ST GEORGE and the DRAGON
Presentation by Laura, expanded from a talk recently given online by Dr Sam Newton
23 April 2022 (!)
St George and the Dragon (painting by Paulo Uccello)
Sam referred to the Middle English poem from the South English Legendary (c 1400s) which relates the tale of St George and the Dragon. This describes George as converting to Christianity as a holy knight. He rode into Libya to the city of Silena where there was an ugly dragon which had to be fed every day. This had started first with sheep. When the sheep ran out, children were given to the dragon, chosen by lots. Eventually, it was the turn of the King’s daughter. (There is a Villa Silene near Leptis Magna in Libya!)
Luckily, St George rode by when the princess was waiting for the dragon. She tried to persuade him to leave. He called upon the strength of Christ to help him overcome the dragon. He wounded the dragon. This was watched by the townspeople on the battlements. St George told the Princess to wrap her girdle around the dragon’s neck and it meekly followed her into the city.
An assortment of Dragons
(Collective noun? – Google – blaze, doom, wing. Lynn said she had come across the noun: a darkness of dragons, also the title of a book by S A Patrick. Anne McCaffrey uses the word “Weyr” to describe a group of dragons ridden by human like beings to fight off the neighbouring planet’s threat of the caustic “Thread” which the dragons overcome by setting fire to it mid-air.)
The White Horse of Uffington was created in the late Iron Age and is believed to be a dragon, sited opposite Dragon Hill, rather than a horse. (Anyone can see it’s a cat.) There is a myth that it moves on the hill, possibly started because when the figure is recut to show off the chalk, it shifts slightly.
Other dragons include the apocalyptic dragon killed by St Michael and the world serpent killed by Thor.
Fafnir, in the Norse and Germanic myths, was a giant who became a dragon as he was overcome with the need to own the Rhine’s gold. He is killed by Sigurd, the method borrowed by Tolkien when Turin kills Glaurung ie an upper thrust from below. The story of Fafnir and Sigurd into the door surround of the Hylesford Stave Church in Norway.
More local dragons include the Nunnington Worm and the Lambton Worm.
Nunnington is on the North Yorkshire moors. A knight, Sir Peter Loschy, fought the dragon because the lady he wished to marry insisted he carried out a brave deed first. Every time he cut the dragon, the pieces joined up, so the knight told his dog to take the pieces to the church yard and bury them. Sadly the dog licked the knight’s face and the dragon’s blood poisoned them both.
The Lambton Worm is probably the most famous d. on legend in England. In the fourteenth century, the young John Lambton missed Sunday church and went fishing. He caught a small eel-like creature and threw it into a well. The worm grows, poisons the well and emerges to circle a local hill seven times. It kills livestock and children. The villagers try to placate it with milk. No knight or hero succeeds in killing it. John Lambton returns from the crusades and seeks advice about how to hill the worm. On the advice of a witch who tells him it was his fault anyway, he makes armour studded with spear heads. She also tells him that he must kill the first thing he sees after killing the worm. John arranges with his father that he will sound his hunting horn three times so that his favourite hound will come to him. Unfortunately his father comes out to greet him first, they still kill the dog but the family is cursed for nine generations. Lady Lucinda Lambton is still around!
There was a discussion on other mythical animals such as the unicorn and why the unicorn is one of the two heraldic supporters of Britain i.e. the lion is real but the unicorn is not. (The unicorn represents Scotland.) Lynn reminded us (how could we forget!) of the episode in the legend of Sir Bevois of Hampton in which he killed two lions (refusing help from Josian) which are depicted at the Bargate by two statues.
Tolkien’s dragons include Smaug; Ancalagon the Black killed by Earendel and whose fire was not hot enough to damage the Ring; Chrysophylax Dives in Farmer Giles of Ham; Glaurung as well as unnamed dragons such as the fire and cold drakes plus the mechanical dragons. Tolkien’s dragons are the only ones who are identified as having a colour – eg Smaug is red-gold.
In our Western European culture, dragons stand for greed and the love of money to hoard which is why they are often found in caves, barrows and wells where they can gloat over their wealth and where they should stay. Jay Johnstone uses the metaphor of greed in the shape of a dragon in his picture of Isildur in which he is holding the Ring and wearing a cloak with a dragon on it.
C S Lewis used an example of this in his Narnia novel “The Voyage of The Dawntreader”. Three children find themselves unexpectedly aboard the ship, the Dawntreader, in Narnia. One of the children is self-centred and unpleasant. When they land on an island, he decides to go off on his own to make the others sorry. He finds a cave with treasure and a dead dragon. He puts on a big gold bracelet and goes to sleep. When he wakes up, he has turned into a dragon and the bracelet is agony on his arm. Also in the book, The Silver Chair, the Lady of the Green Kirtle, who has enchanted the heir to the Narnian throne, reveals herself as a poisonous serpent.
St George told the 20,000 people to be baptised and then he would kill the dragon which is what happened. It took eight oxen to pull the body to a big field. This feels like Aragorn killing the Mouth of Sauron in the film – unnecessary and unchivalrous.
Sam showed several mediaeval paintings of St George most of which have common images: the mounted St George with his flag; various ugly dragons of differing numbers of legs; the maiden and battlements with people on them. I noticed that in many of the pictures, the princess is accompanied by a small white animal whose identity is not clear. In a 1515 woodcut, it looks like a cat sitting on her gown. There was a debate about it being a lamb, representing Christ protecting the princess and underlying her innocence.
There was also a debate about the meaning of the princess’ girdle and why it should have power over the dragon. Definitely not the 1960s garment! Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream says he’ll put a girdle around the earth in 40 minutes – presumably to demonstrate his power and magic. Melian, the Maia, protects Doriath and the elves that live there from the evil outside by surrounding it with her girdle.
Lynn reminded us that in Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight, Sir Bertilak’s lady gives him a protective green girdle but which he fails to mention to the lord of the castle, going against their agreement. Lynn also told us about the courtly love Lays of Marie de France, dedicated to Henry II of England, in which a knight is protected by a girdle.
I have noticed that the princess disappears over time and does not appear in simpler representations of St George. She is forgotten as St George’s role is to save England.
St George is included in the Oxford Dictionary of Saints with St Valentine. His story is possibly taken from the myth of Perseus and Andromeda although this involves a sea monster. St George was not regarded as a major saint during the Anglo-Saxon period; preference was for St Edmund and Edward the Confessor. The rise of St George as England’s patron saint started with Edward III at Windsor Castle and the Knights of the Garter in which he was trying to emulate King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Did the girdle in the story turn into the garter?
Oddly, there do not seem to be any female dragons in these stories (apart from the Lady of the Green Kirtle). The only dragon-like female I could think of is the Mesopotamian creator monster, Tiamat, who is sometimes portrayed as a giant snake. Lynn said about the Greek mythological cursed woman/serpent, Lamia, who Keats portrayed in his long poem of the same name.
Meteorological phenomena in the sky were often interpreted as dragons such as shooting stars and the Northern Lights. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 793 AD, Northumbrians saw sheets of light, whirlwinds and dragons in the sky; not long after this, the Vikings attacked Lindisfarne. Similarly, Halley’s Comet was seen in 1066 when the country was attacked by the descendants of Vikings.
Sam referred to Tolkien several times including the chilling last phrase of his lecture The Monsters and The Critics “until the Dragon comes”.
The first Dragon of English Literature – Beowulf.
Stories of heroes fighting dragons predate the story of St George. The earliest authentic description of a dragon is in Beowulf. The dragon is the third monster in the poem and Beowulf is an old man. The dragon moved into a barrow on what was now Beowulf’s land; the barrow contained a vast hoard of pagan treasure and he lived there for three hundred years. Just as with Smaug in The Hobbit, the dragon misses a single cup that has been stolen. This theft causes him to leave his barrow. He is a dragon that can fly and causes major destruction through his fire. The dragon and Beowulf fatally wound each other. Even if you are old and are a wonderful king, the dragon can still come.
In Tolkien’s translation there is a wonderful description of the dragon’s thought processes: Line 1956. “…he trusted in his barrow, in its wall and his own warlike might, and his trust cheated him.” Tolkien so often uses that final phrase to add sinister overtones eg “…and Sauron, they found him not.”
The first Dragon of English Art – the royal shield from Sutton Hoo.
The shield was made of limewood in the early 7th century, just like the one that Beowulf uses to fight the dragon. The diameter is a yard across and it would have weighed about 11 lbs. Practical but beautiful bosses hold the straps at the back. There are two figures on the front: one of a dragon and the other of a bird of prey. Both are highly detailed and owe much to the zoomorphic northern style of art. The decorations are covered in tinned and gilt bronze.
The dragon has huge teeth including molars. His eye and wing joints are highlighted with garnets. He has three pairs of wings and swept back tail fins and Sam identified dew claws. It possibly isn’t immediately obvious as a dragon to our eyes but the workmanship is beautiful and any enemy facing the two totemic animals must have been concerned at the least! The powerful animals would have been intended to give the user of the shield greater strength. Erich Von Daniken would probably have argued that the dragon is an alien Chinook of some sort!
There is of course a dragon across the top of the helmet, equally beautiful; a bird (eagle; raven?) flying upwards making the nose and moustache with two boars making the eyebrows. Again powerful animals to protect the wearer, give him strength and frighten the enemy. Ian mentioned the tactic of “psyops” – psychological warfare in order to manipulate the enemy.
Sam wished me well in Wessex (he’s still got his pen, The Only Way is Wessex!). I told him that the totemic animal of Wessex is a wyvern, the two-legged dragon which led to a discussion on the taxonomy of dragons – legs but no wings, like Glaurung; the wyverns; the one we most recognise with two wings and four legs etc. (A brief recall of the wonderful comedy sketch “The Class System” – “I look down on him….”)
The group discussed how or why Eastern dragons are different in character from those in Western culture ie they are wise and kind to humans; they are the guardians of Heaven and protectors of the Flaming Pearl which seems to represent different ideas such as wisdom and spirituality.
Lynn wondered if Western dragons only came into being after Christianity as they are the epitome of the opposite to Christianity; would dragons exist without Christianity? St George is an image of a Christian overcoming evil. This led on to consideration of dragons in other cultures. (See Tiamat above.)
Tim later considered the expression “sowing dragon’s teeth” meaning an act which leads to trouble or disputes. This comes from Greek mythology in which Cadmus kills a dragon and, on instructions from Athena, sowed its teeth causing soldiers to grow out of the ground and fight each other. This also happened in the legend of Jason and the Argonauts in which the King of Colchis challenged Jason.
Dragons are also portrayed in Mesopotamia most famously on the Ishtar Gate although we might not recognise them as dragons – they seem to be made of different animals with the back legs of an eagle, the front legs of a lion and a horned snake’s head. It would be interesting to know what the original word was (Mush-khush-shu!) and how it would be translated.
The group also touched on why dragons appear in most cultures. Ian felt it was due to the discovery in ancient times of dinosaur bones. Also race memory may play a part as most humans are hard wired to be wary of serpents. Lynn said that, in early paintings, Lucifer in the Garden of Eden, was often portrayed as a serpent with a woman’s head.
Southfarthing Mathom 2012 