THE  dragon appeared prominently in some of the old London pageants. It was generally a huge paste-board contraption, gilded and painted to look as ferocious as possible ; hollow so that a man (or sometimes two men) could get inside to fill the legs for the walking action. Frequently the masked actor inside had other "practical" tricks to work, as spitting fire from the dragon's nostrils, or lashing its tail in fury, and other antics besides, some to appear "natural" to the beast, others for humorous effect and intended to make the crowds laugh.

In olden times Ascension Day was the Church festival most commonly associated with dragon legends. At the Rogation days immediately preceding it was customary for the clergy, accompanied by the church officers and people, to perambulate the parish boundaries, and at certain prescribed spots to offer prayers for the fruitfulness of the fields and a plenteous yield at the following harvest ; and also to beseech protection from the malevolent spirit of all evil. Emblematical of this infernal spirit the image of the dragon was carried in the procession ; on the third and last day of the processioning this effigy was beaten and kicked, buffeted and stoned, and treated in every way with the utmost insult and ignominy.

In some English parishes are places bearing such names as Dragon's Well or Dragon Rock, which indicate the spots where the processions made some of their prescribed stops.

London, of course, had its municipal dragon. Thus is an old chronicle describing the Lord Mayor of London's procession from Greenwich to Westminster, escorting Anne Boleyn to her coronation, we read : "Fifty barges were filled by the various city companies, and followed the Lord Mayor's barge, marshalled by three light wherries with officers. Before the mayor's barge came another barge full of ordnance, and containing a huge dragon (intended to stand for the rouge dragon in the Tudor arms) which vomited wild fire ; and round about it stood terrible monsters and savages also vomiting fire, discharging squibs, and making hideous noises."

In the city procession of 1672 the pageant was saluted over against Bow Church by two griffins, those being the supporters in the arms of the Grocer's Company, to which body the new Lord Mayor, Sir Robert Hanson, belonged.

Than "Snap" no more fitting name could be devised for a devouring dragon, and this was the name by which in former days the famous civic dragon of Norwich was known. Snap was a magnificent reptile, built of cardboard, all glittering in green and gold, who every year on the Tuesday before St. John the Baptist's Day (June 23) went in procession with the Mayor and Corporation, guarded by four whifflers (or maskers) and accompanied by gay banners and bands of music. He was a very witty and amusing dragon, and always delighted the crowd by his antics.

On the arrival of the procession at the cathedral, Snap was never allowed to enter the sacred edifice, but sat on a big stone outside, called the Dragon-stone ; where he waited till the service was over, when he resumed his place in the procession and returned with it to the Town Hall.

At Burford in Oxfordshire it was a much-honoured old custom to make up yearly the effigy of a huge dragon and to carry it up and down the town in great jollity on Midsummer Eve.

The origin of the practice was lost in the obscurity of the past, but is quite plausibly said to have been instituted to commemorate a signal victory gained at that place in the year 750 by Cuthred (or Cuthbert), a tributary king of the West Saxons, over Ethelbald the Proud, King of Mercia, whose insupportable exactions the former had been unable any longer to endure.

The victor captured, after a desperate struggle, the banner of Ethelbald, on which was depicted a golden dragon, and the form of commemoration is said to have been inspired by this device. In the old village morris dances, along with Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, the hobby-horse, and other familiar characters of mediaeval pageantry, a dragon was sometimes introduced as one of the rarer features ;

M O R R I S D A N C E R S

 the hobby-horse was then supposed to represent St. George. In a mummers' play at Steyning the dragon took a prominent part, for all fought him at once - a heterogeneous company of heroes and champions, including St. George, King Cole, King Alfred and his bride, Giant Blunderbore, Little Jack, and the Morris Fool. In Cornish versions there is nearly always a dragon to fight with St. George and the Dragon was introduced in the London May games.

At Helston in Cornwall is celebrated an annual May festival known as Furry Day, a custom so ancient that its real origin is unknown. One explanation is that it commemorates the joyous delivery of the town from the domination of an evil fiery dragon, and that "Furry Day" should really be "Fiery Day." Another theory of the origin of the custom regards it as a relic of the ancient Roman festival of Floralia, which was held in the early spring, and explains "Furry Day" as a corruption of "Flora Day."

There are other Celtic dragon legends. One tells of an enormous dragon with pestiferous breath which long lay hidden in Wales and destroyed two vast regions with its venom till holy St. Samson seized it by the throat and flung it into the sea. Another, stranger still, is of a terrible dragon which infested the dominions of King Lludd, and on each May-day Eve made every hearth in Britain resound with its piercing shrieks.

Lludd was a king of Britain who rebuilt the walls of London and encompassed the city with numberless towers, whereof "Lud-gate" was one. In its reign (so runs the legend) three dreadful plagues befell the land. One was the yearly occurrence of these terrifying shrieks which scared old and young alike and paralysed everyone with fear.

So the king conferred with his wise brother to discover a remedy for the various calamities which had overtaken the land. The May-day Eve plague was removed by capturing the dragon who was the cause of it, and burying the beast in the very strongest place which could be found in the island of Britain for the purpose - this was a certain kistvaen, or stone-chest, used as a burial-place for the mighty dead.

Remains of such kistvaens, or cromlechs as they are sometimes called, are found in many parts of the country, and show that they were made by forming a tomb of four immense rough uncut stones, with a fifth to serve for the top ; and then the whole was buried under an enormous mound of earth.

The north of England is peculiarly rich in dragon-lore. mostly in the form of heroic tales of knightly dragon slayers. Indeed it has been claimed that the episodes of the great Anglo-Saxon poem "Beowulf" all belong to the early history of the region ; that Heorot, the meadhall or banqueting house of Hrothgar, was at the Hartlepools.

In these tales of romance, of which dragon slaying forms the subject, the gods of ancient mythology, generally armed with thunderbolts, are replaced by valiant knights who slay the monsters with sword or with spear.

Such fables of man-eating dragons, are widely scattered over various parts of Yorkshire ; and often corroboration is sought to be given them by stone carvings bearing the image of a man, a serpent, and a sword ; though local tradition seems to have preserved little which distinguishes one legend from another, particularly in the matter of origins.

A famous dragon legend is that of Bamburgh, celebrated in a ballad called "The Laidly Worm of Spindlestone Heugh," which was composed by Duncan Fraser, a poet of the Cheviots in the days of Bruce. The word "heugh" is pronounced harf, and signifies low-lying wet land ; by the term "laidly worm" must be understood loathsome serpent.

This ancient ballad runs through some fifty verses in true Northumbrian jingle. It tells of a king who once lived at Bamburgh Castle, a widower with a beautiful daughter, and who after a time brought home for a second wife a queen comely of form but who in truth was a witch.

Becoming jealous of her stepdaughter's beauty she turned the girl into a serpent, which nothing could restore to human shape but the very problematical and exceedingly improbable reappearance of her brother, Childe Wynd, then long since gone to foreign parts. The worm in the meantime took up its abode at Spindlestone Heugh, where it consumed the milk of seven cows and poisoned all the land around with its breath.

"For seven miles east, and seven miles west,
And seven miles north and south,
No blade of grass or corn could grow,
So venomous was her mouth."

After a long course of time, however, it came to pass that Childe Wynd heard of the grievous happenings at home, and resolving to return, he called together his merry men, built himself a stout ship with tall masts, all of the rowan tree, for that timber was proof against witchcraft and magic. He sailed for home, and when the queen saw him coming she worked her spells against the ship in vain. Safely the Childe landed at Budle Bay, arriving when the laidly worm was gyrating in one of its threatening frenzies. The valiant Childe, however, drew his "berry-brown sword" and advanced without hesitation to the combat, when the monster thus addressed him -

"Oh, quit thy sword, and bend thy bow,
And give me kisses three -
For though I am a poisonous worm,
No harm I'll do to thee !"

So the Childe with magnificent confidence embraced the laidly worm, whereat it crawled into its lair, only to emerge immediately after as the long-lost and beautiful Margaret, his beloved sister. Joyfully the pair hied them to the castle, greatly to the consternation and discomfiture of the wicked queen whom the Childe bitterly reproached in words and then, by magic more potent than her own, transformed her into a noisome toad.

N O I S O M E T O A D

"Now on the sands near Ida's Tower
She crawls, a loathsome toad,
And venom spits at every maid
She meets along the road."

In the rugged country of Spindlestone Heugh, in Northumberland, standing on the edge of a cliff, is an isolated rock known as the Bridle Rock, so called because local tradition has it that this was the stone over which the Childe threw his bridle reins when he went out to meet the worm. Near by is a cave said to have been the lurking-place of the deadly creature ; and a few hundred yards away lies a hollow stone six feet long, two feet wide, and two feet deep, now used as a drinking-trough for cattle, but claimed as the legendary trough which held the milk of the seven kine, and from which the worm drank.

Just over the Cheviot border, in Roxburghshire, the Linton worm of the Somerville legend had his hole. Linton Tower was the fortalice of the Somerville family, the head of which in the reign of William the Lion was John of that ilk, the hero of the tale.

The noxious creature of this story has been quite minutely described by a Somerville family historian of the seventeenth century, who declares that it was "in length three Scots yards, and somewhat bigger than an ordinary man's leg, with a head more proportionable to its length than greatness ; and in form and colour like to our common muir-edders."

The moderation of this historian is really remarkable, when it is an essential part of the ancient legend that the Linton worm was in the habit of coiling itself round a neighbouring hill, and by its breath destroying all the animal and vegetable life it could from that post of vantage. Indeed, the local gossips still point out a series of indented spiral lines circling the sides of that hill, and solemnly aver that they were caused by the violent contractions of the worm in its dying agony. The knight is stated to have accomplished the death of the creature by the employment of burning pitch, which for some reason is always accounted to be particularly effective in such operations against the fearsome dragons of destructive propensities.

Whenever a new Bishop of Durham - who is one of our English prince-bishops - enters his diocese for the first time, a curious ceremony is performed by the lord of the manor of Sockburn, who holds his lands by the tenure of presenting to his lordship, as an emblem of his temporal power, an ancient falchion. The weapon is supposed to be the identical sword with which Sir John Conyers in olden times slew a "monstrous and poysonous vermine or wyverne which overthrew and devoured many people."

In making the presentation the tenant of Sockburn repeats the following address : 

"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 the reigning gave him the manor of Sockburn to hold by this tenure, that upon the very entrance of every bishop into the county this falchion should be presented."

Sir John Conyers died in 1395, and the effigy of him on his tomb has one foot on a figure of the wyverne or "werme," and the other against the flank of his faithful hound, whose teeth are clenched in the monster's throat. It is not impossible that the legend was invented from the sculptor's design, which was meant to have a religious significance - a good man's triumph over spiritual evil.

Between Slingsby and Hovingham in Yorkshire dwelt a monstrous worm a mile long, which occupied a cave by the roadside, from which it issued at certain times to devour not only the corps of the peasantry, but their children and themselves.

So intolerable did the pest become that at length Marmaduke Wyvill, the lord of Sligsby Hall, made a vow to heaven that he would destroy the loathsome beast. So after due preparation he sallied forth to the attack, and slew the worm. At the neighbouring church of Osgodby may be seen the sculpted effigy of the valiant champion and that of his faithful hound who helped him so bravely in the long and gory conflict.

At Grendale, near Loftus (or Lofthouse), in the North Riding, a block of stone was dug out of the ground not so many years ago, on which were found carved representations of a man's effigy with a formidable-looking sword ; and at once ingenious efforts were made to connect this rude sculpture with the legend of the valorous Sir John Conyers, who "slew a monstrous and poysonous vermine or wyverne, an aske or werme, which overthre and devoured many people in fight ; for that the scent of that poyson was so strong that no person might abyde it."

Again, at Kellington, in the West Riding, where the dragon-theme also crops up, the usual commemoration will be found in the shape of a stone with a carving of man, sword, and serpent. The slayer of the Kellington worm was one Ormroyd, while the hero of the Slingsby legend was a Wyvill, names in which we have, respectively, the syllables Orm (a form of "worm") and Wyv (and abbreviation of wyvern) - facts which give rise to the suspicion that in these two cases there is some connection between the origin of the legend and the family name of the traditional hero of it.

In Ord's History of Cleveland is an illustration showing a grave-cover from Hundale Priory with a dragon carved on it. A dragon-story connected with this priory has a youth named Scaw as the hero of it.

Again, in the Victoria History of Cumberland is an interesting illustration of a Saxon dragon carved on a lintel at St. Bees.

In Burton Agnes church (East Riding of Yorkshire) is the effigy of Sir Walter Griffiths, whose feet rest against a griffin (the canting badge of the family), but the griffin is minus its beak. The story is that the griffin used to ravage the country round, slaying and eating children and decimating the domestic herds, until Sir Walter succeeded in slaying the beast by cutting off its beak.

In East Harsley curch (North Riding) is the cross-legged effigy of an unknown knight, to whom local legend ascribes a wonderful victory over a worm that lived in a hole under Arncliffe. In the same locality is current the story of an arn (eagle) of the Cliffe which also fought with another worm that had its lurking-place in a hole at the foot of the hill. The combat was so severe that both fighters were compelled to retire to their respective lairs, where they died of their wounds.

The origin of such stories is always doubtful ; to distinguish between ancient dragon-legends and the inventions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is sometimes difficult.

As the Stockburn worm is associated with the Tees, the Lambton worm has the tale of his ravenings located on the river Wear, on the banks of which he coiled himself round a hill, and was only pacified by copious draughts of milk that would have exhausted the richest dairy country that ever flowed with the produce of milch kine. The hero of this legend was a Lambton, a family in which is now vested the earldom of Durham. He was a knight and a Crusader, who being made acquainted with the devastations of the terrible dragon, consulted a witch as to the best way of attacking the monster, and was duly instructed by the sibyl.

A condition attached to the successful issue of the enterprise was that the knight should follow up his conquest of the dragon by slaying, as a kind of sacrifice, the first living thing he met on his return from the fight ; if he failed in this, the lords of Lambton for nine generations should not die in their beds.

So it was prearranged for a dog to meet the conquering Crusader on his return. But unfortunately the plan miscarried, and the first being to confront the successful warrior on his return from a terrific struggle with the monster, whose blood flowed so freely from the piercing of a crusading spear as to turn the river red, was his own father. As the knight refused to fulfil the condition imposed by the sibyl, it afterwards befell, as she had prophesied, that for nine succeeding generations the lords of Lambton died otherwise than in their beds at home.

A mile and a half down the river from Lambton Castle is Worm Hill, the reputed haunt of the creature. That the river ran red with blood on the occasion of the conflict is better accounted for by another version of the tale. This story says that the knight clad himself in a coat of armour made of sharp blades - good Yorkshire blades, perchance - so that when the worm coiled himself round his enemy he had used his enormous strength to cut himself into pieces.

The legend of the Lambton worm is given with an amplitude of detail by J. R. Boyle in his Guide to Durham. We are told, for instance, how the hero, when young, led a dissolute life. He would amuse himself by fishing on Sundays, and on one Sabbath day he caught a worm of most disgusting appearance, something like an eft with nine holes on each side of its head. He flung the repulsive creature into a neighbouring well, where it long remained unheeded, till at last it grew too large for its abiding-place, when it sought another home. So the worm moved, and for its day quarters coiled itself round a rock in the middle of the river, and at night slept on a neighbouring hill, twining itself round the base.

On this hill it long made its home, continuing to grow till it was able to wrap its length three times round. Also we are told of the raging fury of the worm whenever the daily supply of its milk fell short of the regulation quantity (the full produce of nine cows), an outrage he resented by lashing his tail round the trees in the park and tearing them up by the roots. Truly the Lambton worm was one of the worms that "turned" !

At Wharncliffe, a forest on the banks of the Dow, in Yorkshire, and seven miles from the city of Sheffield, as the ancient domain of the Wortley family, and a place named in the popular ballad as the haunt of the fabled dragon of Wantley. A cleft in the rock there is still known as the Dragon's Den. "Wantley" was the local pronunciation of Wharncliffe.

The old tale relates that the monster who had this for his lurking-place was slain by More of More Hall, who procured a suit of armour studded with spikes, and proceeded to the well near its lair, kicked the dragon in the mouth, where alone it was vulnerable, and so vanquished it. Doing to death by kicking does not seem a very chivalric method of attack, and yet in the North Country the legend was once very popular.

The dragon's cave is situated amidst the crags of Wharncliffe Chase, once the hunting-grounds of the lordly Wortleys, and the legend originated in an ignorant attempt to localise a satire, the subject of which was a Wortley of Elizabethan times.

The ballad description of the famous beast runs in this wise :

"This dragon had two furious wings, 
Each one upon each shoulder ;
With a sting in his tail, as long as a flail,
Which made him bolder and bolder.
He had long claws, and in his jaws
Four and forty teeth of iron ;
With a hide as tough as any buff
Which did him round environ."

Various explanations have been put forward for the origin of the ballad legend : that the  dragon was nothing more than a wine-bibbing lord who was fast drinking his estates away ; that the devourer was a rapacious lawyer who was feloniously robbing the three orphan owners left in his charge ; that the fabulous monster was a ferocious wolf that infested the neighbouring woods till he was finally slain by the hero of More Hall. And others besides.

"Old stories tell how Hercules
A dragon slew at Lerno,
With seven heads and fourteen eyes,
To see and well discern-o ;
But he had a club, this dragon to drub,
Or he ne'er had done it, I warrant ye ;
But More of More Hall, with nothing at all,
He slew the dragon of Wantley."

In a Salopian legend we have a slight deviation from the usual run of dragon stories by the introduction of Eastern magic, but with reversion to old lines of thought in the dragon guardianship of treasure. The tale runs in this wise. In the year 1344, at Bromfield, near Ludlow, a certain Saracen physician came to Earl Warren to ask permission to kill a dragon which had made its den in Bromfield, and was committing great ravages on all the earl's lands around the Welsh border there. Consent being given, the worm was overcome by the potent spell of an Arab incantation.

Certain words, however, in that strange tongue led to the common belief, which soon spread abroad, that a vast treasure lay hidden in the dragon's den. So a body of men from the neighbouring county of Hereford armed themselves, and went by night to dig for the hidden hoard, led in their nefarious enterprise by a Lombard named Peter Picard.

Just as they had reached the treasure, the earl's men fell upon them, overcame them, and cast them into prison. Then the earl took possession of the treasure, which was very great. The unusual characters introduced suggest an allegory of even deeper significance than some of the other dragon stories.

A worm of prodigious size once upon a time made his lurking-place at Deerhurst, near Tewkesbury, poisoning the inhabitants and devouring their flocks and herds. At last the king proclaimed that anyone who destroyed the obnoxious beast should be rewarded with a fine estate, belonging to the Crown, which lay within that parish.

This brought forth a champion bearing the historic English name of John Smith, who announced his readiness to essay the task. By placing a quantity of milk near the creature's lair he lured him out ; then waiting till he had gorged himself with this very efficacious bait and lay down to sleep, the subtle-witted champion simply stepped forth and cut off his head with his curtal-axe. It is satisfactory to know that the resourceful John Smith was duly awarded the "fine estate."

In the year 1170 appeared at St. Ossythes, in Essex, a dragon of such "marvellous bigness" that it set fire to the houses by merely moving among them.

At Chipping Norton, in Oxfordshire, is said to have appeared in 1349 "a serpent with two heads, each with a face like a woman's, and having great wings after the manner of a bat."

In ancient days, when the greater part of Durham county was covered with forest, a savage beast desolated the region of Bishop Auckland, the ultimate conqueror of which was an heroic member of the Pollard family. Strict inquiry into the details of the legend connected therewith reveals the fact that the Pollard worm was a huge wild boar, or "brawn" - it has been suggested that the name of the neighbouring parish of Brancepeth merely signifies "the brawn's path" !

A Welsh local legend of no little ingenuity seems to have been inspired by an old-time etymological crank. It sets forth that in the far-away times of long-ago a horrible winged serpent haunted the precincts of the Castle of Caledfryn-yn-Rhos (now more familiarly known as Denbigh Castle), attacking man and beast till everyone was scared away and the town became desolate.

At last Sir John-of-the-Thumbs (so called because he had eight fingers and two thumbs on each hand), a member of the noble family of Salusbury, volunteered to

SIR JOHN SUCCEEDED AT LAST IN THRUSTING HIS SWORD DEEP UNDER THE DRAGON'S WING

attack the monstrous reptile.  In the desperate conflict which ensued, Sir John succeeded at last in thrusting his sword deep under the dragon's wing, upon which, with a horrible yell, it expired. Sir John cut off the monster's head and

bore it in triumph to the town, where the delighted townspeople hailed him with the cry, "Dim Bych !" ("No more dragon !") memorable words which, says the erudite chronicler, have now passed into the name of the place (Denbigh).

It will be observed that some of the features of these local dragon-legends are common to a number of them, showing that there has been some borrowing of detail where the power of original invention has been lacking. Where a new element has been introduced, such as an Oriental enchanter, there has been a reversion to the familiar old feature of the dragon guardianship of buried treasure.

The greater frequency of such legends in the North of England may probably be due to old Norse influences. The dragon-stories connected with Wales seem to have something of the ancient Celtic spirit breathing through them.