Beast
The Mordiford Dragon
Fed on milk, it grew. Then it wanted more than milk.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- Norman church by a medieval bridge
- Legend from
- 17th-century record
- Tone
- Light-hearted
A little girl kept a pet in the woods and fed it milk. It grew.
Until the early 1800s a painted dragon covered the west wall of Holy Rood church at Mordiford, near where the Lugg meets the Wye. In 1670 Thomas Blount recorded its verse: the monster that ranged the woods was slain in Eastwood 'by Garstone's hand'. The best-loved version says a little girl, Maud, found a tiny dragon in the woods, took it home and secretly fed it on milk. It grew huge and began eating livestock, then people, though it never harmed her. A condemned criminal hid in a cider barrel by the river and shot it through the heart, but its dying breath burned him.