Hypnogoria: Hypnogoria Halloween Advent Calendar - Door 18

Not far from Haggleton is the village of Fring, which boasts a lovely little church which dates back to at least mediaeval times. It has many fascinating features of the antiquarian but the most prominent is the dragon that coils on the pillar between the big church doors. And what’s more, this is a carving with a tale...

Local folks say that the carved dragon that adorns the column between the double doors of St. Bartolph’s commemorates a fearsome beast. This monstrous wyrm, according to local legend, stalked Thistle Forest, scoffing down livestock, ruining crops and poisoning waterways with its venomous breath. So toxic were its exhalations that anyone who approached it would fall down dead, and hence while many would be heroes attempted to slay the monster, none actually got close enough even to land a blow on the beast.

However where assorted knights failed, the local blacksmith would triumph - for he forged an extra long lance which he mounted on a barrow fortified with sheets of steel. He tracked the beast to the top of the nearby Ringstone Hill, and charged the beast with his armoured contraption. The long length of the lance and the steel shielding protected the canny smith from the worm’s noxious breath, and with one mighty lunge he impaled the scaly horror to a tree. However unusually for dragon legends, the attack didn’t slay the beast, for although the monster was gravely wounded and pinned fast to the trunk, due to its poison breath, no one dared get close enough to finish it off. Instead the villagers left the beast impaled there, and after a week or so the monster starved to death. Allegedly the villagers then skinned the monster and its hide was hung up as a trophy in the church.

But unfortunately for us all, the alleged dragonskin vanished many years ago. It is usually claimed that it was burnt at some point in the 19th century when a new vicar took up residence and objected to the now mouldering hide hanging up in his church. However if you were to get talking to the old boys in The Brown Trout, you might hear a different tale.

For according to the greybearded gaffers, the skin is still in the church, but is now safely bricked up in a secret spot in the walls. This was done at the end of the 18th century allegedly, after an attempted theft. It is said that a gentleman in Ashlington, some say he was antiquarian, others a zoologist, heard that the local church displayed a piece of dragonhide, and made an offer to buy it. However despite the sum offered being very generous, the vicar and villagers decided that they could not sell this ancient piece of their heritage, and so declined the offer.

Obviously the proposed sale of the dragon-hide was the talk of the town, and news of it unfortunately reached a rather unscrupulous pair of ears. Jonas Herd was a down-at-heel market trader, and his fortunes were so poor due to the fact that he knowingly sold poor produce and often swindled his customers on the deals. In fact he had been recently barred from trading in the local market after being caught several times using rigged scales to weigh out his dubious wares.

Now when the money-grasping Herd got wind of this generous offer for the dragonskin and having an axe to grind with the locals, he hatched a seemingly cunning plan. He would break into the church, steal the skin and sell it himself to that fellow in Ashlington. Thus rendering him both a tidy profit and some petty revenge into the bargain. And so, one foggy night in October, he packed up a bag of tools and set to work...

But alas as is so often the case, crime goes hand-in-hand with stupidity, and Herd’s greed certainly outweighed his intelligence. To begin with, rather than selecting the rear door or one of the back windows, Herd decided to break in through the main double doors. Quite how he was planning to get inside is something of a mystery, but whatever he was attempting went badly wrong.

For in the dim watches of that misty night, the peace of the village was shattered by dreadful screaming, and the roused villagers discovered Herd, covered in blood, in a dead faint on the village green. His break-in had resulted in a terrible accident, and the greedy little fellow had managed to sever one of his own hands. A doctor was called but to no avail, and Herd died from blood loss.

Quite how the accident occurred is something of a mystery. Some folks claim he was attempting to saw the doors off their hinges, while others reckon he was trying to cut out the big iron locks. And it is true that both of these foolhardy approaches to burglary could explain how the despicable Herd had managed to lop off one of his own hands. However, as the old boys will tell you with a sly grin, no one, but no one, could explain quite why the severed hand was found clamped in the little dragon’s jaws...