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THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DRAGONS

BY CLARENCE G. CHILD

Professor of the English Language

Somewhere about the house where there are books and children will be found the fairy tales of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. The book is the imperishable monument of two brothers, great scholars, knit together by the closest love and sympathy, who shared together in youth one bed, one worktable, a common stock of books, and found as men a common joy in scholarly research, in sunshine, flowers, poetry-so closely bound together that in that moving discourse which Jacob Grimm delivered in 1860, six months after his brother's death, three years before his own, he said, "I shall speak here of my brother, whom for a half-year my eyes have not seen, who yet still by night is ever with me." Great as their fame in other ways, it seems peculiarly fitting that they should find a common memorial of their close love and comradeship from youth in this book that children love.

Chance alone

One is certain to know the Household Tales. may lead one to another work, as fascinating, by the greater of the two brothers, as chance led me long ago. I saw the name Grimm on a library-shelf, and eagerly took down volume after volume. All were in an uncouth tongue I could not read, and in that Gothic letter from which Henry VIII, of blessed memory, by accident delivered us. Then I lit upon one in English, the Teutonic Mythology, whose translator bore the curious and intriguing name of Stallybrass. The volume I opened had page-headings: horse, ox, bear, wolf, cuckoo, snake, dragon, beetle-a strange menagerie. The word Dragon caught me. What matter if I had to brave innumerable unknown words, meaningless references, dryest of pemmican for the suckling. The great scholar and humanist

could not fail his reader. There was plenty worth the finding. I read of the dragon, the "watchful one," lying on guard upon his gold, gold hence called the "dragon-bed," issuing forth by night from his hole in the hill, scather of the air, scattering fire and poison. Close followed the tale of the beautiful Thora, to whom was given a young dragon. She placed him in a casket with such gold as she had. As he grew, grew also the gold. The chest became too small, and he lay encircling it. Soon he filled her chamber. He lay about the wall with his tail in his mouth, and let no one come near him save to feed him his daily meal of an ox, till Ragnar Lodbrock slew him and won the gold and Thora as his bride. Not alone of dragons, but snakes, I read-snakes and dragons are onewinged snakes with diamond eyes, snakes with golden crowns that visit children and sup their milk, snake-maidens diademed with pale strange beauty, snakes that guard treasure-caves and arch themselves into a bridge across the raging torrent for anyone truly brave, who, if undaunted, may pass and take what gold he will. And I read of dragon-money left lying for a trap on the ground-a penny perhaps, and you pick it up and there is a silver piece next day, and so on. But when it becomes a thaler, leave it or you are under a curse. You cannot get rid of it. Spend it, give it away, throw it away, it comes back to you. One thing only you can do, and that is to sell it for less than its value, and then the curse goes with it. This is the theme, surely, far back, of Stevenson's Bottle Imp. Where, one wonders, did his story come from, before it passed into the old play in which he found it.

These half-dozen pages in Grimm placed me in the dragon's power forever. It was Jacob Grimm, and in great part through these two books, who, before all others, gave inspiration and method to the modern science of folk-lore and the modern scientific study of myth. It is a pity that Grimm could not have foreseen the story of the dragon in full as traced in the picturesque theories of modern students. What a part, indeed, has the dragon played in the slow-woven web of tradition that has broadened out under the ceaseless shuttle

of time from myths immemorially old down to modern literature. To be sure he is at present relatively scarce, even in fairy-tale collections based on folk-tradition. Run over your memories of Grimson, Andersen, Perrault, the polychromatic volumes of Andrew Lang-how many dragons can you remember? This is at first sight curious, for once he was everywhere in folk-tale, saga, myth-as one commentator on Beowulf said, he seems to have multiplied like jack-rabbits, and another avers that there is nothing more "commonplace' than dragons. He has, in fact, nearly become extinct, or persists only in changed forms as far from like his true self as the club-moss and bulrush are unlike their relatives, the pine and the spruce. The reason is simple. Fabulous monsters, like real, must be fitted to survive the hippogriff, for example, is as extinct as the dodo. In a story, an action,. the giant who was not only terrific in combat, but also human, and as such played a part engagingly clumsy and stupid, was far better fitted to survive. The single virtue of the dragon was to stand on guard over his treasure and put up a fine fight against the hero; the rest of his appeal lay in the fantastic terrors of his appearance. In the folk-tale and later romance, he did become a mechanical property, even a commonplace. But, fortunately, his single virtue gave him some great appearances in saga, made true epic stuff of him, gave perpetuity to his tradition. He became, indeed, a sort of symbol and trophy of heroic prowess. Whether or no, after Uther Pendragon saw the two dragons fighting in the sky, it was Uther and Arthur who were the first to shape banners dragonwise, certain it is the long dragon-standards swung from the planted poles by the pavilions in the field to Froissart's time or later and very properly, by that same token, the dragon a few years ago was added as a badge to the achievements of the Prince of Wales.1 Gunpowder blew chivalry from the battle field, but a living tradition in the 17th century gave his name to the dragons, whose muskets belched fire fearfully like him. To search out the dragon in his true greatness is to learn 1 Encyclopædia Britannica, o. v. dragon.

strange things. For that search your best way lies through the corridors and galleries of remembrance where hang the panoplies of great knights and paladins and heroes of the far North and of the Midland Sea, with their famous swords along sheathed, Durendal, Joyeuse, Excalibur, Nægling, Harpe, and the rest, out into the lands of epic story. But choose your path rightly. Do not go that way-that will take you where Ogier smites in the teeth the craven who gives back from the foe with the Emperor's oriflamme, where Roland sounds his horn, and where the youth Vivian, dying upon the bloody field of Aliscans is houseled by his uncle William. There are no dragons there. Your direct way will lie rather by lands of later romance and Northern story, Britain, Ireland, Iceland, the deep-cleft coasts of Scandinavia, over bare moorlands, by old barrows on wave-swept cliffs, through the deep forests and mountain gorges of central Europe, on to Thessaly, land of enchantment, meeting-place of classic and Gothic tradition, where Faust met Helen, and so to Greece, Persia, India, and beyond. With what stores for curious inquiry and reflection shall you win home. Consider this list of the gods and heroes and saints who in some sort have fought and slain the dragon: Indra, Trita, Susanowo, Chorio, Faridun, Rustum, Zeus, Phoebus, Apollo, Hermes, Dionysos, Hercules, Cadmus, Jason, Perseus, Theseus, Bellerophon, Thor, Wada, Siegemund, Siegfried, Beowulf, Frotho, Ragnar, Roland, Lancelot, Tristram, Bevis, Guy, Dietwar, St. George, St. Margaret, St. Germain, St. Marthe, St. Marcel-one might add a score or two more and not be at end. The list, I trust, is long enough to be edifying. It is selective and eclectic-for one must have an eye to the humanities and common sense as well as to purely scientific considerations. The modern scientific mythologist would sneer at some of these worthies as being late and degenerate-mere triflers and copy-cats. But he, for his part, goes to wild extremes. The IndoGermanic field, for a time contents him and he manages to get in pretty nearly the whole classic Pantheon-and then he itches to run outside after strange gods like Osiris and the

Babylonian Marduk. One wonders why he has not found a place for the great serpent god of the Aztecs. Huitzilopochtli, or better still Quetzalcoatl, "feathered serpent," with his fascinating tufts of blue humming-bird feathers, who, it is said the early Spanish missionaries in Mexico told their flocks had really been St. Thomas come over to convert them from his apostolic diocese in farther India-a notion which links up picturesquely with modern theories of traces of Asiatic art along the western shores of the New World, and an Egyptian cult of a serpent goddess brought to our shores by adventurous voyagers from Asia trading across the Pacific islands for shell.1

Curious enough are some of the candidates for dragon-fights whom the mythologist admits. Cain one is tempted to blackball at once. The prophet Daniel must freely be admitted; he disposed of his dragon by entangling his teeth with a ball of pitch, as Theseus did the Minotaur, just before he was thrown in the lions' den. Jonah, one feels some hesitation about-there was very little fight in Jonah, but it is quaint to put him alongside Hercules, who jumped into the seamonster's mouth in saving Hesione and emerged with all his hair burned off by the beast's fiery entrails. One thinks it absurd, at first, to find the mythologist admitting all kinds of sea-monsters-everything seems to be a dragon that comes into his net-but in this he is unquestionably right. The dragon was originally an anomalous serpentine creature, and these monsters characteristically are serpentine, even though often later given fish-names or attributes. Moreover, except in later developments in Europe and elsewhere, there is abundant evidence of the close connection of the dragon with water the sea, lakes, pools, and rivers. Consider the references in Scripture, especially those to Leviathan, and

1 As a matter of fact, Maza and Aztec divinities have been brought into connection with the dragon-cult by G. Elliot Smith, whose book, The Evolution of the Dragon, though ordered some months before, was received a week after this lecture was given. A summary of it is given below. The connection of the "Great Mother" with the dragon, and transference of the cult to America was the subject of a correspondence in Science some years ago; it is treated at length in this volume.

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