Note 56.2 — Chapter XVII · THE RESCUE OF ANDROMEDA IN SAGAS.

We may now return to sagas more properly coming within our ken. From Candahar is reported a Mussulman legend, which relates that in pagan times the king of Candahar found himself compelled to promise a young girl every day to a dragon. Accordingly a maiden mounted on a camel was daily sent to the monster. As soon as the camel arrived within a certain distance of the cavern where the dragon dwelt, the latter inhaled its breath with such force that its prey was inevitably drawn into its throat. One day the lot fell on the fairest maid of Candahar, when Ali, “the sword of the faith,” happened to pass through the country, and saw the victim in tears. Learning the cause of her distress, he placed himself in her stead on the camel, and at the moment of being drawn into the monster’s throat he cut off its head with his irresistible blade.56.2 In Abyssinia the tale is told with variations, due to Christian and Jewish influences. Axum, we learn, was the seat of a serpent-king, for whose appetite a virgin was daily provided. When it came to the turn of Saba, a virgin of high birth and pure spirit, she was rescued by a “celestial warrior in earthly form,” but not before the serpent’s saliva had fallen on her foot, causing her thereafter incurable ulcers and lameness. She was acclaimed queen; but her disease marred her joy. Wherefore she crossed the seas to seek for healing at the hands of the renowned King Solomon, from whom she obtained not only restoration to health but also a son, born after her return to Abyssinia. He was named Menelek, and to him the kings of Gondar have ever since traced their ancestry.57.1 In the basin of the Upper Niger, the story concerns not the beginnings of a royal race but the destruction of a kingdom—that of the Bakiris whose capital was called Wagadu. It was said to be colossally rich; the kings possessed an immense treasure; but they owed their fortune to the protection of a serpent which dwelt within a well near the king’s village. Every year, by lot, one of the loveliest maidens of the country was chosen, and, arrayed like a bride, she was conducted to the well, when the serpent would come forth and, rolling his scaly folds around her, would carry her off to his den. Now, one year the lot fell on a damsel betrothed to the bravest warrior of the land, who, besides, was the king’s cousin. He swore to save her, and mounted on his steed, which he had tethered near the well, he awaited the dragon’s coming. Twice the serpent put forth his head, and twice drew back. But the third time, the moment he stretched out to seize the prey the warrior lunged forward, cut the brute in two with a single blow of his sabre; and seizing his beloved he carried her off with all the speed of his courser, which no horse has ever surpassed. As he disappeared, a voice was heard from the well denouncing seven years of drought and every evil a country could suffer. The king sought his cousin and would have put him to death; but he could not be caught. Soon the predicted woes were accomplished; and forced by drought and sickness the population deserted the capital in a body for other lands. It is even said that the king, unable to carry off his riches, buried them, and that no man since has been able to find them, for the soil burns and bursts into flame beneath the hardy treasure-seeker. Certain it is that scourges of various kinds, which transformed the country into desert, caused the emigration of a once numerous people.58.1