CH 6 (6/8) - British Dragon Legends

Part six of the sixth chapter of historian Frederick William Hackwood's study of dragonlore.

FULL ILLUSTRATED TEXT
http://www.justgenealogy.plus.com/fwhdd06.htm

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."

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Dragon's
• Den
• Wharncliffe
• Wantley
• Wortley
• More
• Chivalry
• Elizabethan
• British
• Dragons
• Ballad
• Poem
• Rhyme
• Literature
• Hercules

[scoobywortley]

Curious how history and fables mix together, thank you.

Regards,

Richard Wortley.