The Wawel Dragon

There’s an old Polish legend about a kingdom ruled over by Prince Krakus, where the most peculiar of things once took place. From one day to the next, people started disappearing from the towns and villages around the Wawel Hill. They would simply vanish, and no one would hear from them ever again.

And not just that! Shepherds started losing their sheep, usually when they took them to the pastures just at the foot of the same hill. The good people of the kingdom started to get very worried and tried to make sense of the mysterious disappearances. It was as if the earth itself had just swallowed the poor creatures whole.

Not long after, it happened that a little boy was picking parasol mushrooms in the nearby woods. He was following a small trail of them when he found a cave hidden behind a dense thicket. He peeked inside… and there it was! – a colossal green dragon, sleeping like a kitten, his loud snoring making the earth tremble.

The frightened boy quickly ran away and ran straight to the castle to tell the prince about the terrible menace lurking in the cave under the hill. The prince immediately gathered all of his forces. He ordered the townsfolk to take up their arms as well, things like pitchforks and axes and rakes, and they all marched together to the cave.

But the loud racket of the heavily armed men woke the beast up from its sleep. When the dragon saw all of the people who had come to kill him, he got very angry indeed. He slowly walked outside of his lair, took a deep breath, and he started spitting fire all around!

People were flying through the air like rag-dolls from his fiery blast. Those…