The Dragon of Mordiford was said to reside just outside the

Herefordshire Herefordshire () is a county in the West Midlands of England, governed by Herefordshire Council. It is bordered by Shropshire to the north, Worcestershire to the east, Gloucestershire to the south-east, and the Welsh counties of Monmouthsh ...

village of Mordiford, at the confluence of the

River Lugg The River Lugg ( cy, Afon Llugwy) rises near Llangynllo in Radnorshire, Wales. It flows through the border town of Presteigne and then through Herefordshire, England, where it meets its main tributary, the River Arrow, to the south of Leomi ...

and the River Wye.

Differing Accounts

There are multiple accounts of the dragon that have it take different forms.

Maud and the Wyvern

One version of the legend explains that the dragon – a

wyvern A wyvern ( , sometimes spelled wivern) is a legendary winged dragon that has two legs. The wyvern in its various forms is important in heraldry, frequently appearing as a mascot of schools and athletic teams (chiefly in the United States, Un ...

in this account – was found by a little girl from Mordiford named Maud, who had desperately wanted a pet. While wandering the forest adjacent to her village one day, Maud had found a small bright creature with a snout and small, translucent wings prowling around a small group of flowers. Excited by the creature, the girl took it home to show to her parents. Immediately her mother and father realized it was a wyver and commanded Maud to take it back to where she had found it because it would cause trouble in the village. The indignant Maud pretended to obey but instead hid the infant dragon in a safe place in the forest. There she nurtured her "pet" with milk, playing with it and watching it try to fly. The dragon grew vastly each month, eventually taking on an emerald hue and developing thick, powerful wings. In the legend, after reaching maturity, the dragon's hunger could not be satisfied with milk anymore—it now had an enormous hunger for meat. Soon, it began to plague the local farms, killing their livestock, especially cows and sheep, and farmers were intolerant. These men tried to stop the beast by extermination, but it soon feasted upon them, finding human flesh delicious. Maud implored the beast during her visits afterward to stop its rampage. Still the beast, now fully mature, killed everything in its way except for Maud, its only friend. The townspeople in the tale grew exhausted of the constant attacks from the dragon and desperate, sought help from the noblemen of Mordiford. A man from the local Garstone family set out in full armour to end the beast's life forever, finding the beast nearly camouflaged into the forest's many plants. The dragon almost instantly released a blast of fire, Garstone barely deflecting it. He aimed a lance at the wyvern's throat, releasing it and fully penetrating through the dragon. Maud, insane with rage and grief, burst from the surrounding forest and came to mourn her past pet.

The Convict and the Serpent

In another account, the Mordiford Dragon was more serpentine and lived in Haugh Wood for some years. The poisonous creature terrorized the area to the point where it decreased the working population of the town. Eventually a local convict offered to kill the creature if he were given a pardon. The pardon was granted, and the convict acquired a bow, arrows, and a large cider barrel. He then went to the

where the serpent drank its water and concealed himself in the barrel. Once the dragon arrived at the river, the convict shot an arrow through a hole in the barrel, piercing the creature's heart. But as the dragon died, its poison flowed into the barrel, killing the convict as well.

Legacy and Basis

The story of the dragon remains part of Mordiford's culture: it is continually mentioned in modern records of the town. A portrait of the dragon – depicting it as a green wyvern – appeared on the wall of the main church of the village until the church was repaired and renovated in 1811. Supposedly it was removed because a

rector Rector (Latin for the member of a vessel's crew who steers) may refer to: Style or title *Rector (ecclesiastical), a cleric who functions as an administrative leader in some Christian denominations *Rector (academia), a senior official in an edu ...

considered it "heathenish." A reproduction of this painting of the dragon is displayed inside the church. Some verses from 1670 refer to the dragon in the Mordiford church:

This is the true Effigy of that strange Prodigious monster which our woods did range In Eastwood it by Garston's hand was slaine, A truth which old mythologists maintaine

The name Garston corresponds to a local well-to-do family – one that the local parish records note that made charitable bequests to the local church in the 16th and 17th centuries. Paul Newman speculates that the slayer's identity as a convict was added to the serpent version of the tale to make it into a "local villain-makes-good story." Supposedly, as late as 1875, a pair of old women could be seen killing

newt A newt is a salamander in the subfamily Pleurodelinae. The terrestrial juvenile phase is called an eft. Unlike other members of the family Salamandridae, newts are semiaquatic, alternating between aquatic and terrestrial habitats. Not all aqua ...

s from the River Lugg, believing that the animals were "the seed of the dragon" and that if they weren't ritually sacrificed, the dragon would reappear and wreak havoc once again. A local group has created the Mordiford Dragon Trail, which tells the story of the Maud and the Dragon with the help of statues on a 1.4 mile walk around the village. The Mordiford Dragon Trail opened in 2022 and begins on The Lower Green with an information board.

References

Sources

* *{{cite book , title=Dragons: A Natural History , last=Shuker , first=Karl , location=New York , publisher=Barnes and Noble , date=1995 , isbn=0-7607-4551-X , url-access=registration , url=https://archive.org/details/dragonsnaturalhi00karl_0

External links

''Dragons of the Marches''

from Chambers' ''Book of Days''
''Helps to Hereford history, civil and legendary, in an account of ... The Mordiford Dragon and other subjects''
by James Dacres Devlin - 1848
''The Hereford guide: containing a concise history of the city''
by

William Jenkins Rees William Jenkins Rees (10 January 1772 – 18 January 1855) was a Welsh cleric and antiquary.Dictionary of ...

- 1808
''Picturesque views on the river Wye''
by Samuel Ireland - 1797
''History from Marble''
by

Thomas Dingley Sir Thomas Dingley (executed 9 or 10 July 1539) was an English prior of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. He is a Catholic martyr. Biography Sir Thomas was the son of John Dingley of Boston, Lincolnshire and his wife, Mabel, daughter of Edmun ...

- 1868 (images earlier - 1696)
''Hereford, cathedral and city: a handbook for the public buildings''
by Joseph Jones - 1858
''Britannia''
by William Camden - 1695
''Journey into South Wales: through the counties of ... Hereford in the year 1799''
by George Lipscomb - 1802
''Notes and Queries''
compendium - 1865
''The Mordiford Dragon Trail''
European dragons Herefordshire folklore English legendary creatures