Lampe - The Dragon of Wantley - plate by John June

The Dragon of Wantley is a legend of a dragon-slaying by a knight on

Wharncliffe Crags Wharncliffe Crags is a gritstone escarpment or edge situated approximately north-west of the city of Sheffield in South Yorkshire, England. It is a geological Site of Special Scientific Interest. Overview The edge, which is characterised as ...

South Yorkshire South Yorkshire is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It borders North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the north, the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north-east, Lincolnshire ...

, recounted in a

comic a medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically the form of a sequence of panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons, captions, and onomatopoeia can indicat ...

broadside ballad A broadside (also known as a broadsheet) is a single sheet of inexpensive paper printed on one side, often with a ballad, rhyme, news and sometimes with woodcut illustrations. They were one of the most common forms of printed material between the ...

of 1685. It was later included in Thomas Percy's 1767 ''

Reliques of Ancient English Poetry The ''Reliques of Ancient English Poetry'' (sometimes known as ''Reliques of Ancient Poetry'' or simply Percy's ''Reliques'') is a collection of ballads and popular songs collected by Bishop Thomas Percy and published in 1765. Sources The basis ...

'', enjoying widespread popularity in the 18th and 19th centuries, although less well-known today. In 1737, the

ballad A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of Great Britain and Ireland from the Late Middle Ages until the 19th century. They were widely used across Eur ...

was adapted (in English) into one of the more successful

opera Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...

s to appear in London up to that point. The ballad tells of how a huge

dragon A dragon is a Magic (supernatural), magical legendary creature that appears in the folklore of multiple cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but European dragon, dragons in Western cultures since the Hi ...

– almost as big as the

Trojan Horse In Greek mythology, the Trojan Horse () was a wooden horse said to have been used by the Greeks during the Trojan War to enter the city of Troy and win the war. The Trojan Horse is not mentioned in Homer, Homer's ''Iliad'', with the poem ending ...

– devours anything it wishes, even trees and buildings, until the Falstaffian knight Moore of Moore Hall obtains a bespoke suit of spiked Sheffield

armour Armour (Commonwealth English) or armor (American English; see American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, spelling differences) is a covering used to protect an object, individual, or vehicle from physical injury or damage, e ...

and delivers a fatal kick to the dragon's "arse-gut" – its only vulnerable spot, as the dragon explains with its dying breath. The topography of the ballad is accurate in its detail as regards Wharncliffe Crags and environs, but the story, and its burlesque humour, has been enjoyed in places far from the

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes th ...

from which it appears to derive and has been used to make a number of points unrelated to it.

Inspirations

More Hall is a 15th-century (or earlier) residence immediately below the gritstone edge of Wharncliffe Crags—Wharncliffe being formerly known in the local vernacular as Wantley—The dragon was reputed to reside in a den, and to fly across the valley to Allman (Dragon's) Well on the Waldershelf ridge above

Deepcar Deepcar is a village located on the eastern fringe of the town of Stocksbridge, South Yorkshire, England. It is in the electoral ward of Stocksbridge and Upper Don, 10 miles (16 km) south-west of Barnsley town centre and approximately nor ...

. One member of the More family of More Hall, George More, was involved in the

Throckmorton Plot The 1583 Throckmorton Plot was one of a series of attempts by English Roman Catholics to depose Elizabeth I of England and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots, then held under house arrest in England. The alleged objective was to facilitate a Sp ...

against

Elizabeth I Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was List of English monarchs, Queen of England and List of Irish monarchs, Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. She was the last and longest reigning monarch of the House of Tudo ...

in 1583.

The 1573 case

lawsuit A lawsuit is a proceeding by one or more parties (the plaintiff or claimant) against one or more parties (the defendant) in a civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today ...

was taken out in 1573 by one George More of Sheffield on behalf of the Sheffield Burgery (the 'free men' of Sheffield) against the Lord of the manor of Sheffield, George Talbot, the sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, in respect of his appropriation of the proceeds of Sheffield 'waste' land, which hitherto had paid for Sheffield's poor, civic works and the parish church. This had long been the practice under an agreement in 1297 by one of Talbot's predecessors, one Thomas Furnival, and had seemed secure after a successful petition some two decades previously to the newly enthroned Queen Mary with the full support of George Talbot's father (the previous—fifth—Earl of Shrewsbury, Francis Talbot).

Percy's interpretation

In his ''Reliques of Ancient English Poetry'' Thomas Percy holds that the story of ''The Dragon of Wantley'' relates to a dispute over the alleged misappropriation of church tithes in Wharncliffe by Sir Francis Wortley who was opposed by a local lawyer named More.

Opera parody

Henry Carey Henry Carey may refer to: *Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon (1526–1596), politician, general, and potential illegitimate son of Henry VIII *Henry Carey, 1st Earl of Dover (1580–1666), English peer *Henry Carey, 2nd Earl of Monmouth (1596–1661), ...

wrote the

libretto A libretto (From the Italian word , ) is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to th ...

to a

burlesque A burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects.

called ''The Dragon of Wantley'' in 1737. The opera, with

music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

composed by

John Frederick Lampe John Frederick Lampe (born Johann Friedrich Lampe; probably 1703 – 25 July 1751) was a musician and composer. Life Lampe was born in Saxony, Germany but came to England in 1724 and played the bassoon in opera houses. In 1730, he was hired by ...

, punctured the vacuous operatic conventions and pointed a satirical barb at

Robert Walpole Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford (; 26 August 1676 – 18 March 1745), known between 1725 and 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British Whigs (British political party), Whig statesman who is generally regarded as the ''de facto'' first Prim ...

and his taxation policies. This Augustan parody was a huge success and its initial run was 69 performances in the first season; a number which exceeded even ''

The Beggar's Opera ''The Beggar's Opera'' is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of sati ...

'' (1728). The opera debuted at the

Haymarket Theatre The Theatre Royal Haymarket (also known as Haymarket Theatre or the Little Theatre) is a West End theatre in Haymarket, London, Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in ...

, where its coded attack on Walpole would have been clear, but its long run occurred after it moved to

Covent Garden Covent Garden is a district in London, on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit-and-vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist sit ...

, which had a much greater capacity for staging. Part of its satire of opera was that all the words were sung, including the recitatives and da capo arias. The play itself is very brief on the page, as it relied extensively on absurd theatrics, dances, and other non-textual entertainments. ''The Musical Entertainer'' from 1739 contains engravings showing how the work was performed. The piece is at once a satire of the ridiculousness of operatic staging and an indirect satire of the government's tax policy. In Carey's play, Moore of Moorehall, "a valiant knight, in love with Margery", is a drunk who pauses to deal with the dragon only between bouts of drinking and carousing with women. Margery offers herself as a human sacrifice to Moore to persuade him to take on the cause of battling the dragon, and she is opposed by Mauxalinda, Moore's "cast-off mistress", who has interest in him now that a rival has appeared. The battle with the dragon takes place entirely offstage, and Moore only wounds the dragon (who is more reasonable than Moore in his dialogue) in its anus. The main action concerns the lavish dances and songs by the two sopranos and Moore. The opera is now rarely performed. Isleworth Baroque (now Richmond Opera) have produced two fully-staged productions, in 2012 and 2021. The

University of Birmingham The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university in Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingham (founded in 1825 as ...

also performed the opera as part of their Summer Festival in the Barber Institute of Fine Arts. It is being produced for two performances in Chicago's Haymarket Opera Company in October 2019 and the

Boston Early Music Festival The Boston Early Music Festival (BEMF) is a non-profit organization founded in 1980 in Boston, Massachusetts, to promote historical music performance. It arranges an annual Boston and New York City concert series, produces opera recordings, and ...

has announced performances in November 2023.

Recording

John Frederick Lampe: ''The Dragon of Wantley'' – Mary Bevan, Catherine Carby, Mark Wilde, John Savournin, The Brook Street Band, John Andrews. Resonus Classics 2022

The novel

A novel, ''The Dragon of Wantley'', was written by

Owen Wister Owen Wister (July 14, 1860 – July 21, 1938) was an American writer. His novel ''The Virginian (novel), The Virginian'', published in 1902, helped create the cowboy as a folk hero in the United States and built Wister's reputation as the " ...

, best known as the author of '' The Virginian'', in 1892. Wister described the story as a comic "burlesque" concerning the "true" story of the Dragon. It is a romantic story set at Christmastime in the early 13th century. The book was a surprise success, going through four editions over the next ten years.

Representations

There is a representation of the dragon above More Hall on the opposite side of the valley to Wharncliffe Crags. The snaking stone wall culminating in a carved dragon's head can be found at the southern edge of Bitholmes Wood (Grid Ref:SK 295 959). There is also a bas-relief frieze of a knight killing a dragon, said to be a representation of More and the Dragon of Wantley, in the entrance hall to

Sheffield Town Hall Sheffield Town Hall is a municipal building on Pinstone Street in the Sheffield, City of Sheffield, England. The building is used by Sheffield City Council, and also contains a publicly displayed collection of silverware. It is a Grade I liste ...

Other references

In his

Chronicles of Barsetshire The ''Chronicles of Barsetshire'' is a series of six novels by English author Anthony Trollope, published between 1855 and 1867. They are set in the fictional English county of Barsetshire and its cathedral town of Barchester. The novels concer ...

novels,

Anthony Trollope Anthony Trollope ( ; 24 April 1815 – 6 December 1882) was an English novelist and civil servant of the Victorian era. Among the best-known of his 47 novels are two series of six novels each collectively known as the ''Chronicles of Barsetshire ...

names an inn and posting house in

Barchester Barsetshire is a fictional English county created by Anthony Trollope in the series of novels known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire (1855–1867). The county town and cathedral city is Barchester. Other towns named in the novels include Silverbr ...

''The Dragon of Wantley''. When it is first mentioned, in ''

The Warden ''The Warden'' is a novel by English author Anthony Trollope published by Longman in 1855. It is the first book in the ''Chronicles of Barsetshire'' series, followed by '' Barchester Towers''. Synopsis Mr Septimus Harding is the meek, widowed ...

'', this pub is owned by John Bold, a local doctor, who is pursuing a dispute with the church authorities over the alleged misapplication of ecclesiastical revenues. The dragon is also mentioned in the first paragraph of the opening chapter of Sir

Walter Scott Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European literature, European and Scottish literature, notably the novels ''Ivanhoe'' (18 ...

's novel

Ivanhoe ''Ivanhoe: A Romance'' ( ) by Walter Scott is a historical novel published in three volumes, in December 1819, as one of the Waverley novels. It marked a shift away from Scott's prior practice of setting stories in Scotland and in the more ...

where Scott writes "In that pleasant district of Merry England which is watered by the River Don, there extended in ancient times a large forest...Here haunted of yore the fabulous Dragon of Wantley." In Chapter XXXVIII of

David Copperfield ''David Copperfield''Dickens invented over 14 variations of the title for this work; see is a novel by English author Charles Dickens, narrated by the eponymous David Copperfield, detailing his adventures in his journey from infancy to matur ...

, David writes a letter to Mr. Spenlow in which David "addressed him...as if...he had been an Ogre, or the Dragon of Wantley." In Chapter III of

The Railway Children ''The Railway Children'' is a children's book by E. Nesbit, Edith Nesbit, originally serialised in ''The London Magazine'' during 1905 and published in book form in the same year. It has been adapted for the screen several times, of which the ...

by E. Nesbit, the children name trains after dragons, dubbing one "the Worm of Wantley".Chapter III of

by E. Nesbit

References

External links

*
The Dragon of Wantley (unexpurgated)
* * {{YouTube, id=9QS92K_c578, title=The Dragon of Wantley opera British satirical poems 1737 poems 1767 poems History of Sheffield Dragons 17th-century ballads