A Fierceness of Dragons
Dragon tales from the the valley of the Stour
The village of Bures, through which runs the River Stour, rested gently in the dusk. The dark came early in winter, though this year the season had been late in turning. A family of long-tailed tits perched on a sturdy branch of a gnarled old tree by St Stephen’s Chapel. The tiny birds had feasted well on insects and seeds during the long autumn. But it was growing colder now, and food had become harder to find. They shivered in the sudden wind, and huddled closer together for warmth.
A pair of sparrows sat miserably together on the branch below. They had wandered far from their cosy hedgerow in search of food that day, and were tired and very cold. The male sparrow looked enviously at the tit family clustered together. “If only we had made it back home tonight,” he sighed. His mate fluffed up her feathers and shuffled closer to him.
“Hey, sparrows!” called the tits, overhearing. “Hop up here, share the warmth! Cold winter nights are always better spent in company!” The sparrows did not need to be asked twice. They flew up at once and settled gratefully into the welcoming warmth.
The wind was picking up, but the old chapel sheltered the birds from the worst of its bite. A frost-white moon rose slowly into the winter sky. The fields and woods, which the sparrows had only ever seen lie dreaming green-gold in the sunlight, now shimmered silver-black in the moon’s cold light. Shadows danced on the old chapel walls and shuddered down the hill, across the valley and to the meadow beyond — where stood an enormous creature, unfurling its huge wings.
“What’s that?” squealed the sparrows in fright.
“Oh, that’s just Chalk, our local dragon,” said the tits cheerfully. “He shows up every moonlit night, ever since they decided to make a picture of him on the meadow.”
“A dragon, did you say?” squeaked the sparrows, more terrified than ever.
“Don’t be afraid, he’s perfectly harmless,” reassured the tits. “He’ll stomp about a bit, flap those huge wings a little and swish his tail about — but he knows he’s scaring no one. And once the moon sets, he’ll go back to being a chalk outline on the meadow.”
The sparrows stared transfixed at the dragon. They had never seen an animal so large, nor any so terrifyingly magnificent. It stood there, taller than the tallest tree, shimmering black and silver in the moonlight, its huge wings arcing silver into the night sky. Its barbed tail lashed the dark, and cold, blue sparks ran up and down its scaly spine. Suddenly, with a roar that shook the night, the dragon rose up into the air. It circled once around the old chapel, and disappeared.
“Oh dear,” said the tits, alarmed. “He’s never done that before!”
“These days, even chalk dragons want to fly free,” chuckled a raspy old voice from a branch above. It was the barn owl, who had flown up on silent wings and, unknown to the smaller birds, listened with great interest to their conversation.“But will he come back?” asked the tits of the owl, whom they knew quite well.
“He’d better, and before the moon sets — if he knows what’s good for him,” replied the owl darkly.
The tits subsided into anxious silence. The sparrows, though, were not sorry to see the dragon fly away. Recovering from their shock, they turned to the barn owl and asked, “How did he come to be here in the first place?”
And this is the tale the barn owl told.
A DRAGON IS SIGHTED AT BURES
Retold by Rohini Chowdhury
It is written that in the year 1405, when Henry Bolingbroke had been king of England for six years, there appeared in the village of Bures near Sudbury, a vast dragon. With an enormous, crested head, jagged, sawlike teeth, and a tail that was excessively long, it was a thing of terror! He killed a shepherd who was grazing his sheep nearby, and then killed and ate many of the sheep.
Now, the dragon had hidden himself in the grounds of Smallbridge Hall, then the home of Sir Richard Waldegrave and his wife, Joan. Sir Richard and his archers joined the men of Bures, and together they went, a veritable army, to hunt the fearsome beast. But to their horror, they found their weapons were useless against the creature! Their arrows struck its scaly spine with a clanging sound as if its skin were iron or hard stone, and bounced off harmlessly.
Sir Richard and the people of Bures were at a loss. How was this dragon to be killed? At length, they summoned the entire countryside, and boys and men armed with bows and arrows came from all the surrounding villages to help them.
When the dragon saw itself attacked once again with arrows, it fled into a mere and slipped away amidst the reeds. It was never seen again.
“The people of Bures still remember the dragon. And that is why, in the year 2012, though more than six centuries had passed since its appearance, they created its likeness on the meadow beyond — the very meadow where it was vanquished by Sir Richard and his men!” finished the owl with a flourish.
“Oh, but that’s not all!” twittered the tits. “It is believed that the dragon still lives, deep in the murky depths of the mere into which it fled! From time to time, the mere still bubbles with its fiery breath! And if you don’t believe us, you can go see the mere for itself — it’s only a short flight away!”
“That old tale!” sighed the owl. “More likely the bubbles are methane released by decomposing organic matter in the mere!”
“So what happened to the dragon then?” asked the sparrows, apprehensively. They loved stories, but dragons, not so much.
“Some say it found its way to the neighbouring village of Wormingford and continued to terrorise the countryside, killing and eating any traveller who passed by — till it was killed by Sir Bertram, a noble knight from the village of Layer de la Haye, who cleverly felled a tree so that it fell upon the poor creature’s head!” The owl fluffed up his feathers in a pleased, scholarly sort of way. He liked stories, and he liked answering questions about them even more.
“But…did you say ‘worm’?” chirped the sparrows, hopefully. The tale had made them hungry, and the thought of fat, juicy worms was far more enticing than a scary dragon’s rather ignominious end.
“Oh, you are funny,” twittered the tit family all together. “‘Worm’ used to be another word for ‘dragon’ — and that’s what it means in ‘Wormingford’.”
“Yes,” nodded the owl. “That village has had its share of dragons. There was another, some two hundred years before old Chalk here…”
“What? Another dragon?” exclaimed the sparrows with a shudder. The moon was high in the sky. They looked apprehensively at the meadow beyond. Much to their relief, the silver dragon had still not returned. “Wh…what happened to that one?”
And this is the second tale the barn owl told.
THE DRAGON OF WORMINGFORD
Retold by Rohini Chowdhury
The tale of the unfortunate dragon of Wormingford begins long ago, in a land far from here. It was in the year 1191 when Richard I, king of England, led the Crusader armies against Saladin, the formidable Sultan of Egypt and Syria. Richard, called ‘Lionheart’ for his courage in battle, recaptured the city of Acre in Palestine and forced Saladin to return the precious relic of the True Cross to the Christians. Some say that Richard and Saladin met on the battlefield, and recognised greatness in each other. Saladin, as a measure of his regard for the Crusader king, presented him with a strange and unusual beast. This creature was, at the time, little more than a handspan in length.
Soon after, Richard heard that his brother John was conspiring against him with Philip II, king of France. Though his work in the Holy Land was not done, Richard set sail for England, taking with him Saladin’s singular gift. It was now 1192.
Richard’s journey home was fraught with danger. Bad weather forced his ship off course to Corfu, then a part of the Byzantine Empire. Richard disguised himself as a Knight Templar, and set sail once more, but his ship was wrecked in the Adriatic, near Aquilea. Richard now had no choice except to make his way by land across Europe. But his troubles were not over. Shortly before Christmas, he was captured by Leopold V, Duke of Austria. Leopold had raised his banner along with Richard’s at Acre, but the two had quarrelled and, insulted by Richard, Leopold had left the Crusade.
Leopold now locked up Richard in a tower at Durnstein fortress. Some say he sent in a lion with him. That didn’t bother Richard. He borrowed a scarf from the king’s daughter, Margery, who was (of course!) in love with him, wrapped the scarf round his hand, and plunging his hand into the lion’s mouth, pulled out its heart. And that’s the real reason, some say, why he came to be called ‘Lionheart’!
Stories also tell how the troubadour, Blondel, wandered Europe in search of his king, singing a song they had once composed together. When he sang his song outside Durnstein fortress, he heard Richard’s voice joining in from the tower above. Overjoyed, Blondel returned to England with the news, and Richard’s mother, Queen Eleanor, raised the money for his ransom and freed him. Finally, some two years after he had left the Holy Land, Richard arrived back in England. It was now 1194.
More miraculous than Richard’s return though, is that all this while Richard had succeeded in keeping safe Saladin’s gift. The beast had been his companion through it all — shipwreck, captivity, and some say, even torture. Leopold of Austria had left the beast alone. Perhaps he had not considered it worth taking away. It wasn’t that he couldn’t have seen it, for it had grown, as beasts are wont to do, and was no longer a handspan in length. We can only marvel at Leopold’s indifference, and at the creature’s resilience and Richard’s care of it that it survived all the travails of the journey home.
Richard, crowned king a second time, now set about restoring his kingdom to its former strength and went to war against France. He didn’t forget his strange companion though, but kept it in a sturdy cage in the Tower of London. The beast, properly fed and well looked after, grew and grew.
Then, on the 6th of April 1199, Richard the Lionheart died. Shot in the shoulder by a crossbow bolt by a boy. With him died chivalry, and all that was romantic in England at the time. And one fine spring day, the beast he had nurtured and brought all the way home from the Holy Land, smashed its cage and escaped into the River Thames.
Days passed, weeks and months, and nothing was heard or seen of the creature. Till one bright spring morning, it climbed out of the River Stour and made its way to the tiny village of Withermundford. The villagers were terrified. Those who saw it declared it to be a dragon. The bravest amongst them attacked it with bows and arrows, but to no avail — their arrows bounced off its impenetrable skin without a mark. They fed it sheep, and then, in desperation, virgins, for it was well known amongst them that dragons preferred virgins to all other meat. But sadly for the village of Withermundford, the supply of virgins soon ran out. We can only imagine the spate of hurried weddings that must have taken place in that beleaguered village! At last the villagers sent for Sir George of Layer de la Haye, begging the noble knight to rid them of the dragon.
Sir George, gallant knight, rode at once to their aid. He chased the dragon through woods and fields, and struck it a deathly blow with his lance. The people were finally rid of the fearsome creature. From then on, the village of Withermundford began to be called Wormiton, Wormington and Wormingford, in memory of the ‘worm’ that had once terrorised it.
“King Richard must have been really brave, to have travelled so far with a dragon,” said the sparrows with an admiring shudder. They really didn’t like dragons, and were secretly relieved that this dragon, at least, had been definitely slain.
“Yes,” nodded the owl. “Though some say that the strange animal, if it existed at all, was just a poor old crocodile, and not a dragon at all!”
“Oh, that’s no fun!” twittered the tit family. “Crocodiles are so ordinary!”
“And unbelievable too,” agreed the owl. He loved dragons and didn’t approve of these modern theories one bit. “No croc could have survived that journey from Acre, or even travelled all the way from the Tower to Wormingford.”
“Oh, but a dragon might have,” twittered the tit family.
“It’s strange Leopold didn’t kill the creature or take it for himself,” puzzled the sparrows. “After all, it was not just any animal, but a very unusual one.”
“It must have made itself invisible — dragons are magic after all,” said the tit family.
“Speaking of invisible, where’s that Chalk Dragon got to?” muttered the owl, scanning the sky worriedly. The moon hung lower in the sky. The wind blew in sudden gusts that made the lengthening shadows jerk and jump across the fields.
Just then, a shower of silver sparks lit the sky. “Look, look, there he is,” cried the tits. Outlined against the moon’s silver face, was the Chalk Dragon, gliding smoothly through the night on outstretched wings. The birds watched, breathless, as it turned with effortless grace and landed smoothly upon the meadow.
“Glad to have you home again, Chalk,” hooted the owl.
The Dragon turned his enormous head towards the birds, which sent the sparrows into a paroxysm of fright. But “Till we meet again,” he rumbled, and arching his huge wings above his head, settled into the hillside to become just a chalk outline once more.
Stories copyright ©Rohini Chowdhury 2022
Illustration copyright ©Shaiontoni Bose 2022
AUTHOR’S NOTE
There are five River Stours in England. The one we are concerned with is the one that rises in the Cambridgeshire Fens and flows eastwards through East Anglia, to empty itself into the North Sea by Harwich. The river and its valley, which have been immortalised in the paintings of John Constable, are also home to an astonishingly large number of tales about dragons and dragon sightings. In addition to Bures and Wormingford, the neighbouring village of Wissington also has its dragon, and the parish of Little Cornard has two! And, as is always the case with folklore and legend, several versions of the tales exist.
I first heard of the Bures dragon from my friend and neighbour, Sheila Cook, who, seeing my excitement, very kindly drove me all the way to Bures one bright day last June. I shall remain ever grateful to Sheila for thus introducing me to a magical world of myth and legend right on my doorstep that I had not known existed.
My grateful thanks too, to Robert Hadgraft, whose lively recounting of the tale of the Bures dragon(s) in a 1976 article for the East Anglian Daily Times was the starting point of my search for stories and sources. Mr Hadgraft was kind enough to respond to my various questions and confusions about the Bures dragon(s). His article may be read HERE on the Bures website. Mr Hadgraft’s telling of the tale is far more detailed than the version I have given here. He also writes that the Bures dragon was first sighted in Sudbury, a market town a few miles upstream from Bures — which, to me, sounds eminently possible. In his email to me, though, he clarifies that there was, allegedly, just the one dragon that appeared at Bures and Wormingford, and Sudbury “was only mentioned with regard to the ‘panic’ that is said to have engulfed the town after the weird and wonderful rumours coming from Bures direction”.
Mr Hadgraft also provides an amusing footnote to the Bures story: apparently, a local version of the tale declares that the men who had chased off the dragon at Bures, retired afterwards “to the Eight Bells public house to enjoy a hearty meal of the sheep which had been conveniently roasted on a barbecue by the dragon's fiery breath.” From the bowmen’s perspective, this is definitely a good ending! The earliest mention of the Eight Bells, though, that I have been able to find is 1705 — once again on the Bures website, HERE.
The mere into which the Bures dragon is believed to have disappeared is called Wormingford Mere and lies across the River Stour from Smallbridge House. The mere lies on private land, and cannot be visited — except by the birds in our story!
The chalk outline of the Bures dragon was created in 2012 as part of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations by a team led by Geoffrey Probert, a distant relative of Sir Richard Waldegrave.
I have based my version of the Bures dragon tale on a sighting recorded in the Annales Henrici quarto, a medieval Latin text on the reign of Henry IV by an unknown author. The ultimate slaying of this dragon by Bertram de la Haye — my source for this is the legend of the Wormingford dragon as given on the Bures website HERE. I was unable to find any further information on Sir Bertram.
In the Church of St Andrews in Wormingford is a document (downloadable HERE from the Bures website) that tells the story of the Wormingford dragon. This fearsome creature, says the account, was no dragon but a crocodile brought to England by Richard I from the Crusades. The crocodile, according to this account, was presented to the king by the Lusignans, for his support of their claim to Jerusalem. A stained-glass window, presented to the church in 1950, commemorates this legend; the window shows a rather pleased-looking crocodile with a pair of pink, possibly virginal, legs sticking out of a corner of its mouth! Another account of the Wormingford dragon, recorded by author Winifred Beaumont, says that the crocodile was presented to Richard I by Saladin.
My retelling is based loosely on the account in Wormingford Church, though I have taken the dragon to be a gift from Saladin rather than the Lusignans. I have also added more detail about the Third Crusade and Richard’s return to England. I have, on purpose, left out the crocodile angle — a magical dragon is more likely to have survived the fraught journey to England far better than a croc! Some believe that the Wormingford dragon was the same that appeared at Bures, which, if the written account is to be believed, did not show up till in 1405. Given that Richard I died in 1199, it makes the dragon more than 200 years old at the time of its sighting in Bures. Of course, dragons are magical and can live for centuries, but two centuries for a crocodile is a bit of a stretch, even though the creatures have been known to live as long as 150 years in the wild. Another reason to discard the crocodile theory.
In the village of Wissington, in the small, Norman church dedicated to St Mary the Virgin, there is a painting of a dragon, that, says the Bures website, dates to the 14th century. This dragon is also supposed to be the same as the Bures dragon — except that the dates, once again, don’t match. A letter, by a Michael Burgess of Lowestoft, in the January 1980 issue of the Journal of Geomancy tells of a “monstrous dragon” on the river bank, seen by some men working in the water meadows near Wissington (the letter doesn’t give any dates). The frightened men sent for help to the nearby town of Colchester, and soldiers arrived, bringing cannon with them. But of course, the cannonballs bounced harmlessly off the dragon’s '“scaly back”!
I would like to believe that the Bures dragon of 1405 was a later, and different, dragon to the Wormingford one, which probably showed up towards the end of the 13th century. And that the Wissington one was a third, completely different beast!
The crocodile hypothesis as an explanation for dragon sightings in the Stour Valley and elsewhere gained much popularity in the 19th century, when rational, scientific explanations were being increasingly sought for things of myth and magic. For readers who want to know more, Michael Behrend’s article, ‘The Dragon as Crocodile’, is a good starting point.
I leave you with the story of the two dragons sighted in September 1449 in the parish of Little Cornard: from the direction of Kedington Hill came a black dragon from Suffolk, and from the direction of Balingdon Hill came a red-spotted one from Essex. The dragons met and fought on the meadow known today as Sharpfight Meadow. The fight continued for about an hour or so around sunset. Finally, the red dragon was victorious. The battle done, each dragon returned to its own place. This sighting is apparently contained in a book now held in Canterbury Cathedral.
Do you have any more stories about the Stour valley dragons? Or know of dragons and dragon sightings where you live? Write in via the comments below!
SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
My first and most comprehensive source in retelling these tales has been the Bures Online website. The following pages were especially useful:
A PDF version of the Annales Henrici quarti, edited by Henry Thomas Riley, Rolls Series (1866) may be found here on the Lollard Society website.
For more on Richard I: Westwell, Chantry. “The Crusades: Stories of Deeds in Lands across the Sea.” Essay. In Dragons, Heroes, Myths and Magic: The Medieval Art of Storytelling. London: British Library, 2021.
For more on Sir Richard Waldegrave (c.1338-1410), see History of Parliament Online: WALDEGRAVE, Sir Richard (c.1338-1410)
For the dragon-as-crocodile theory:
Behrend, Michael. “The Dragon as Crocodile.” Journal of Geomancy (vol.4, no.1), October 1979.For more on the Wormingford, Wissington, and Little Cornard dragons:
Burgess, Michael W. “Letters to the Editor.” Journal of Geomancy (vol.4, no.2), January 1980.And on the Little Cornard dragons again:
Briggs, Stacia, and Siofra Connor. “Weird Suffolk:The Little Cornard Dragons.” East Anglian Daily Times.
I just posted this on my JCF Mythological Roundtable of Ketchum FB page. :)
Very unusual dragon. I read British history, but never came across such story.
Very well researched and interesting