ST. MARTHA & the TARASQUE

SOME FOLKS SAY that this tale is about the same woman who was visited by Jesus in her home near Jerusalem, the sister of Lazarus. Other accounts place this story several centuries later, featuring a young local maiden whose only association with the biblical woman was to share the same name. Either way, this legend is rooted in the southern coast of France, near the Mediterranean Sea.

As the story begins, the King of Nerluc presided over a countryside being terrorized by a dragon called the Tarasque. This infamous creature was described as having six short legs, teeth as sharp as swords and a scaly tail. The King sent his bravest knights to attack the beast, yet none could prevail against this hideous monster.

Enter Martha. It is said that she first encountered the Tarasque while it was still in the process of eating a man. She threw holy water on the dragon and held up a cross, charming the beast with hymns and prayers. According to the legend, the vicious monster was instantly rendered docile and submissive as Martha tied her belt around its neck and led the creature back to the villagers. The townsfolk were frightened by the sight of the approaching monster and killed it, although the dragon is said to have offered no resistance. Saint Martha preached her message of Christianity to the people of the village, who were so moved by her message and her conquering their adversary that they renamed their village Tarascon.

Martha stayed in Tarascon, living a life of Christian piety and prayerful devotion, and was buried there. Her crypt lies in the Eglise Collégiale Ste Marthe ("St. Martha's Collegiate Church"), a local destination for tourists and pilgrims. The town holds an annual festival every June commemorating St. Martha's victory over the Tarasque.

This story of St. Martha is one of many popular tales included in the Golden Legend which was published around A.D.1260 and was something of a medieval bestseller. The storyline, the otherwise-unconquerable evil beast subdued by a woman, is a familiar plot from the ancient Mesopotamian stories of Enkidu to the modern tale of King Kong.

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Monsters in the Lake

SOME FOLKS SAY that the most famous of all sea serpents is the Loch Ness Monster. In 1933, a London resident named George Spicer told a reporter from the Inverness Courier that he had been driving around the lake when he and his wife saw “a dragon or pre-historic animal” crossing the road with an animal in its mouth. When the story appeared in the Courier, other accounts began to appear about the “monster fish,” or “sea serpent” or “dragon” in the lake. The most famous photo of the head and neck of the Loch Ness Monster (shown right) was published the following year in 1934.

The earliest recorded references to a monstrous creature in the Scottish lake, however, pre-date these events. The life of St. Columba in the 7th century contains a miraculous tale of a confrontation with a predatory lake monster in Loch Ness. Sightings and skeptics continue to fuel the debate, and the tourist trade, in the Scottish Highlands to this day.

But Loch Ness is not the only lake that claims a resident monster. Lake Champlain lies between the states of New York and Vermont. Local sightings of a lake monster, similar in description to the Loch Ness Monster, have been reported since Samuel Champlain and the early explorers came to the region. Once called the Monster of Lake Champlain, the creature is now popularly referred to as “Champ” and a successful tourist trade has grown up in Port Henry, New York where local merchants offer coffee mugs and t-shirts celebrating their most unusual and legendary resident.

Although skeptics would be inclined to dismiss “Champ” as an imitation to capitalize on the commercial success of the Loch Ness Monster, this rationalization does not explain the historic accounts of the sightings of a great creature emerging from the deep waters, including an attack on a boat of fishermen in 1939 near Rouses Point.

The Native Americans in the region, the Ojibwa and Algonquin, also have tales of a great monster within the waters. Called Missipissy, or Mishipizhiw (sometimes Mitchipissy), the creature in these tales is described as a great sea serpent that guards the sturgeons as they hibernate through the winter in the Great Lakes.

A similar sea-serpent type of creature is Ogopogo, who is reported to live in the Okanagan Lake area of British Columbia. There are underground caverns near Rattlesnake Island that are considered to be the home of Ogopogo. Similar tales of a vast lake monster in the British Columbia region call the beast Naitaka. It is not clear if there are two names for a single monster, or two monsters.

While skeptics continue to seek to discredit individual sightings, the widespread reports between disparate cultures and regions in different times suggest that the phenomenon probably has (or had) some natural basis fueling these legends of monsters. All of these tales are centered on cold water lakes - a pesky fact which discourages the theory that these are plesiosaurs that somehow escaped extinction, since plesiosaurs inhabited warm, tropical waters. Even today, efforts to prove or disprove the existence of these creatures (as well as attempts to explain, describe or categorize them) often end with the conclusions the researchers held at the start.

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Mokele-Mbembe

SOME FOLKS SAY that there are exotic reptile-like creatures alive today in remote reaches of the modern nation of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a large central African nation situated on the equator. The land is hot and humid; the forests are dense. The largest swamp in the world, the Likouala Swamp, is located there and even today is largely unexplored. Through the Democratic Republic of the Congo flows the Congo River, also sometimes called the Zaire River, to the Atlantic Ocean. To the east lies the tiny nation of Rwanda, best known in modern culture for its 1994 tribal genocide; to the north, the Sudan which has also seen widespread violence in recent years. From intense tropical heat to local warring parties, with ominous swamps and dense jungles, many factors have conspired to keep this area beyond the bounds of biologists and adventurers.

The first European to venture into this area was the French missionary A. L. Bonaventure in 1776. In his detailed, lengthy notes about the local plants, animals and human settlements, Bonaventure tells of seeing abnormally large animal footprints with marks of claws. He did not use the terms "dinosaur" or "prehistoric" as these words were not yet invented - this terminology was introduced many years later.

These over-sized footprints with claws were also documented in the Twentieth Century by many later explorers, including an expedition from the Smithsonian Institute. Although current presentations of these events generally prefer to attribute features more like a brontosaurus, which aren't traditionally portrayed with claws, the earliest descriptions include long necks and alligator-like tails, brown or reddish-brown skin without any trace of hair, three claws on each of four feet and a horn on its head. Most eyewitness accounts tell of a creature 15 to 30 feet long. There are similar tales of such creatures in the region using the names Groot Slang and Iriz Ima. Sometimes the names Jago-Nini and Amali are also used. Yet all the descriptions are remarkably alike.

What can it be? Popular images indicate that these native tales are about a benign brontosaurus munching blissfully on the jungle vegetation, just out of view of the explorers' cameras. Local legends suggest a very different creature, one that resents and attacks humans that intrude upon its habitat. Some indistinct photos have been taken by various expeditions, but to date there is no compelling evidence to support these reports and sightings of Mokele-Mbembe.

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HORNED DRAGONS OF THE AMERICAS

SOME FOLKS SAY that the Native American cultures had little contact with each other across the great distances of the New World. Yet many cultures of the native peoples of the Americas had legends and stories of horned dragons or similarly described beasts. In these disparate cultures, the creatures are described with remarkable similarity; a long, serpentine body of immense length, a large head with huge jaws, and horns (usually two) atop its head. In Mexico, its name was Hoga. In parts of South America, the natives called the creature Andura. Particularly in the region that is present-day Canada, the creature was considered more or less benign if given a wide berth, although some malevolence is recounted in the folktales. The traditions of the Shawnee and the Sauk tribes caution that young women are of particular interest to these creatures, and maidens should be especially circumspect in avoiding contact with them.

Some stories tell of humans making solemn pacts with these dragons to wield the magical powers that the creatures’ blood contained. In each instance, the would-be magician gets some unpleasant come-uppances. In the folklore of the Huron people, one man named Tijaiha sacrifices his mother-in-law to the great beast to ask the beast for the power to kill his enemies. But before you decide that is a good plan, here's the rest of the story - Tijaiha is forced to flee and his own tribe ends up killing him. In another legend, the sorcerer cooked and ate one of these horned dragons, only to turn into a water serpent himself and to this day is the guardian of the Missouri River.

The Pueblo, Hope and Zuni tribes of the region now called the Southwest United States revered these dragons and painted them on pottery and included their images in many important ceremonies.

However, some of these horned dragons were dangerous to humans. In Southern Ontario, the native people avoided a cavern close to the shore of Lake Ontario, where legend told that a mighty horned dragon swallowed the great Iroquois hero Gun-No-Da-Ya. In Iroquois legends, the storms on the Great Lakes were the result of the dragon’s anger.

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The Kazan Dragon

SOME FOLKS SAY that a "Zilant" is not really a dragon, but a winged snake-like creature closely related to dragons. For the residents of the Tatarstan region in Russia, the Zilant on their flag is known as the "Kazan Dragon."

There was once a young wife living in the city of Old Kazan in what is now present day Tatarstan. Every day she had to fetch water from the Kazanka River. One day she had the opportunity to meet the local khan. She complained to him that the city was poorly situated and it would be much better for everyone to move the city to Zilantaw Hill on the banks of the Kazanka River; better for him because the hill provided a more defensible position, and better for the residents who could draw their water from the nearby river more easily. The khan agreed with her and ordered the entire city moved.

However, Zilantaw Hill was infested with snakes; little snakes, big snakes, snakes as big and stout as logs, thousands of snakes that tormented the villagers and infested their homes. The most fearsome of all, the leader of the snakes, was the wicked zilant who terrorized the residents of the new village, eating their livestock, pets, and even small children.

The khan sent for his wisest wizard to ask what was to be done. The wizard told the khan to gather a large pile of straw and wood just outside the city. The next spring, the snakes came out of their winter burrows and slithered into the straw pile, which was warm against the crisp air of the early Russian spring. Then, at the signal from the wizard, a knight-errant came out from the village and set fire to the straw and wood pile, burning the snakes. It is said that, even in their deaths, the snakes were still a plague to the villagers as their burning stink overpowered many people and horses.

But the zilant escaped the fire. In one version of the tale, the zilant flees to the nearby Quaban Lakes where he lives in an underwater kingdom beneath the lake and from there, from time to time, wreaks vengeance on the citizens of the town. In another version of the story, the zilant confronts the knight who set the fire. In a great battle, both are slain; the zilant cuts the knight into six pieces before succumbing to the poison on the knight's pike.

We do know that the zilant wound up on the flag of Kazan. It's not clear why folks would put their nemesis on their flag. Nevertheless, Kazan is the sixth largest city in Russia and the capital city of the Republic of Tatarstan with a population of over a million people.

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Fafnir, Dragon of the Opera

Some folks say that there are few people with mild opinions about opera; that most folks are passionate about opera, either loving it or loathing it. Richard Wagner (1813-1883) wrote a famous opera called “The Ring of the Nibelung.” Here is an opera that is sure to inspire strong reactions - the piece is about 15 hours long! Performances of the “Ring” are usually split across four nights, allowing those who love opera to attend all week long while providing for easy escapes for the opera loathers. The Libretto (storyline) of the “Ring of the Nibelung” is based on an Old Teutonic legend about a magic gold ring and the greed to possess it. As with most legends, there are several variants depending on who is retelling the story. Wagner himself used several disparate sources to weave together the story of the “Ring.”

In the Teutonic legend, the brothers were named Fafnir and Regin - while in the opera their names are Alberich and Mime - sons of King Hreidmar. When the god Loki accidentally killed Otr, the third brother, the ring was given to the Dwarf King Hreidmar (along with a grand sum of gold) as "blood money." The Ring carried a curse that it would bring its owner great wealth and great misfortune. Fafnir coveted the Ring and conspired with his brother Regin to steal the Ring and the gold treasure from their father. Fafnir killed his father and then, not wishing to share the treasure with his brother, ran off into the wilderness and hid in a great cave. There he lay down on his hoard of gold and metamorphosed into a great hideous dragon.

In the legend, Regin (still seeking to gain the treasure for himself) persuaded Sigurd to kill Fafnir the dragon. In the opera, the young hero was named Siegfried. According to Regin’s plan, he directed Sigurd / Siegfried to dig a trench in front of the cave wherein lay the great dragon Fafnir. In the morning, when Fafnir came out to drink, his path would take him across this trench where Sigurd / Siegfried would conceal himself with his magic sword. Sigurd / Siegfried would strike at the dragon as he passed overhead. Regin secretly hoped that both the hero and the vile dragon will be killed in the confrontation and he will be able to claim the gold and the Ring for himself alone.

The Teutonic Gods intervened again when Odin came in a vision to Sigurd and warned him about the burning properties of dragon’s blood, that Regin knew of this danger yet did not tell Sigurd, and to dig a second pit to crawl into to escape contact with the dragon’s blood. So Sigurd dug a second ditch, as he had been told, then waited for the dragon to emerge. In the cool of the dawn, the massive dragon emerged and the ground shook beneath his feet as he lumbered towards the river. Sigurd felt a sharp pang of fear when he saw how immense the dragon truly was, but he hid in his trench and thrust his sword deep into the underbelly of the colossal body as the dragon passed above him. As the toxic blood gushed forth, Sigurd rolled to safety into the second pit. Fafnir bellowed and writhed in pain, but the wound was fatal.

As the great beast lay dying, Fafnir asked Sigurd his name and who sent him to kill such a terrifying dragon. Fafnir figured out that it was his own brother Regin who plotted his death, and he knew that Regin would also cause Sigurd's death. Sigurd mocked the dying dragon that he would take all of the dragon’s treasure from within the cave, now that the dragon could no longer guard it from him. Although Fafnir told Sigurd that taking the treasure will mean his death, Sigurd remained defiant that all men must face death someday.

After the dragon’s death, although Regin was astonished and disappointed to see Sigurd had survived, outwardly he greeted the young hero with great congratulations and praise for his noble deed. He directed the champion to cut out the dragon’s heart and cook it over a fire that Regin might eat it in honor of the glorious deeds of the day. Sigurd built a cooking fire and cut the heart from the dragon’s chest with his powerful sword. As he was preparing this unusual dish, he burned his hand on the fire. Inadvertently, Sigurd licked his hand and in so doing tasted the blood and juices that ran from the dragon’s heart. Instantly, the taste of the dragon’s blood endowed Sigurd with the understanding of all languages, including the language of the birds. The birds told him to eat the heart of the dragon himself and become the wisest of all men. He also learned from the birds that Regin intended to kill him and, drawing his sword once more, he slew Regin with a single fierce blow.

The “Ring of the Nibelung” opera further follows the fate of Siegfried, including his own betrayal and death, and the continuing mischief of the Ring in the hands of his lover Brünnhilde. These themes are familiar to contemporary readers; the One Ring of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” invokes the same corrupting powers, the same degradation and loss of humanity for Gollum while he struggles with his greed to possess the Ring. In “The Chronicles of Narnia,” C.S. Lewis includes a character Eustace Scrubb who turns into a dragon due to his greediness over a cursed treasure.

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Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from all of us at The Folklore Store and thanks for a great year in 2010