Folklore of Yorkshire by Kai Roberts Read Free Book Online Page B

on Cringle Moor in Cleveland there is a tumulus known as Drake Howe, the name of which is thought to derive from the Old English term for a dragon. There is also a legend that treasure is buried within the mound. However, no surviving narrative explicitly connects a dragon with the treasure, and as Chapter 11 shows, associations between ancient earthworks and treasure are not at all uncommon in Yorkshire, so this may have nothing to do with a dragon at all. Attempts have also been made to connect the legend of a ‘Golden Cradle’ buried in the earthworks of Castle Hill above Huddersfield to a dragon suggested by the nearby toponym ‘Wyrmcliffe’.
    However, as so many toponyms have been subject to centuries of consonantal drift, it is difficult to say with confidence to what it originally referred and a great deal of wishful thinking has been exhibited by amateur philologists over the years. An example of the controversial nature of such speculation can be seen in Reverend H.N. Pobjoy’s attempt to derive the name of Blakelaw, a vanished hamlet that once stood on Hartshead Moor in West Yorkshire, from the Old English Dracanhlawe , meaning ‘Mound of the Dragon’. He sought to connect this with vague rumours of a dragon legend he’d heard amongst the locals of his parish. Yet another, arguably more authoritative source, prefers to give it as Blachelana , which has the prosaic translation of ‘black hill’.
    Where detailed dragon legends do survive in Yorkshire, they all conform to a single type. These beasts are invariably voracious and destructive, but do not guard treasure. Nor does it take theft to incite them to terrorise the surrounding countryside – rather such aggression is intrinsic to their nature. Furthermore, whilst Anglo-Saxon dragons were usually located in wild, remote and ancient places – Beowulf’s dragon resides in ‘a steep stone burial mound high on the heath – in most surviving local legends a dragon’s habitat is typically located on the borders of civilisation and their lairs close to a settlement.
    Jacqueline Simpson also observes that dragon tales are ‘characteristic of either coastal areas or of river valleys, and preferably of areas where hills are fairly low’. This is especially true of Yorkshire, where the majority of narratives are concentrated in the fertile, woody and relatively low-lying areas of the county, particularly Cleveland, the Vale of York and the South Yorkshire Coalfield. There are no dragons to be found in the heart of the Pennines, although what this geographical distribution says about the origin, spread and function of such legends remains unclear.
    It must equally be noted that most Yorkshire dragons fail to conform to the image of a dragon as it is understood today. Although their breath is often noisome and poisonous, it is not fiery and perhaps more significantly, some examples may be described as possessing wings, but they are never reported to fly. They more typically resemble a gigantic snake – coiling up in their den and crawling along the ground, often killing their victims in the manner of a boa constrictor. Indeed, in many cases the beasts are referred to as ‘worms’ or ‘serpents’ in the original sources of the narrative.
    Similarly, these monsters rarely capture or feast on young maidens as in the legend of St George and its ilk. The only place in Yorkshire with which this motif is associated is Handale. More often they simply exhibit such an insatiable appetite as to place a serious burden on the neighbouring farmers’ livelihoods. Kellington’s dragon devoured flocks of sheep, Wantley’s stole cattle and tore up trees, whilst Sexhow’s demanded the milk of nine cows daily. Meanwhile, at Filey – in one of the most original dragon legends to have emerged from Yorkshire – the dragon’s unappeasable appetite is successfully used against it.
    The most famous and well-developed dragon legend in Yorkshire is that of the Dragon of