The People's Songbag

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30953, 8 January 1966, Page 5

The People's Songbag

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[Specially written for "The Press’* by DERRICK ROONEY] QJTART digging around behind a traditional English ballad and there is no telling what you may find. Take the strange case of the scatological fiend, or the defecating dragon of Wantley, related in a Roman-letter copy in the Pepys collection. At first glance it is a mildly amusing and somewhat robust ballad—though not so robust that the estimable Bishop Percy felt himself bound to eliminate it from his “Religues,” where it quietly resides between the song of St George and the love song of Valentine and Ursine. The Wantley dragon was a fearsome beast who lived in a well and came out at night to eat children and young trees. Houses and churches “were to him geese and turkeys” and he left uneaten nothing but “some stones, dear Jack, that he could not crack.”

His nemesis arrived in the shape of More of More-Hall, the knight “with nothing at all,” who agreed, for a suitable fee (aged 16) to hew the dragon down: but first went, “new armour to beskeak at Sheffield town, with spike all about, not within but without.”

Fortified by six pots of ale and a quart of aqua-vitae, More confronted the dragon—no, not confronted exactly, for this is a tale with a twist in its tail: that’s where the dragon kept his secret weapon. Although somewhat taken aback, so to speak, More reeled and delivered his own secret weapon: a sharp kick on a portion of the dragon’s anatomy.

Across s—Graduate returns to become a priest. (4) 7 Get hold of in order to control. (4,2,4,) 8— Huts rebuilt—how was it done? (4) 10— Depict an arrangement that is doctrinaire. (8) 11— Useless remnant amongst the ashes? (3-3) 12— Give up again and retreat. (6) 14—Holy book set to music? (6) 16— Old Asian warrior brings back two deserters. (6) 17— A strange reaction in the making. (8) 19—Albert has 8, too (4) 21— Quite honestly, it’s flat. (2,3,5) 22 Gore-spilling monster. (4)

“Murder, murder!” the dragon cried, then

His head he shak'd. and trembl'd and quak’d. And down he laid and cry'd; First on one knee, then on back tumbled he. So groan’d, kick'd and died. All this is really no more than the uninhibited reflections of some village bard on the occasion of a quarrel over the rights to collect tithes in the parish of Penniston, Yorkshire, during the time of James I. 7.e dragon was Sir Francis Wortley, who possessed a family document dated 37th Elizabeth which, he claimed, gave him title to the tithes. The “houses and churches” of the ballad were the titheable things on which he chose to live; the stones which would not crack were the parishioners, who signed an agreement to protect their modus; and the names and seals on the latter were the armour with spikes all about. The knight's weapon—nothing at all —refers to the payment for which Wortley finally settled: a rose a year, next to nothing. And the knight? A humble attorney-at-law.

Down 1 — Let it stand in tall grass, tethered. (4) 2 All points to dance and a film. (4-4) 3 Went around at speed, turned in and shot (6) 4 Run on legs! (6) 5 A study in the Middle East. (4) 6 Where beer is served in prison? (6,4) 9—Leader tough but very self-willed. (10) 13—Find bodies court actions for motorists? (8) 15— Old smocks in which miners work, for example. (6) 16— Two-thirds of this vessel is a vessel in itself. (6) 18—Put nothing in beer from bitter plant. (4) 20—Capital of Czechoslovakia? (4) (Solution Page 3)