CHAPTER IX.

THE COMBAT.

The pre-Munchausenite world--The Colonial Dragon--Io's journey
--Medusa--British Dragons--The Communal Dragon--Savage Saviours
--A Mimac helper--The Brutal Dragon--Woman protected--The Saint
of the Mikados.


The realm of the Unknown has now, by exploration of our planet
and by science, been pretty well pressed into annexation with the
Unknowable. In early periods, however, unexplored lands and seas
existed only in the human imagination, and men appear to have included
them within the laws of analogy as slowly as their descendants so
included the planets. The monstrous forms with which superstition
now peoples regions of space that cannot be visited could then dwell
securely in parts of the world where their existence or non-existence
could not be verified. Science had not yet shown the simplicity and
unity underlying the superficial varieties of nature; and though
Rudolf Raspe appeared many times, and related the adventures of
his Baron Munchausen in many languages, it was only a hundred years
ago that he managed to raise a laugh over them. It has taken nearly
another hundred to reveal the humour of Munchausenisms that relate
to invisible and future worlds.

The Dragon which now haunts the imagination of a few compulsory
voyagers beyond the grave originated in speculations concerning the
unseen shores of equally mythical realms, whose burning zones and
frozen seas had not yet been detached from this planet to make the
Inferno of another. In our section on Demonology we have considered
many of these imaginary forms in detail, limiting ourselves generally
to the more realistic embodiments of special obstacles. Just above that
formation comes the stratum in which we find the separate features
of the previous demonic fauna combining to forms which indicate the
new creative power which, as we have seen, makes nature over again
in its own image.

Beginning thus on the physical plane, with a view of passing to the
social, political, and metaphysical arenas where man has successively
met his Dragons, we may first consider the combination of terrors
and perils, real and imaginary, which were confronted by the early
colonist. I will venture to call this the Colonial Dragon.

This form may be represented by any of those forms against which
the Prometheus of Æschylus cautions Io on her way to the realm which
should be called Ionia. 'When thou shalt have crossed the stream that
bounds the continents to the rosy realms of the morning where the sun
sets forth, ... thou shalt reach beyond the roaring sea Cisthene's
Gorgonian plains, where dwell the Phorkides, ... and hard by are
their three winged sisters, the Snake-haired Gorgons, by mortals
abhorred, on whom none of human race can look and live.... Be on
thy guard against the Gryphons, sharp-fanged hounds of Jove that
never bark, and against the cavalry host of one-eyed Arimaspians,
dwelling on the gold-gushing fount, the stream of Pluto. Thou wilt
reach a distant land, a dark tribe, near to the fount of the sun,
where runs the river Æthiops.' [244]

One who has looked upon Leonardo da Vinci's Medusa at Florence--one of
the finest interpretations of a mythologic subject ever painted--may
comprehend what to the early explorer and colonist were the
fascinations of those rumoured regions where nature was fair but
girt round with terrors. The Gorgon's head alone is given, with
its fearful tangle of serpent tresses; her face, even in its pain,
possesses the beauty that may veil a fatal power; from her mouth is
exhaled a vapour which in its outline has brought into life vampyre,
newt, toad, and loathsome nondescript creatures. Here is the malaria
of undrained coasts, the vermin of noxious nature. The source of
these must be destroyed before man can found his city; it is the
fiery poisonous breath of the Colonial Dragon.

Most of the Dragon-myths of Great Britain appear to have been
importations of the Colonial monsters. Perhaps the most famous
of these in all Europe was the Chimæra, which came westward upon
coins, Bellerophon having become a national hero at Corinth--almost
superseding the god of war himself--and his effigy spread with
many migrations. Our conventional figure of St. George is still
Bellerophon, though the Dragon has been substituted for Chimæra,--a
change which christian tradition and national respect for the lion
rendered necessary (Fig. 31). Corresponding to this change in outward
representation, the monster-myths of Great Britain have been gradually
pressed into service as moral and religious lessons. The Lambton Worm
illustrates the duty of attending mass and sanctity of the sabbath;
the demon serpents of Ireland and Cornwall prove the potency of
holy exorcism; and this process of moralisation has extended, in the
case of the Boar, whose head graces the Christmas table at Queen's
College, Oxford, to an illustration of the value of Aristotelian
philosophy. It was with a volume of Aristotle that the monster was
slain, the mythologic affinities of the legend being quaintly preserved
in the item that it was thrust down the boar's throat.

But these modifications are very transparent, the British legends
being mainly variants of one or two original myths which appear to have
grown out of the heraldic devices imported by ancient families. These
probably acquired realistic statement through the prowess and energy
of chieftains, and were exaggerated by their descendants, perhaps also
connected with some benefit to the community, in order to strengthen
the family tenure of its estates. For this kind of duty the Colonial
Dragon was the one usually imported by the family romancer or poet. The
multiplication of these fables is, indeed, sufficiently curious. It
looks as if there were some primitive agrarian sentiment which had
to be encountered by aid of appeals to exceptional warrant. The
family which could trace its title to an estate to an ancestor who
rescued the whole district, was careful to preserve some memorial
of the feat. On account of the interests concerned in old times we
should be guarded in receiving the rationalised interpretations of
such myths, which have become traditional in some localities. The
barbaric achievements of knights did not lose in the ballads of
minstrels any marvellous splendours, but gained many; and most of
these came from the south and east. The Dragon which Guy of Warwick
slew still retained traces of Chimæra; it had 'paws as a lion.' Sir
William Dugdale thought that this was a romanticised version of a real
combat which Guy fought with a Danish chief, A.C. 926. Similarly the
Dragon of Wantley has been reduced to a fraudulent barrister.

The most characteristic of this class of legends is that of
Sockburn. Soon after the Norman conquest the Conyers family
received that manor by episcopal grant, the tradition being that
it was because Sir John Conyers, Knight, slew a huge Worm which had
devoured many people. The falchion with which this feat was achieved
is still preserved, and I believe it is still the custom, when a
new bishop visits that diocese, for the lord of Sockburn to present
this sword. The lord of the manor meets the bishop in the middle of
the river Tees, and says:--'My Lord Bishop, I here present you with
the falchion wherewith the Champion Conyers slew the Worm, Dragon,
or fiery flying Serpent, which destroyed man, woman, and child, in
memory of which the king then reigning gave him the manor of Sockburn
to hold by this tenure,--that upon the first entrance of every bishop
into the country this falchion should be presented.' The bishop
returns the sword and wishes the lord long enjoyment of the tenure,
which has been thus held since the year 1396. The family tradition
is that the Dragon was a Scotch intruder named Comyn, whom Conyers
compelled to kneel before the episcopal throne. The Conyers family
of Sockburn seem to have been at last overtaken by a Dragon which was
too much for them: the last knight was taken from a workhouse barely
in time not to die there.

In the 'Memoirs of the Somervilles' we read that one of that family
acquired a parish by slaying a 'hydeous monster in forme of a
worme.' [245]


The wode Laird of Laristone
Slew the Worme of Worme's Glen,
And wan all Linton parochine.


It was 'in lenth 3 Scots yards, and somewhat bigger than an ordinary
man's leg, with a hede more proportionable to its lenth than its
greatness; its forme and collour (like) to our common muir adders.'

This was a very moderate dragon compared with others, by slaying
which many knights won their spurs: this, for example, which Sir
Dygore killed in the fourteenth century--


----A Dragon great and grymme,
Full of fyre, and also of venymme:
With a wide throte and tuskes grete,
Uppon that knight fast gan he bete;
And as a Lionn then was his fete,
His tayle was long and ful unmete;
Between his hede and his tayle
Was xxii. fote withouten fayle;
His body was like a wine tonne,
He shone full bright ageynst the sunne;
His eyes were bright as any glasse,
His scales were hard as any brasse.


The familiar story of St. Patrick clearing the snakes out of Ireland,
and the Cornish version of it, in which the exorcist is St. Petrox,
presents some features which relate it to the colonist's combat
with his dragon, though it is more interesting in other aspects. The
Colonial Dragon includes the diseases, the wild beasts, the savages,
and all manner of obstructions which environ a new country. But
when these difficulties have been surmounted, the young settlement
has still its foes to contend with,--war-like invaders from without,
ambitious members within. We then find the Dragon taking on the form
of a public enemy, and his alleged slayer is representative of the
commune,--possibly in the end to transmit its more real devourer. Most
of the British Dragon-myths have expanded beyond the stage in which
they represent merely the struggles of immigrants with wild nature,
and include the further stage where they represent the formation of
the community. The growth of patriotism at length is measured by its
shadow. The Colonial is transformed to the Communal Dragon. Many
Dragon-myths are adaptations of the ancient symbolism to hostes
communes: such are the monsters described as desolating villages and
districts, until they are encountered by antagonists animated by public
spirit. Such antagonists are distinguishable from the heroes that go
forth to rescue the maiden in distress: their chief representative
in mythology is Herakles, most of whose labours reveal the man of
self-devotion redressing public wrongs, and raising the standard of
humanity as well as civilisation.

The age of chivalry has its legend in the Centaurs and Cheiron. The
Hippo-centaurs are mounted savages: Cheiron is the true knight,
withstanding monsters in his own shape, saving Peleus from them, and
giving hospitality to the Argonauts. The mounted man was dragon to the
man on foot until he became the chevalier; then the demonic character
passed to the strategist who had no horse. It is curious enough to
find existing among the Mormons a murderous order calling themselves
Danites, or Destroying Angels, after the text of Gen. xlix. 17,
'Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth
the horse's heel that his rider shall fall backward.' The Ritter,
however, so far as his Dragon was concerned, was as one winged, and
every horse a Pegasus when it bore him to decide the day between the
adder and its victim. It is remarkable that the Mormons should have
carried from the East a cruel superstition to find even among the Red
Men, who are disappearing before the western march of Saxon strength,
more gentle fables.

Among the Mimacs, the aborigines of Nova Scotia, there is a legend
of a young hero named Keekwajoo, who, in seeking for a wife, is
befriended by a good sage named Glooscap, who warns him against
a powerful magician disguised as a beaver, and two demon sisters,
who will waylay him in the disguise of large weasels. The youth is
admonished to beat a certain drum as his canoe passes them, and he
is saved as Orpheus in passing Cerberus and Ulysses in sailing past
the Syrens. The weasels, hearing the music, aspire to wed the stars,
but find themselves in an indescribable nest at the top of a tall
white pine. [246]

The chevalier encounters also the Brutal Dragon, whose victim is
Woman. From immemorial time man's captive, unable to hold her own
against brute force, she is at the mercy of all who are insensible to
the refined and passive powers. The rock-bound Andromeda, the pursued
Leto, or whatever fair maid it may be that the Dragon-slayer rescues,
may have begun mythologically as emblem of the Dawn, whose swallower is
the Night Cloud; but in the end she symbolises a brighter dawn,--that
of civility and magnanimity among men.

It is a notable fact that far away in Japan we should find a
Dragon-myth which would appear to represent, with rare beauty, the
social evolution we have been considering. Their great mythological
Serpent, Yamati-no-orochi, that is, the serpent of eight heads and
tails, stretching over eight valleys, would pretty certainly represent
a river annually overflowing its banks. One is reminded by this monster
of the accounts given by Mencius of the difficulties with streams
which the Chinese had to surmount before they could make the Middle
States habitable. But this Colonial Dragon, in the further evolution
of the country, reappears as the Brutal Dragon. The admirable legend
relates that, while the rest of the world were using stone implements,
there came into the possession of Sosano-o-no-Mikoto (the Prince
of Sosano) a piece of iron which was wrought into a sword. That
maiden-sword of the world was fleshed to save a maiden from the jaws
of a monster. The prince descended from heaven to a bank of the river
Hino Kawa, and the country around seemed uninhabited; but presently
he saw a chopped stick floating down the stream, and concluded that
there must be beings dwelling farther up; so he travelled until he
came to a spot where he beheld an aged man and his wife (Asinaduti
and Tenaduti), with their beautiful daughter, Himé of Inada. The three
were weeping bitterly, and the prince was informed that Himé was the
last of their daughters, seven of whom had been devoured by a terrible
serpent. This serpent had eight heads, and the condition on which it
had ceased to desolate the district was that one of these eight maidens
should be brought annually to this spot to satisfy his voracity. The
last had now been brought to complete the dreadful compact. The
Japanese are careful to distinguish this serpent from a dragon,
with them an agathodemon. It had no feet, and its heads branched by
as many necks from a single body, this body being so large that it
stretched over eight valleys. It was covered with trees and moss,
and its belly was red as blood. The prince doubted if even with his
sword he could encounter such a monster, so he resorted to stratagem;
he obtained eight vast bowls, filled them with eight different kinds
of wine, and, having built a fence with the same number of openings,
set a bowl in each. The result may be imagined: the eight heads in
passing over the bowls paused, drank deep, and were soon in a state
of beastly intoxication. In this condition the heads were severed
from their neck, and the maiden saved to wed the first Mikado Prince.