You’ve all heard the stories – how George killed the dragon, or at the very least tamed it, and the Princess was able to lead it to the palace on a ribbon, or something: Well, what rubbish! Never believe anything you read in the chronicles, my old Mam used to say, and quite right she was. She also brought me up to be polite, and never eat maidens - or any other human beings, come to think of it. Anyway, the time has come to put the record straight.
To begin at the beginning (as another Welsh writer puts it), there were dragons all over the world in those days. Marvellous it was, to see us young ones flying in formation over hill and dale, lake and sea. Of course, there were always nations that were more welcoming than others – usually the older, wiser ones, especially the Chinese and Welsh. I often visited my fellows in China, but my home was Wales. Kind to us, the people there were – bred huge herds of sheep for us to eat.
We never ate people: that’s a wicked lie spread about by those people who were scared of us – the English for example. I won’t say we didn’t do a bit of border raiding from time to time, and take the odd English cow. I’ll even admit to scaring a few Anglo-Saxons by belching fire in their general direction, but we never killed anyone, let alone ate them. Mam would have gone spare, and a Welsh Mam, especially a dragon, on the warpath, is something you do not want to see!
Well, to the incident in question: what it was, was that we had an English Princess staying at the court of our local Prince (no kings in Wales). Some sort of hostage – she’d been swapped for one of our Prince’s daughters until the details of the Peace Treaty were sorted. A lovely girl she was too, and good to look at. I mean all our Welsh girls – and the Chinese ones, come to think of it – are little and dark. The English one was tall and fair, as well as pretty, so she was a real novelty. She was friendly too, and was soon as close as close with the Welsh princesses and their friends. (Nothing snooty about us Welsh – all the girls in the district ran round together)
One day, at the beginning of May they were all playing round my cave, making May garlands and playing silly games, whilst I snoozed in the afternoon sun, half in and half out of my cave, full to the brim after a good lunch of Welsh Mutton. The girls were acting as if they were six or seven, not sixteen and seventeen, as most of them were: the spring sunshine had gone to their heads. “Let’s play hide-and- seek!” said one and soon they’d all scattered, some even hiding in the folds of my wings.
Well, they’d been playing for about half-an-hour, when up rode George. Let me tell you about him. Our English Princess had told us that when all this Peace Treaty was sorted out, and she went home, she was to marry a Syrian Prince “Very brave, and handsome and rich, and not so clever that I won’t be able to wind him round my little finger!” An arranged marriage, of course, but she was very happy about it, and very willing to love her George, whilst he
was bewitched by the lovely lass. George had arrived to take our Princess home, the Treaty having been sorted out. And he totally misread the situation.
The point is, that dragons aren’t well known in the Middle East. The Far East, yes, but the food supplies in the Middle East always presented a problem – not too many well-fleshed herds in those deserts! So when he was told that the girls were all up at the Dragon’s Den, he got it wrong. And being a brave, noble sort of chap, stuffed full of Chivalric ideas, (and not blessed with a great sense of humour), he rushed off to the rescue.
And what did he see? His Beloved, standing quite near a large red dragon, with her hands over her eyes, shaking slightly (Well, it was her turn to be on, and she was trying to count, whilst still laughing at a remark one of our girls had made). No other girls to be seen, and quite a few gnawed bones lying around (I’d been too sleepy to tidy up after lunch). The next thing I know, I feel something between a prod and a tickle, and as I open my eyes, I see George, poking at me with his little sword. I’m not best pleased and I give a little warning puff of flame over his head. But his Princess shouts to me in Welsh (which she’d learnt, but George of course didn’t understand), telling me to humour him, and to “play dead”.
So I rolled onto my back with my legs in the air, and the Princess came rushing up, and told George how brave he was - that was true, of course, if I’d been as fierce as he’d thought! Then all the others rushed up, eager to get their eyes on George, and he thought he’d rescued them as well: that they’d been hiding from me, or imprisoned by me or something. So they took the garlands they’d made earlier, and draped them all over George and me, as well as round their own necks, and we went back to the town for a feast.
When the Princess and George set off home, I went with them to the border, but I didn’t go further, as I wasn’t sure of my welcome – or if I’d be able to keep my claws off their cattle!
So that’s how the two versions of the story got going – firstly that George had tamed me, and the princess had led me home on some sort of lead, and secondly, because they no longer had me with them, that I’d been killed in the fight.
There’s stupid, as my Mam would say. But that’s the way all sorts of legends get going – take them all with a pinch of salt, I say. There’s often some truth in it, but searching for it can be like looking for as needle in a haystack. When you come across something that seems a bit farfetched remember George, and me, the Dragon.
