The Reluctant Dragon

The Reluctant Dragon is the gentle, poetry-loving dragon of Kenneth Grahame's 1898 story, who would rather chat and compose verse than fight, and who stages a mock battle with Saint George.

The Story

A shepherd comes home in a panic: there is a dragon in a cave on the Downs above the village. His son, a bookish boy who has read all about dragons, goes up to see for himself. He finds the dragon lying peacefully at the mouth of the cave, enjoying the evening and making up poems. The dragon explains that he is not like the dragons in books. He has no interest in eating anyone or burning anything. He is lazy, sociable, and fond of verse, and he simply wants to be left in peace.

The villagers, however, are thrilled to have a real dragon and want to see it fought. When Saint George himself comes to town, everyone expects a battle. The boy acts as go-between, and the dragon refuses to fight, while Saint George has no wish to kill a harmless beast. Together the three of them arrange a staged fight. The two put on a fine show, George pretends to wound the dragon with a light touch of his spear, and he then announces that the dragon has reformed. The dragon is led down into the village, where he becomes the guest of honor at a feast and a welcome member of local society.

Appearance and Powers

Grahame gives little physical description. His dragon is large enough to alarm a shepherd and to put on a convincing show in battle, with scales, claws, and a fine tail, but his real features are his manners, his vanity about his poetry, and his good nature. He is, in a sense, an anti-dragon: everything the old legends say about dragons is turned on its head.

Origins and Sources

Grahame, later famous for The Wind in the Willows (1908), published the story as a chapter of Dream Days (1898), a collection of tales about a family of children. In the book, the story is told to the narrator by a family friend. It gently mocks the medieval legend of Saint George and the dragon and the Victorian taste for heroic romance. It is often printed alone as a children's book, notably with illustrations by Ernest H. Shepard.

Legacy

The story is one of the first to make a dragon a friendly, comic character, and it helped open the way for later gentle dragons in children's books and films. Walt Disney Productions adapted it as a segment of the 1941 film The Reluctant Dragon, a feature built around a tour of the Disney studio. Stage plays and an opera have followed. For the older, fiercer dragons Grahame was playing against, see Western dragons.

Related

• Dragon of Silene: The Dragon of Silene is the lake-dwelling, plague-breathing dragon killed by Saint George in medieval legend after he rescued a princess offered to it, the best-known version appearing in the Golden Legend around 1260.
• Chrysophylax: Chrysophylax Dives is the rich, crafty, and cowardly dragon of J.R.R. Tolkien's comic tale Farmer Giles of Ham (1949), who is outwitted by a reluctant farmer and ends up as his ally.
• Puff the Magic Dragon: Puff the Magic Dragon is the gentle dragon of the 1963 Peter, Paul and Mary song by Peter Yarrow and Leonard Lipton, who lives by the sea and plays with a boy named Jackie Paper until the boy grows up.
• Jabberwock: The Jabberwock is the monstrous dragon-like creature of Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem "Jabberwocky" in Through the Looking-Glass (1871), slain by a young hero with a vorpal sword.
• Saint George and the Dragon
• Dragon Books
• Western Dragons

Sources and Further Reading

• Kenneth Grahame, Dream Days (John Lane, 1898)
• Kenneth Grahame, The Reluctant Dragon, illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard (Holiday House, 1938)
• Peter Green, Kenneth Grahame: A Biography (John Murray, 1959)

Cite this entry: “The Reluctant Dragon,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/reluctant-dragon.