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XIII.

The Dragon of Wantley.

THIS humorous song (as a former Editor has well observed) is to old metrical romances and ballads of chivalry, what Don Quixote is to prose narratives of that kind,—a lively satire on their extravagant fictions. But although the satire is thus general, the subject of this ballad is local and peculiar; so that many of the finest strokes of humour are lost for want of our knowing the minute circumstances to which they allude. Many of them can hardly now be recovered, although we have been fortunate enough to learn the general subject to which the satire referred, and shall detail the information with which we have been favoured in a separate memoir at the end of the poem.

The

In handling his subject, the author has brought in most of the common incidents which occur in romance. description of the dragon 2-his outrages-the people flying to the knight for succour—his care in choosing his armour-his being drest for fight by a young damseland most of the circumstances of the battle and victory (allowing for the burlesque turn given to them), are what occur in every book of chivalry, whether in prose or

verse.

If any one piece more than another is more particularly levelled at, it seems to be the old rhyming legend

1 Collection of Historical Ballads, in 3 vols. 1727.

2 See above, pp. 144 and 266.

of Sir Bevis. There a dragon is attacked from a well in a manner not very remote from this of the ballad :

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This seems to be meant by the Dragon of Wantley's stink, ver. 110. As the politic knight's creeping out, and attacking the dragon, &c., seems evidently to allude to the following:

"Bevis blessed himselfe, and forth yode,
And lepte out with haste full good;
And Bevis unto the dragon gone is;
And the dragon also to Bevis.
Longe and harde was that fyght
Betwene the dragon and that knyght:
But ever whan syr Bevis was hurt sore,
He went to the well, and washed him thore;

He was as hole as any man,

Ever freshe as whan he began.

The dragon sawe it might not avayle

Besyde the well to hold batayle;

He thought he would, wyth some wyle,

Out of that place Bevis begyle;
He woulde have flowen then awaye,
But Bevis lepte after with good Morglaye,

And hyt him under the wynge,

As he was in his flyenge," &c.

Sign. M. jv. L. j. &c.

After all, perhaps the writer of this ballad was acquainted with the above incidents only through the medium of Spenser, who has assumed most of them in his Faerie Queen. At least some particulars in the description of the dragon, &c. seem evidently borrowed from the latter. See book i. canto ii. where the dragon's “two wynges like sayls-huge long tayl-with stings-his cruel rending clawes-and yron teeth-his breath of smothering smoke and sulphur "—and the duration of the fight for upwards of two days, bear a great resemblance to passages in the following ballad; though it must be confessed that these particulars are common to all old writers of

romance.

Although this ballad must have been written early in the last century, we have met with none but such as were comparatively modern copies. It is here printed from one in Roman letter, in the Pepys collection, collated with such others as could be procured.

OLD stories tell, how Hercules
A dragon slew at Lerna,

With seven heads, and fourteen eyes,
To see and well discern-a:

But he had a club, this dragon to drub,

Or he had ne'er done it, I warrant ye : But More of More-Hall, with nothing at all, He slew the dragon of Wantley.

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This dragon had two furious wings,

Each one upon each shoulder;

With a sting in his tayl, as long as a flayl,

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.

Have you not heard how the Trojan horse

Held seventy men in his belly?

This dragon was not quite so big,
But very near, I'll tell ye.

Devoured he poor children three,

That could not with him grapple ;

And at one sup he eat them up,

As one would eat an apple.

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15

20

All sorts of cattle this dragon did eat.
Some say he ate up trees,

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And that the forests sure he would

Devour up by degrees :

For houses and churches were to him geese and

turkies;

He ate all, and left none behind,

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But some stones, dear Jack, that he could not crack, Which on the hills you will find.

Ver. 29, were to him gorse and birches. Other copies.

In Yorkshire, near fair Rotherham,

The place I know it well;

Some two or three miles, or thereabouts,

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I vow I cannot tell;

But there is a hedge, just on the hill edge,
And Matthew's house hard by it;

O there and then was this dragon's den,
You could not chuse but spy it.

Some say, this dragon was a witch;
Some say he was a devil,

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For from his nose a smoke arose,

And with it burning snivel;

Which he cast off, when he did cough,

45

In a well that he did stand by;

Which made it look, just like a brook
Running with burning brandy.

Hard by a furious knight there dwelt,

Of whom all towns did ring,

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For he could wrestle, play at quarter-staff, kick,

cuff and huff,

Call son of a whore, do any kind of thing:
By the tail and the main, with his hands twain
He swung a horse till he was dead;
And that which is stranger, he for very anger

Eat him all up but his head.

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