J. Dunne - St. George and the Witches

There was a clatter of racing feet on the ancient, oaken stairs. There followed, apparently, a wrestling match outside my door. Then the two entered, paused, advanced and greeted me sedately.

“Well, what shall we play tonight?” I asked.

“St. George and the Dragon,” said Rosemary.

“But we did that yesterday,” I objected.

“Well, go on with it,” said Christopher.

“But we finished St. George and the Dragon. You killed the Dragon, and you married the Princess [which is not in the real story]. There isn’t any more to go on with.”

“Well, they can have adventures after they are married, can’t they?” said Christopher.

“Oh!” said I, and paused to take this in. “Oh, very well.”

That was how it all began; but, when the story came to be written out, the children were old enough to render advisable a change of diction and an amplification of the plot.

The joyous liberties we took with history; the geography we molded to our desire; the demonology we modified to suit our needs: these, of necessity, remain. All said and done, the tale’s the thing.

J. W. Dunne

When St. George, mounted upon his great war horse, rode toward the dragon, the Princess Cleodolinda closed her eyes. Then she opened them again; because she felt that she simply must have one more look at this knight before he was turned into a cinder. She wanted to remember his face. The fact that she, probably, would be chewed up by the dragon two minutes later seemed merely to make it more important that she should get that face fixed quite clearly in her mind. She was a brave girl, or she would not—you will remember—have been there at all.

Well, when she opened her eyes, she saw a most surprising thing. St. George had dismounted and was strolling—yes, strolling—toward the dragon, with nothing but a long, thin dagger in his hand. The brute was watching him in a slightly puzzled fashion, and little wisps of acrid smoke curled upward from its nostrils as it waited. St. George drew nearer, and suddenly the dragon opened its enormous jaws. At that, the Princess shut her eyes very tightly indeed. She heard a slight scuffling noise and a thud.

And then, to her joy and amazement, she heard the Knight say, “It is all right, my pretty. Open your eyes. The beast is dead.”

She looked, and there was St. George smiling at her from the other side of the prone monster. She wanted to cry “Oh! thank Heaven! thank Heaven!” but she knew that princesses must not be emotional. So, all that she did say, gravely, was “You have no right, sir, to call me your ‘pretty’ just because you have killed a dragon.”

At that St. George laughed (it made her think, somehow, of the sun sparkling on a running brook) and he cried, “Then I will call you ‘my pretty’ just because you are pretty, and because I hope you will be mine.” And he jumped over the dragon, and cut her bonds with his dagger, and then kneeled and kissed her hand. And when he looked up, and she, bending forward, looked down into his upturned face, the gravity left her lips, and her smile made him think, somehow, of stars in an evening sky when the wind blows away dark mists that are like, in some fashion, the veil of a damsel’s long hair drooping round a kneeling knight. And then they both forgot all about the dragon.

But, after they were married—(What! didn’t you know that they were married three days later? Someone must have told you the story all wrong.) After they were married, the Princess remembered; and she said, “Tell me, St. George, how did you manage to kill that dragon?”

Her father, the King of Silene (the Princess had invited them both to her private boudoir to taste a strange new beverage called “tea”), echoed her question. “Come, tell us,” he said. “There is nobody here but we three, and modesty, you know, can be overdone.”

St. George laughed. “The truest modesty, sire,” he replied, “would be for me to tell you precisely how it happened; for I fear that you will think less highly of me when you learn how easy was the deed. You see—” he paused for a moment. “But, perhaps,” he went on, “it would be simpler if I told you the story from the beginning.”

The Princess clapped her hands. “Yes, please do so,” she cried. “I simply love stories, especially when they are true. But first, will you not each have another cup of my tea? Did I tell you that it was sent to me as a birthday present by my great-uncle, the Emperor of China? It was on the last birthday—my sixteenth.”

She poured out three more cups of tea, and then St. George began.

“When I was young,” he said—but here the King interrupted.

“Young?” he cried. “I thought you told me that you had just passed twenty-three.”

“That is true,” replied St. George, “but at the time of which I am going to speak I was only eighteen.”

“Oh, ah! I see,” said the King. He had been sixty-five at his last birthday.

“When I was young,” repeated St. George firmly, “I happened to be walking in a wood. I was stepping very quietly, because I was hunting for rabbits. Suddenly, I saw a sort of heaving movement in a patch of bracken a little way ahead; and looking more closely, I perceived that the bracken partly concealed the body of a long green dragon. Smoke was rising lightly from its nostrils, making a faint blue haze above the fronds; so the beast was, clearly, one of the fire-breathing kind. They are very rare indeed; but I do not know why.”

“I do,” said the King unexpectedly.

“Why?” asked the Princess and St. George, speaking together.

“I will tell you afterwards,” replied the King. “Go on with your story now.”

“The beast did not notice me,” continued St. George, “because it lay sideways to me, with its head pointing to my right, and its gaze fixed intently upon some object in front of it. Just as I realized this, I heard a loud bellow, and glancing in the direction toward which the dragon was looking, I saw a large white bull trotting toward the monster with his head held high in the air. It was clear to me that he had scented the dragon; and that, with all the reckless stupidity of his kind, he was advancing toward the place where he smelled danger.

“The dragon lay motionless until the bull had come to within fifteen paces of its head, and then it opened its mouth to its widest stretch. Now, its lower jaw lay along the ground, so it managed the opening by bending its head backward and raising the upper jaw. As it did so it drew a long, deep breath—I could see its ribs swelling with the effort—and, meanwhile, it closed its eyes. If you will hold your lower jaw, throw your head back so as to open your mouth, and draw a deep breath, you will find that the tendency to close your eyes is so natural that it requires a distinct effort to keep them open.”

The King tried this. The Princess did not do so. “Yes,” said the King, “I see what you mean.”

“I realized, at once,” continued St. George, “that, while the monster was engaged in this operation, there would be time for a swift and active man to leap forward to the side of the brute’s head, without being seen.”

“But, surely,” gasped the Princess, “that would be horribly dangerous.”

“Much less dangerous than it sounds,” replied St. George, “but the bull, of course, made no such agile side-leap. He just lowered his head, rushed straight in, and was met by a blast of flame so bright and blinding that I was, for the moment, completely dazzled. Then I saw that the poor, foolish beast was lying in a heap on the ground, and noticed that the air was filled with a delicious aroma of roast beef. The dragon licked its lips and advanced to its meal. I dropped to the ground, and squirmed away backward, nor did I rise until I could do so without danger of being seen.