Mysterious Creatures : A Guide to Cryptozoology

ton, Kingston St. Mary, Norton Fitzwarren,
Shervage Wood (near Crowcombe).
Suffolk—Bures Saint Mary.
Sussex—Bignor Hill, Knucker Hole (near
Lyminster), St. Leonard’s Forest (near Horsham).
Significant sightings: St. George (a knight of
Cappadocia in Turkey) was said to have killed a
Dragon in a pond near Silene (possibly Shahhat
or Suluntah in Cyrenaica or Zlitan in Tripolitania),
Libya. The citizens of the town were sacrificing
teenage girls to the monster in order to
keep it from killing everyone and devastating
the countryside. When it was the turn of the
king’s daughter, an itinerant knight named
George stuck the Dragon with his lance. The
girl then led it through the town where George
killed it. Afterward, the townsfolk became
Christian. The legend may have originated in
sixth-century North African folktales or in the
Caucasus Mountains of Georgia, but St. George
was adopted as an Anglo-Saxon Christian hero
in England. The tale circulated widely during
the Middle Ages, eventually becoming a somewhat
erotic romance. The Dragon was seen as a
symbol of paganism or evil.
The Lambton Worm was a loathsome Dragon
that surfaced in the River Wear, Durham, in the
fourteenth century. Lord Lambton caught it on
his fishing line but threw it down a nearby well
when he realized what it was. For the next few
years, the creature grew in size and began to terrorize
the locals, consuming livestock and killing
any would-be slayers. The villagers had to pacify
it by keeping a trough filled with milk for it to
drink. Lambton himself finally killed it but only
because he had protected himself with a spikestudded
coat of mail. A piece of the Dragon’s
hide and the milk trough were still on exhibit at
the castle in the nineteenth century.
In the early fifteenth century, Sir Maurice de
Berkeley is said to have killed a scaly, firebreathing
Dragon at Dragon Field near Bisterne,
Hampshire.
Sir Thomas Venables is said to have shot and
killed a Dragon just as it was about to eat a child
in Bache Pool, near Moston, Cheshire, in the
sixteenth century. A 1632 carving in the church
vestry shows the crest of the Venables as a
Dragon swallowing a child.
A scaly Dragon—9 feet long, black on top,
reddish below, and with a white ring around its
neck—was roaming St. Leonard’s Forest, near
Horsham, Sussex, in August 1614. It could run
as fast as a man on its four feet, and it killed but
did not eat several cattle, two dogs, and two
people on different occasions. The animal left
behind a slimy trail and spat venom.
A flying Dragon 8–9 feet long with two rows
of sharp teeth and a pair of wings was seen near
Henham, Essex, beginning on May 27 and 28,
1669. It was observed basking in the sun by several
people, but when they returned with guns
and pitchforks, it darted into Birch Wood.
Possible explanations:
(1) Physical characteristics borrowed from a
vague knowledge of pythons, cobras, and
crocodiles.
(2) An evolved Kuehneosaurus, a 2-footlong,
winged reptile that lived in England in
the Late Triassic, 200 million years ago,
proposed by Mark A. Hall. Though known
fossil forms were only capable of gliding
flight, Hall suggests that by the Middle
Ages, it may have grown in size and
developed true flight.
(3) Windsock banners used by armies to
identify specific military units. There was a
whistling device attached to the silk banner
that made hissing noises as the banner was
waved vigorously. A lighted torch was also
placed in the mouth of the banner. The
custom probably originated in China, but
the Romans picked it up during various
wars with the Persians, Scythians, and
Dacians. A Dragon was the standard of a
Roman cohort (one-tenth of a legion). After
the Romans left Britain, the Britons and
Saxons adopted the custom for their own
armies. After the Battle of Hastings in 1066,
the Dragon standard was adopted by the
Normans and was used throughout the
Hundred Years’ War. The national flag of
Wales is a red Dragon, Y Ddraig Goch.
(4) A completely mythical animal used in
moralistic tales.
(5) A symbolic expression of the raids of the
Vikings, whose longboats featured brightly
painted Dragon figureheads.
DRAGON (BRITISH) 145