ranged in a semicircular pattern two goats, three ducks, two deer, three geese and two sheep. All had been done that was to be done. The homelanders suddenly began to feel the effects of their sleepless night. They would have denied that they were sleepy, but they felt a desire to lie down and think. The valley soon had a coverlet of sleeping figures, prone and supine. But, as you know, the mind has a way of waking us when it should; and the homelanders were all wide awake when the shadows began to lengthen.