IOF DRAGONS IN GENERAL
In Glastonbury, where St. Dunstan took the devil by the nose and where the Pilgrim’s Inn is dedicated to St. George and the Dragon, the dragon will always be an object of peculiar interest, not to say veneration. (So true is this that on the 16th October, 1906, the Somerset County Council, on the advice of its Chairman, adopted as its sole device “Gules, a dragon rampant, or,” though the recognition of its increasing importance has since led it to add—15th October, 1912—the mace of office, “at a cost not exceeding £20.”)
For Milton writes in one of his most harmonious numbers:
The old Dragon under groundIn straiter limits boundNot half so far casts his usurpéd sway.And wroth to see his kingdom failSwings the scaly horrour of his folded tail.
The old Dragon under groundIn straiter limits boundNot half so far casts his usurpéd sway.And wroth to see his kingdom failSwings the scaly horrour of his folded tail.
The old Dragon under groundIn straiter limits boundNot half so far casts his usurpéd sway.And wroth to see his kingdom failSwings the scaly horrour of his folded tail.
The old Dragon under ground
In straiter limits bound
Not half so far casts his usurpéd sway.
And wroth to see his kingdom fail
Swings the scaly horrour of his folded tail.
and St. John (Revelation, xx, 2) speaks of “the Dragon, the old Serpent, which is the Devil and Satan,” while the Serpent that tempted Eve in Paradise has been familiar to us all since our earliest childhood; though commentators differ as to whether it appeared with a virgin’s head (as some say) and how it was enabled to speak, and in Eve’s own language; and why the event excited no surprise in her. (Milton tells us—Paradise Lost, ix, 550, and what follows—that it did, and that “not unamazed” she took up the matter with the Serpent, which explained that it had been elevated above all the “other beasts that graze” by tasting of the tree of knowledge. This answer at once satisfied Eve and lured her on to her fall. The whole account is circumstantial but undocumented.) Some say that Eve was inexperienced with animals, not having been presentwhen Adam named them; Eugubinus suggests that the Serpent was a basilisk, at that time harmless; and the Emperor Julian said roundly that the whole story was a fable. However that may be, the dragon has been identified with nearly all the gods and devils of nearly all the religions of nearly all mankind—primitive man does not distinguish between the two, both being primarily non-moral beings of enormous and terrifying power—and Christian evidence is undivided in associating the dragon with the powers of darkness. And what could be more natural than that a dragon should take up its abode in or near Glastonbury, this region of hills and swamps? For it is universally admitted that dragons are to be found on the tops of mountains or in the depths of marshes, and it is a generally accepted test of evidence that what has been believed by all men everywhere inevery age is true—absurd, perhaps, but not more absurd than the modern opinion that what one man has once believed is true.
We need not pause long over those other meanings of “Dragon” which so confused our forefathers and so delight our contemporary compilers of dictionaries: we do not propose to study that Dragon (Draco) who gave stringent laws to the ancient Athenians, nor the variety of carrier-pigeon known to natural history under that name, nor the star called Dragon, nor quicksilver, nor (directly) the sea-serpent, nor the flying lizard; nor have we any concern with the dragoons, who take their name either from the dragon wrought upon their guns or from the fact that they were originally mounted infantry, and so a kind of fabulous monster or “popular mystery.” Our subject is the common (or garden) dragon, one of themajor vertebrates, blood-red or chameleon-hued, with huge snake-coils, web-feet, bat-wings, and the head of a lion or an eagle, capable of snuffing up the wind (Jeremiah, xiv, 6) and holding companionship with owls (Job, xxx, 29) though some say that the bird intended is the ostrich. It dwelt of old in mountain-caves, and lakes and marshes, and other inaccessible places (the fiercer sort favoured the mountains), and survives to-day only in heraldry, for instance, in the arms of the City of London, and of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. More peculiar and detailed descriptions of the animal will follow later, but it is well to note here its special partiality for water and for swallows (whence swallows flying low are to this day popularly supposed to herald rain), and its habit of guarding treasures—gold, pearls, and precious stones—and of emitting thunder andlightning. Eating its heart confers peculiar qualities, notably fertility and the gift of tongues, and the draconite or precious stone which lies embedded in its forehead has incredible properties in the way of medicine and magic, but only if you catch the animal alive and remove the stone without otherwise injuring it. (The recorded instances of this feat are remarkably rare, most authentic draconites having fortunately fallen from the head of the beast while in flight, very much as a meteorite might fall to-day.)
Without further theorizing or inquiry, we will pass on to the old Greek legend of Perseus, pausing only for the pleasant task of exploding one particularly absurd opinion about the origin of the dragon. Sceptics have suggested that it is nothing but primitive man’s hazy and terrified tradition of the antediluvian monsters which walked theearly earth and which adorn the first pages of Mr. Wells’Outline of History; but science now tells us that something like seven million years elapsed between the passing of the last of these and the first appearance of the first of our fairly human forebears.