THE DIET OF DRAGONS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 439, 21 November 1947, Page 18

THE DIET OF DRAGONS

| Excerpts from a talk by |

JONATHEN

CURLING,

in the BBC s Third Programme

in the Gold Coast last year. We were on our way back from a week-end in Dahomey, the French Colony next door. Seven o'clock on a Sunday evening, at the end of August, and pitch dark (there is no double summer-time on _ the Coast), suddenly our head-lamps lit up a large creature crossing the road. Midway over this reddest and straightest of roads it paused, looked full at us with eyes like points of fire, turned and retired into the bush. "What was that?" I asked. It seemed a reptile about eight feet long, with a high humped back serrated like a saw. "Master, him see one dragon," said my driver, a black Presbyterian from Togoland, whose name" was Andrew. "This dragon no good master, he chop young piccans." (By which Andrew wished to convey that the saurian fed on piccaninnies or native children). Andrew’s brother, Boniface, a Jehovah’s Witness, just converted to Seventh Day Adventism, disagreed: "Them dragon chop tree and grass, them no chop piccans at all at all," he said in a rather disparaging voice. And he added, to justify: himself: "In my school I win two prizes for natural history." ] BEGAN my dossier on dragons

The diet of dragons exercised my mind for some time afterwards. I was then well away from reference books. But I seemed to remember a remark in Pliny about dragons eating lettuces. So perhaps Boniface was right in asserting that dragons were vegetarians, and not, as’ Andrew had said, carnivorous. Now I have had a chance to find out about the gastronomics of dragons, and other incidental information on their habits. Pliny did specify salads. "Dragons," he said, "look for lettuces in the spring, to cure them of a nausea which habitually affects them at that time of year." Aristotle, too, supports this theory. "When the dragon has consumed much fruit," he says, "it searchest out the bitter lettuce. Yea, it has been seen to do this." And a slight variant is given by Aelian, in his Nature of Animals. "Dragons suck the juice of wild chicory, because this affords them a sovereign remedy against indigestion."

Fruit, according to ancient writers, figures often on the dragon’s menu. But the dragon is "choosey" about the hands from which it takes the fruit. They must be chaste. For instance, some 20 miles out of Rome, along. the Appian Way, there lived an elderly dragon who was the pet of the people of Lanuvium. No trouble at all. Only once a year a young girl was chosen to enter the noisome cavern in which the dragon dweltand offer him some fruit. "The very basket trembled in the maiden’s hands," gloats the poet Propertius. The

villagers and the maiden knew that if the girl had not been quite so good as was hoped for, the dragon would abandon his fruitarian regime, and the young lady would not emerge again from his den. The Epirotes in Greece also kept a couple of tame dragons in a grove behind their Temple to Apollo. "Hither," some anonymous poetaster relates, "a sacred virgin comes alone, each autumn, and presents fruit to the monsters who are indubitably descended from the

Delphic python." Chinese dragons, I am told, are just as jealous about the morals of those who feed them. The azure dragon, for example. He is also something of a misogynist. In the Buddhist Testament, the Kwoh-Shi-Pu, the Azure Dragon is said "to accept sustenance from a chaste priest or candidate for the priesthood; if a nun or other female approach, then there is great lightning, thunder and tempest." (continued on next page) Sf

(continued from previous page) But don’t think that the diet of dragons is limited to lettuce, to chicory, to fruit-and to young persons with a past. Walt Disney’s reluctant dragon drank tea. you remember. But the preferred beverage of dragons is elephant’s blood. An obscure classical naturalist called Onesicritus Astypalaeus explains: "The blood of the. elephant being remarkably cold in the parching heats of the solstice, it is sought.as a refreshing

delicacy, with keen avidity, by the Indian dragon. When the elephant approaches for the purpose of browsing on the young branches of a tree, the dragon (having previously concealed itself in the foliage and secured a hold

by entangling the boughs in its tail) leaps on to the elephant, tears out his eyes, neatly ties a knot in his trunk and sips cool and soothing blood from the vacant eye sockets." The blood of an elephant. does not satisfy the © pah dragon of northern

China. It gorges elephants whole, and ejects the bones after three years. It is also very fond of _ swallow’s_ flesh. Phrygian dragons, too, are bird lovers. They have been known to stand near the River Rhyndacus, with the neck gently extended, the mouth agape, attracting sea- -gulls which, "drawn by some strange fascination, glide down the ghastly throat into the reptile’s seething guts." So says Philostratus, one of the first reliable zoologists to deal in dragons. He distinguishes two chief species; the mountain dragon and the marsh dragon. The mountain dragon has a@ moderate crest, that lengthens with age, and a saffron-coloured beard. The marsh dragon has no crest and very seldom a beard. If it does have one, it is deep heliotrope. A "draconologist" called Harris, who published his Collection of Voyages in 1764, has much to say about the two varieties. "The mountain dragon," he maintains, "is the largest of all, and covered with scales as resplendent as burnished gold. It has a kind of beard hanging from its lower jaw, the eyebrows bushy, and very exactly arched; its aspect the most fnghtful that can be imagined, and the cry loud and shrill. The crest is of bright yellow, and’ there is a protuberance on the head like a burning coal.’ Our friend Harris agrees with the Latin writer Strabo that the marsh dragon has no crest nor any rising upon its head, and it differs from the mountain sort in that its scales are not gilded, but silvery and fish-like. If you consult the 52-volume 16th Century Chinese medical encyclopaedia, the Pan Tsao Kang Mu, you will find the mountain dragon described as, the largest of all scaled reptiles, having the head of a camel, the horns of a stag,

the eyes of a hare, the ears of a bull, the neck of a snake, the belly of an iguanodon, the claws of an eagle, and the paws of a tiger. "On each: side -of its mouth are flame-hued whiskers, and beneath its chin a pearl. Under its throat the scales are reversed, and on top of its head is the poh shan, which others call the ligneous foot-rule. A dragon without a foot-rule cannot ascend into the skies." "Grass Groweth Upon Their Backs" Indeed, no country has been without its dragons. In Greece, the drakone, in Rome the draco, in Persia the azhdaha, in Egypt the tiamat, in China the kiaolung. But undoubtedly India and Ethiopia produce the best and biggest dragons. "Indian dragons are so vast," says Artemidorus, "that grass groweth upon their backs." And Megasthenes adds, "In India dragons- grow to such an immense size as to swallow stags and bulls. Pliny, again referring to the dfagon’s greed for elephant’s blood, mentions that Indian dragons are so huge that they can swallow all the blood at a single sitting. "Consequently," he tells us, "the elephant, being drained of its blood, falls to the earth exhausted; while the dragon, intoxicated with the draught,

is crushed beneath its prey, and so shares its fate." A little research will show you that the Ethiopian dragon, though not so large, was more deadly. According to an early globe-trot-ter, John Leo, it was thick about the middle, but had a slen-

der neck and tail, "so that its motion was but slow." Villagers in the mountain districts of Abyssinia most infested with dragons-avoided venturing far after nightfall. "For," says Strabo, "after sunset the flying Ethiopian dragon lets fall

drops of sweat which occasion the skins of persons who are not on their guard to putrefy." Lucan invokes them in his Pharsalia, "O Dragon of Ethiop, thou burstest asunder the most formidable of oxen, nor is the tusked mammoth safe from thy folds on account of its bulk." Several specimens of the Abyssinian dragons were obtained, and in the City Library of Constantinople, Ignatius tells us, was exhibited the large intestine of one of these beasts, a hundred and twenty feet long. On it were written the Iliad and the Odyssey in letters of gold. It was a straying Ethiopian dragon that the Roman general Regulus encountered in the Punic War near the River Bagrada. He brought flame-throw-ers, giant catapults and other engines of war into action against it. And on his return to Rome, Regulus was decreed (continued on next page)

DRAGONS AND THEIR DIET

(continued from previous page) a hero’s ovation for his successful campaign against this dragon. Its skin and jaws were preserved as trophies in the Capitol, where Pliny examined them. Desirable Blood Sport Great Britain, too, can contributed its quota of dragon lore — the Lambton "worm" and Beowulf’s dragon that "buckled like a bow" and King Arthur’s scaly monégster (an albino in fact) that "swoughed" on him from the sky. Less well known perhaps is the dragon of Wantley, which Mr. More Hall killed

(near Wharncliffe in Yorkshire) in a regrettably unsporting manner. Clad in spiked armour, he descended into the well where the dragon nested, and kicked the monster in the mouth. Berkshire disputes with Syria the claim to be the site of St, George’s triumph. It seems that among saints dragon-slaying was once .considered socially desirable as a blood-sport, rather like fox-hunting in other ages to the now landless gentry. St. George was just one of many in the hagiological hue and cry after dragons. Others who did them to death were St. Philip in Phrygia, St. -Keyne in Cornwall, St. Romain at Rouen, St.. Martha at Aix, St. Cada in Brittany, St. Clement at Metz; St. Michael, St. Margaret, St. Maudet and one solitary Pope, Sylvester. Canonised Christians would certainly have subscribed little to a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Dragons. In the pagan world, too, the poor dragon was equally the prey of knights and heroes, from Hercules, Perseus and Cadmud to Lancelot, Tristram, Sigurd and Siegfried. Domesticated Dragons Of course, there are good. as well as bad dragons, and domesticated dragons, too, like those harnessed -to the aerial chariot that served Medea in her flight from Jason. Athanasius Kircher tells us in his Mundus Subterraneus‘ the story of a dragon domesticated in spite of itself. It seems that a man of Lucerne was climbing Mount Pilatus. Suddenly he tumbled through a hole into a cavern that contained a mountain dragon and its mate. They were hibernating, like tortoises, and during the six months that he shared their home, their unwilling guest came to no harm. But abstinence was the order of the darkling day. Not a single stalk of wild chicory, not the core of an apple, not even a maiden’s thigh-bene was to be seen in the cave. The monsters merely licked moisture off the rocky walls of their home-and the fallen mountaineer kept himself fighting fit by following their example. At last the early spring sunshine began to filter through the cracks in the roof of the cave. The dragons Tan to and fro, flapping their wings and testing their pectoral muscles. The man from Lucerne detached his belt. With it he secured himself to the tail of the female dragon. Sure enough, one bright morning in May the dragons took flight-and the adventurous alpinist was safely brought back to the ‘upper world without sacrificing a single bone. But the sudden change-over to a solid Swiss cuisine, after his dewy diet in the recesses of Mount Pilatus, was too much for his digestion-and he died within three,weeks of his escape. He left all his possessions to the Church and a tablet recalling his gratitude to the dragons was erected at the Ecclesiastical College of Saint Leodegaris at Lucerne. :