St. George’s Day and Three Perspectives

The most famous tale associated with St. George, as patron saint of England and champion for Christianity, is of him slaying the dragon which was terrorising the city of Silene in the province of Libya, on the day when the king’s own daughter, the Princess Sabra, was to be sacrificed to it. As the princess was being led to her doom, the passing knight, learning of her dreadful fate, determined to slay the dragon and save her. However, the dragon’s scales were like steel and his spear simply broke into pieces,; he could only defeat it in the end by aiming at a small patch of vulnerable skin. The grateful inhabitants held a huge feast in his honour, and the king offered him his daughter in marriage. St. George caused all the people, including the king, to be baptised into Christianity.

The story of St. George and the Dragon comes from the Golden Legend (a popular 13th-century collection of saints’ lives by Jacopo da Voragine). In the Libyan city of Silene, a dragon (sometimes described as plague-bearing) terrorizes the people, who feed it sheep and then their children to appease it. When the king’s daughter is chosen as the next sacrifice, she is led out to the monster. Saint George rides by, learns of her plight, attacks the dragon, wounds it (often non-fatally), and then instructs the princess to tie her girdle (belt or sash) around the creature’s neck. Miraculously, the dragon becomes tame and follows her “like a little dog on a leash” back to the city, where the people eventually kill it after converting to Christianity. nationalgallery.org.uk

The narrative has pre-Christian origins (Jason and Medea, Perseus and Andromeda, Typhon, etc.),^[1] and is recorded in various saints’ lives prior to its attribution to Saint George specifically.

Not my best side, I’m afraid.
The artist didn’t give me a chance to
Pose properly, and as you can see,
Poor chap, he had this obsession with
Triangles, so he left off two of my
Feet. I didn’t comment at the time
(What, after all, are two feet
To a monster?) but afterwards
I was sorry for the bad publicity.
Why, I said to myself, should my conqueror
Be so ostentatiously beardless, and ride
A horse with a deformed neck and square hoofs?
Why should my victim be so
Unattractive as to be inedible,
And why should she have me literally
On a string? I don’t mind dying
Ritually, since I always rise again,
But I should have liked a little more blood
To show they were taking me seriously.

The Princess: The King’s Daughter

II

It’s hard for a girl to be sure if
She wants to be rescued. I mean, I quite
Took to the dragon. It’s nice to be
Liked, if you know what I mean. He was
So nicely physical, with his claws
And lovely green skin, and that sexy tail,
And the way he looked at me,
He made me feel he was all ready to
Eat me. And any girl enjoys that.
So when this boy turned up, wearing machinery,
On a really dangerous horse, to be honest
I didn’t much fancy him. I mean,
What was he like underneath the hardware?
He might have acne, blackheads or even
Bad breath for all I could tell, but the dragon–
Well, you could see all his equipment
At a glance. Still, what could I do?
The dragon got himself beaten by the boy,
And a girl’s got to think of her future.

III

St. George

I have diplomas in Dragon
Management and Virgin Reclamation.
My horse is the latest model, with
Automatic transmission and built-in
Obsolescence. My spear is custom-built,
And my prototype armour
Still on the secret list. You can’t
Do better than me at the moment.
I’m qualified and equipped to the
Eyebrow. So why be difficult?
Don’t you want to be killed and/or rescued
In the most contemporary way? Don’t
You want to carry out the roles
That sociology and myth have designed for you?
Don’t you realize that, by being choosy,
You are endangering job-prospects
In the spear- and horse-building industries?
What, in any case, does it matter what
You want? You’re in my way.