On St George’s day we celebrate a national hero who famously despatched a dragon (or infamously, depending on your view of dragons). St George was first referenced by Bede in relation to Arthurian myth. Other sources claim he was a crusader.
Whichever it is his dragon slaying abilities seem to be a fairly fixed legend. I recall having school plays and general high jinks when I was of junior school age. In recent years celebrating our national saint day has fallen off but there does seem to be a resurgence
George and dragon are both echoed in traditional and ancient Sussex Mummer plays performed in pubs and churches (Sussex folk have their own priorities) over the 12 days of Christmas.
In Sussex, however, St George was not the only dragon slayer of legend.
There is also St Leonard after whom St Leonard’s, near Horsham, was named. (The dragon statue can be found in Horsham park.)
The legend tells of a great dragon with claws that could slice through rock, and a mouth that could engulf a village whole. It terrorised the nearby villages, destroying crops and livestock, and causing famines and plagues. A holy man named Leonard to killed the beast, and saved the people of Sussex. The villagers laughed at Leonard, asking how a man cloaked in rags and carrying a walking stick would have the strength to kill the beast. Not dismayed by their taunts and laughter, Leonard set of into the woods, in search of the cave where the beast dwelled.
Leonard found the beast asleep and woke it, saying “I am Leonard and I have come to slay you”.
The dragon laughed saying, “You would try to defeat me?”
Leonard drew his sword, and charged. The battle raged for hours, with both sides sustaining wounds until Leonard managed to gain the upper hand and stabbed the beast through the heart.
During the fight, however, Leonard had been injured, and where he bled, pearly white lily’s came into bloom. God asked Leonard (later revered as a saint) what he wanted as a reward for slaying the dragon. Leonard said he would like two things; that adders to no longer poison the nearby people (a reasonable request) and the blackbirds not to sing – an odder notion but apparently this was so that the forest was open to silent prayer.
I can’t say whether God granted his requests at the time – I have certainly heard blackbirds singing there – but the local people where so grateful that they named the forest after him, as an everlasting tribute to the man who slayed the dragon.
The legend also has a back-up myth – that of the St Leonards Dragon, seen in 1614 .
The text below is taken from a book called ‘The Harleian Miscellany: A Collection of Scarce, Curious and Entertaining Pamphlets and Tracts…. Selected from the Library of Edward Harley,
“True and Wonderfull. A Discourse relating a strange and monstrous Serpent (or Dragon) lately discovered, and yet living, to the great Annoyence and divers Slaughters both of Men and Cattell, by his strong and violent Poyson: In Sussex, two Miles from Horsam, in a Woode called St. Leonard’s Forrest, and thirtie Miles from London, this present Month of August, 1614. With the true Generation of Serpents.”
The 1614 pamphlet describes in some detail a monster-type creature “most terrible and noisome to the inhabitants thereabouts.”
These chap books were sensationalist forerunners of Victorian penny dreadfuls with subjects that included murders, monsters, and criminality. We shall never know if this was a publisher’s publicity stunt, or a creepy first-hand account! It was printed by John Trundle in London and its provenance is unknown, though some researchers feel it may have been a rumour put about by smugglers and highway robbers to keep people away from their forest hideouts.
Whatever the origins the chapbook speaks of sightings of the serpent in St Leonard’s forest, an area which is described as a “vast and unfrequented place, heathie, vaultie, full of unwholesome shades, and over-growne hollowes”
It names three witnesses to its presence, local residents named John Steele, Christopher Holder, and “a Widow Woman dwelling nere Faygate”.
According to these people, “this serpent (or dragon, as some call it) is reputed to be nine feete, or rather more, in length, and shaped almost in the forme of an axletree of a cart” and it is “discovered to have large feete, but the eye may be there deceived; for some suppose that serpents have no feete, but glide upon certain ribbes and scales”.
Witnesses to the serpent. (Lib 16806)
It goes on to describe the destruction of this creature…
“He will cast is venome about four rode [rod] from him, as by woefull experience it was proved on that bodies of a man and a woman comming that way, who afterwards were found dead, being poisoned and very much swelled, but not prayed upon.”
Whether there really was a ‘monstrous serpent’ terrorising Horsham is open to debate.
Whether the legends of St George and St Leonard arose from the same roots is something to consider.
But… what if there were now unfamiliar animals behind those sightings?
All I can say is for those living in Horsham, especially those roaming in St Leonard’s Forest, Beware…
Jan Edwards 
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