Note 88.1 — Chapter XVIII · THE RESCUE OF ANDROMEDA: ITS RELATION TO HUMAN SACRIFICES.

Passing with these illustrations away from sacrifices to water, and from legends of water-monsters, we may note that another object with which the sagas of dragons are connected is a hill, often shown as the creature’s resting-place. He lies curled upon it, or around it, or dwells in a cave or den. Thus the Lambton Worm lay coiled thrice about the base of an oval hill on the northern bank of the Wear. I am not aware what this oval hill may be; but some of the hills mentioned in these stories are prehistoric barrows. Mr. Andrew Lang published some years ago a story from Galloway of a snake that used to lie twined round the tumulus at Dalry. “In colour it was snow-white, and the thickest part of its body was as thick as three bags of meal. This creature was a terror to all the neighbourhood, as it not only destroyed cattle and men, but had an ugly habit of going at night to the neighbouring churchyard, digging up coffins with its claws, and devouring the newly dead.” The Lord of Galloway offered a reward for its destruction. But one of his knights was swallowed up by the serpent, horse and armour and all; and another was deterred by evil omens. The adventure was then undertaken, as at Deerhurst, by a smith, who devised a suit of armour for himself covered with long sharp spikes which could be drawn in or thrust out at the wearer’s will. Scarcely was his armour completed when the smith’s young and beautiful wife died, and was buried in the churchyard. The night after the funeral the smith came upon the brute scraping the earth from the newly-made grave, and attacked it vigorously. The snake swallowed him whole; but as he slipped down its throat he suddenly shot out his spikes, rolling about violently inside. This was more than the creature had bargained for; and in a short time the smith by strenuous efforts tore his way through his enemy’s carcase. There lay the serpent quite dead, and for three days following the river Ken ran red with its blood. “Here,” says Mr. Andrew Lang, “the story should properly end; but a later and more romantic fancy has added that at the very moment of victory the second knight arrived on the spot, and, in a fury of disappointed ambition, attacked the smith, who of course was as victorious in the second fight as he had been in the first.”88.1 With all deference to Mr. Lang’s great authority, I venture to think that the second knight’s attack was part of the original story, embodying as it seems to do the germ of the Impostor incident so common in Rescue tales. Be this, however, as it may, the point whereto I desire to direct attention is that the connection of the snake with a prehistoric tumulus, and that of other dragons with hills or mounds, both in this country and on the Continent, is probably not without its significance. There, if anywhere, sacrifices would have been offered in early times; and their memory, transformed by the popular imagination into the form of a dragon with a propensity for human flesh, may have lingered for many a century after their abolition. But to raise this beyond the value of a conjecture careful inquiry and comparison of instances, for which I have no opportunity at present, would be required. I may point out, however, that the conjecture is countenanced by analogous legends of dragons haunting other sacred spots. At Aarhuus in Denmark, for instance, bodies placed overnight for the funeral solemnities in the cathedral frequently disappeared by the morning. A dragon whose lair was near the cathedral had eaten them. At length a strolling glazier devised a coffin of mirrors, pierced by one hole just large enough to thrust a sword through; and he caused himself to be laid within it in the cathedral. Around the coffin stood four tapers, which he lighted at midnight. When the prowling dragon beheld its reflection in the mirrors it drew nigh, deeming the image to be its mate. The glazier instantly thrust his sword through the hole of the coffin into his enemy’s throat; but he himself perished in the floods of blood and venom that spouted from the body of the dying monster. An ancient image in the church is said to preserve the memory of the heroic act, as at Mansfeld, Deerhurst, and elsewhere.89.1