Dragon slayer

“ The devices might thus multiply. Some process of this kind would account for the entirely good reputation of the dragon in China and Japan, where it is the emblem of all national grandeur. It would also appear to underlie the proud titles of the Pythian Apollo and Bellerophon, gained from the monsters they were said to have slain. The city of Worms takes its name from the serpent instead of its slayer.3 Pendragon, in the past—and even our dragoon of the present—are names in which the horrors of the monster become transformed in the hero’s fame. The dragon, says Mr. ”

“ Suddenly rose before him the shadowy outline of a strange and monstrous shape, so dim in itself, and so faintly seen amid the gloomy twilight of the overarching trees, that he could hardly tell if it were a mighty serpent, or a long line of armed men marching in single file, till, all at once, a flash of fire sprang from what seemed to be the monster’s head, revealing in all its hideousness the form of a huge dragon, with the iron claws, vast shadowy wings, and flaming breath assigned to it by popular tradition. ”

“ The weapon stuck in the dragon's flesh, until he contrived to tear it out with his claws, whereupon black blood streamed forth from his wound, and flames of fire from his nostrils. In his rage, he flung his great tail about: it twisted round the horse's legs, and the steed in its effort to get free, only became the more entangled, and at length was forced to throw the knight. Quickly he arose, and laying hold of his powerful sword, struck the dragon a stroke that seemed as if it must prove fatal. ”

“ Will ye let escape this horde of Foreign Devil enemies who have hurled at us giant crackers that have spit death, now that they are near enough to feel how the Dragon's blood can strike? Here are the Dragon's claws!" He waved his bayoneted gun aloft. "Will ye die like men, or like slinking rats stamped into the earth? All who are not cowards—come!" ”

“ He wakes, sees the dragon arise out of the waves, apparently, to come ashore and go back to the cavern or mound wherein the treasure lay. His scales are too hard to pierce; he is terribly strong, lashing trees down with his tail, and wearing a deep path through the wood and over the stones with his huge and perpetual bulk; but the hero, covered with hide-wrapped shield against the poison, gets down into the hollow path, and pierces the monster from below, afterward rifling its underground store and carrying off its treasure. ”

“ While the dragon was coming down from the hills, to make his evening meal of a pretty girl, or to swish her off to his cave, he was careful to sniff the air on every side, lest some brave men in hiding should rush out at him, and put his eye out with an arrow, or push a spear down his throat, or throw fire or poison into his mouth. The dragon could easily swallow up a man, but he feared missiles shot or slung at him, whether arrows, sling stones or catapult balls. ”

“ Suddenly the men heard a frightful hissing, and as they looked around they saw the dragon’s bluish head emerging from the cavern. They dropped their buckets. Their faces grew deadly pale and their limbs trembled. In the meantime the dragon coiled its scaly body and arched itself over the men so that they could not fly. Not one of them escaped. The monster tore some with its teeth, killed some by strangling them in its coils, and the rest were killed by the poisonous breath from its throat. ”

“ When the dragon has been killed, he thinks, the hero will be hot and tired, and then he will offer him something to drink. It will be poison, the hero will die, and then he, the poor dwarf, who has worked and waited all these years for this day, will have all the treasure, with the magic helmet and the ring. So he sets himself to brewing the poison by the very same fire that the young man is using to forge his sword. ”

“ The dreadful beast must be exterminated, the country-side must be freed from this pest, this terror, this destroying scourge. The fact that not even a hen roost was the worse for the dragon's arrival wasn't allowed to have anything to do with it. He was a dragon, and he couldn't deny it, and if he didn't choose to behave as such that was his own lookout. But in spite of much valiant talk no hero was found willing to take sword and spear and free the suffering village and win deathless fame ”

“ You must die, even had you seven souls!" roared the dragon, but instead of an answer the prince threw his mace at him, with such force that it smashed one of his heads on the spot, thereupon he attacked him with his sword, and also set his dogs at him, and while he cut the dragon's heads off one by one, his servants bit him to pieces, and thus killed the dragon, whose blood formed a brook seven miles long. After this he drew a tooth out of each head of the dragon and put them into his sabretache, and, as he was very tired, he lay down amongst the bulrushes and went fast asleep with his dogs. ”

“ The dragon, defending his own ground as confidently and angrily as if the empire of evil were really a rightful one wherever sanctioned by antiquity of possession, dashes his ponderous jaws at the reckless agitator, opened wide enough to swallow him, with all his weapons and armor at a gulp; but he manages to elude the clumsy wrath, and, nothing daunted and nothing doubting, deals his blows with energy in the ratio of the rage they rouse. Curiously, but conformably enough, at every stroke another ring of the monster’s tail unrolls. ”

“ It is always difficult to kill Dragons. They are by nature thick-skinned and tough, as doubtless every one has heard. Besides, you must not forget that this was a Purple Dragon, and all scientists who have studied deeply the character of Dragons say those of a purple color at the most disagreeable to fight with. So all the King's cutting and slashing had no effect upon the monster other than to make him angry. Forgetful of the respect due to a crowned King, the wicked Dragon presently opening wide its jaws and bit his Majesty's head clean off his body. ”

“ The sandy, burning, treeless, waterless tongue of land, with its scanty footholds for the English and its sheltered pits for the enemy that from over their heads in the heights poured fire and death on them, to him seemed like some hideous dragon—a dragon fifty-seven miles long, carrying on back and in belly every weapon of destruction known to man and nature. ”

“ Since the middle of the seventeenth century, when by the reformation in Europe and the British Isles, the dragon was cast down from the symbolic heaven, he has been assailing in "great wrath" all ranks and degrees of men, not, as before, with fire and sword, with scaffolds, gibbets, thumb-screws,—torturing and destroying their mortal bodies, that he might reach their immortal souls: but by bringing them together in voluntary associations on principles of the covenant of works, subversive of the covenant of grace, and consequently aiming at the drowning of the mystic woman. ”

“ Each knew the hate and deadly power of the other.
The mighty Prince, firm and watchful, stood guarded by his shield. The dragon, crouching as in ambush, awaited him.
Then suddenly like a flaming arch the dragon bent and towered, and dashed upon the Lord of the Goths. Up swung the arm of the hero, and dealt a mighty blow to the grisly, many-colored beast. But the famous sword was all too weak against such a foe. The edge turned and bit less strongly than its great king had need, for he was sore pressed. His shield, too, proved no strong shelter from the wrathful dragon. ”

“ Some fell monster, roaming through the heavens, seeking whom he may devour,—some dragon, "monstrous, horrible, and waste," whom no Redcrosse Knight shall pierce with his trenchand blade, is swallowing with giant gulps the writhing victim. ”

“ But the dragon is so big and fierce and fiery and poisonous, that nobody could ever hope to kill him except the very greatest of heroes, and one who simply did not know what fear meant. Even such a hero might have a good deal of trouble about it, if he did not have a sword that was just as keen and strong, just as sharp and firm and true as himself. So, that he may not want for such a good blade, the Father of the Gods has made a magic sword. No one but a god could make a sword like this, and he has driven it up to the hilt into the great tree in the robber's house. ”

“ It cost the stranger no more effort to achieve this feat of a giant's strength than for one of the young maidens to touch her sister's rosy cheek with a flower.
"Do you not believe," said he, looking at the damsels with a smile, "that such a blow would have crushed one of the dragon's hundred heads?"
Then he sat down on the grass, and told them the story of his life, or as much of it as he could remember, from the day when he was first cradled in a warrior's brazen shield. While he lay there, two immense serpents came gliding over the floor, and opened their hideous jaws to devour him ”

“ The young hero seizes the hilt of the sword to draw it from the dragon's body, and as he pulls it out the blood from the wound spurts upon his hand. It burns as if it were the fuel of the creature's fiery breath. As he feels its heat he puts his fingers into his mouth, and the instant that he tastes the blood the most wonderful thing of all happens to him. ”

“ The young women looked at his massive club, and at the shaggy lion's skin which he wore, and likewise at his heroic limbs and figure; and they whispered to each other that the stranger appeared to be one who might reasonably expect to perform deeds far beyond the might of other men. But, then, the dragon with a hundred heads! What mortal, even if he possessed a hundred lives, could hope to escape the fangs of such a monster? ”

“ When he had finished he let go, and the tailor was flung onto a heap of dry grass piled up in the meadow. So the tailor said: “If it hadn’t been for my skill in flying, I should have broken my neck,” and he promised to teach the giant how to fly.
So they went on their way again, and they came to a town. The town was all in mourning. They asked the reason, and they were told that a dragon had taken up his headquarters in the church and was killing the people. The king would give a thousand pounds to whoever could kill the dragon. So they told the king that they would kill the dragon. ”

“ Then said the Knight to Una: “The hour is come; stand aside on yonder hill where you may watch the battle and be safe yourself.”
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Meanwhile the dragon came on, half flying and half on foot, such haste did he make. Never was seen upon the earth so terrible a beast. He looked like to a mountain as he came, so much of the earth did he cover, so high did he rear himself in air, so broad a shadow did he cast. He was covered all over with scales as of brass or iron, fitting so close together that neither edge of sword nor point of spear could pierce them. ”

“ Exploring its recesses, he observed a stone in which a richly ornamented sword was firmly embedded, but as he attempted to grasp this the air was rent by the bellowings of a frightful dragon, which descended upon him with such velocity that ere he could prepare himself for its onset it had coiled its enormous folds round his body in an effort to break through the plates of his armour and crush him to death. ”

“ Man and monster wrestled to and fro in a death-grapple, and so terrific were their exertions that the earth shook and the castle rocked beneath them as they swayed and writhed in a deadly embrace. At length Esplandian succeeded in freeing his right hand from the dragon’s encircling folds, and, drawing a magic sword which Urganda had bestowed upon him, passed it through the monster’s scaly hide. Mortally wounded, the dragon relaxed its grip, and its huge body became rigid in death. ”

“ At the close of the second day, the monster's tail whisks Georgos into a pool, whose waters fortunately prove so healing that this bath washes away every trace of weakness and restores him to health and strength. On the third day's encounter, the Red Cross Knight manages to run his sword into the dragon's mouth, and thus inflicts a deadly wound. Seeing her foe writhing at last in the agonies of death, Una joyfully emerges from her hiding-place, while the watchman on the castle tower loudly proclaims that they are free at last! ”

“ But with the third day came a speedy end to that fierce encounter. The dragon, full of rage to be so baulked of his prey, ran at the Knight with mouth wide open as if to swallow him alive. And he was not slow to seize the occasion, for his foe had laid bare before him its most vital part. Right into the monster’s mouth he drove his sword with all the strength that was in him. Nor had he need to strike again, for the monster fell as falls some cliff which the waves of the sea for many years have worn away. High and strong it seems to stand, but it falls far and wide in sudden ruin. ”

“ Later, when he marries a merchant’s daughter, whose first two husbands have been killed by a dragon on the wedding night, he is saved by the ghost of the dead, which keeps watch in the chamber with a sword and kills the nine-headed dragon. ”

“ The wise-men all before the king 25
This answer fram'd incontinent;
The dragon none to death might bring
By any means they could invent:
His skin more hard than brass was found,
That sword nor spear could pierce nor wound. 30
When this the people understood,
They cryed out most piteouslye,
The dragon's breath infects their blood,
That every day in heaps they dye:
Among them such a plague it bred, 35
The living scarce could bury the dead. ”