Note 137 — Chapter IX · WAR-SHIPS.

When the Crusaders took Constantinople in 1204, the Belgians sent many relics home (these are reckoned up in D’Outremann, ‘Constantinopolis Belgica’); among them this dragon was sent to Bruges. In 1382, Bruges was taken and plundered by the men of Ghent, and the dragon as a trophy was put on the top of the belfry in Ghent, where it still is.

In Sigurd Jorsalafari’s Saga (Heimskringla), ch. 14, and Fornmanna Sögur, vii. 98, we read that Sigurd put the gilded dragon-heads of his ship on Peter’s Church (a part of Sophia Church, in Constantinople) (‘Recueil des chroniques de Flandre 1837–41,’ vol. i.; Schiern, ‘Nyere historiske Studier,’ i. 1875).