Round the Herne

 As today is St George's Day, I thought I would share a short story about a dragon - the Krepel is part of the folklore of Bytom in Poland. The area where the dragon once lived is no longer forest land but part of the city itself (as to what became of the dragon in the long-term, alas I do not know - there are no accounts which I could locate answering that one).

 It being St George's Day, I decided to record a story about a dragon - this one from Biscerne, battled by the local squire Sir Maurice Berkeley. The fate of the dragon is very reminiscent of a lot of stories where a magical or divine being becomes part of the landscape. It would be a fascinating topic for a book, if someone has not already written such a thing. I've never seen Bolton's Bench to know if the shape inspired the legend or if it stems from other sources - the photograph is not especially suggestive, but perhaps this is the result of changes over time, farming practices etc. Who knows what the hill looked like in the 15th century?

  The Australian political theorist Kenneth Minogue coined the term St George in Retirement Syndrome (a more  pagan equivalent might be Beowulf in Retirement Syndrome!)  to describe the plight of old campaigners who, having gained prominence in their younger days by fighting against some draconian enemy find themselves yearning for the sense of purpose it once gave them. The Canadian psychiatrist Eric Berne spoke about difficult life scripts that people get stuck acting out, becoming ever more unhappy as they do so. One of the negative scripts he links to the Greek myth of Baucis and Philemon, a sweet old couple who are transformed into interlinked trees as a reward for their hospitality. Whilst such a fate might sound lovely, retiring too early to a peaceful, placid existence can become utterly tedious for many and they yearn for challenge and difficulty. Retirement can leave a lot of people wondering what on earth to do with themselves. Hankering for the “good old days”...

 It being April 23rd, my mind turns to dragons and the numerous folktales about them. This story from Albania features a singularly charmless family as its central characters and a reminder about why we should be careful who we let have influence over our children's minds (cranky, manipulative teachers included).  There are forty dragons featured in this tale, though it has to be said that they really don't do anything very draconian and, as is so often the case with a lot of folktales, there are many loose ends left untied - like what happens to the governess, why are forty dragons squeezed into a castle, and ought the romantic "hero" be on a police watch list? Possibly when this story was first doing the rounds, audiences would have been familiar with other stories that would have put the dragons, the governess etc. into context. I did consider doing a story about the bolla, a type of dragon that only opens its eyes on April 23rd, but aside from a few scraps of myth...