maybe fairy tales are true
Krakow, Poland
If you find yourself in an ancient city, with a castle (called Wawel) and a cave that once housed a dragon, you’d wonder if you’d stepped into a fairy tale!
A popular version of the Wawel Dragon’s tale takes place in Kraków during the reign of King Krak, the city’s legendary founder. Each day the evil dragon would beat a path of destruction across the countryside, killing the civilians, pillaging their homes and devouring their livestock. In many versions of this story, the dragon especially enjoyed eating young girls, and could only be appeased if the townfolk would leave a young girl in front of its cave once a month. The King certainly wanted to put a stop to the dragon, but his bravest knights fell to its fiery breath. In the versions involving the sacrifice of young girls, every girl in the city was eventually sacrificed except one, the King’s daughter Wanda. In desperation, the King promised his beautiful daughter’s hand in marriage to anybody who could defeat the dragon. Great warriors from near and far fought for the prize and failed. One day, a poor cobbler’s apprentice named Skuba Dratewka accepted the challenge. He stuffed a lamb with sulphur and set it outside the dragon’s cave. The dragon ate it and soon became incredibly thirsty. He turned to the Vistula River for relief and he drank and drank. But no amount of water could quell his aching stomach, and after swelling up from drinking half of the Vistula river, he exploded. Dratewka married the King’s daughter as promised and they lived happily ever after.
(story courtesy of Wikipedia, although some of the other version we have read suggest the shoemaker was called Krak and somehow became the founder of the city – King Krak did not feature in those ones)
When you read a story, you get a picture in your imagination, and unfortunately in this instance reality proved to disappointing for the smaller kids.
”I thought it would be much bigger,” Tgirl5 stated as we tripped along the path winding its way around the forty-year-old dragon rearing up outside his cave under the Wawel castle.
Hmm, now that you mention it, it does look rather scrawny.
”Can a statue really breathe fire?” she asked, her illusion not quite completely shattered.
”Let’s stand here and watch,” I noncomitally suggested.
We didn’t have to wait long; this dragon huffs every three minutes (and if you can’t wait that long, you can text a certain number and it will perform on cue for ya!)
”Look, it is, it really is! But it’s not real, I can see the pipe for the gas.”
It was still a good story!
Tags: 2008/09, children, history, parenting, postcard: Poland, tradition
rayres
oh wow so *that* is where that sorry comes from! cool! heh the picture in my imagination involves a town covered in dragon innards.. i’m glad they decided to make the statue of an intact one breathing fire instead.
(aren’t you glad i’m catching up & commenting again!? 😉 )