Happy St George's Day!

The known facts of St George's life are pretty meagre - an officer in the Roman army, he was a victim of the Diocletian persecutions in Lydda, Palestine. He 'gave his goods to the poor, and openly confessed Christianity before the court.'

However...

I have before me a copy of the Golden Legend, a collection of the various traditional stories often told about saints and martyrs. The stories in there are a bit more interesting. Let me give you the potted highlights...

George once travelled to the city of Silena, in Libya. Near this city there was a huge lake, where a 'plague-bearing dragon lurked'. This dragon was, tbh, a bit of a pest, rather fond of attacking the city and its inhabitants. So the inhabitants of Silena hatched a plan...

...To appease the dragon, they decided to give him 2 sheep a day. But they pretty soon ran out of sheep, and decided that they'd have to start paying the tribute of ... the city's youth, chosen by lot (as you do, they were in dragon lock-down and getting on everyone's nerves)...

...Eventually, the king's daughter was chosen by lot to be sacrificed to the dragon. He was, as you can imagine, not mightily chuffed by this, & tried to get her off - but the townspeople were having none of it. 'This was your dumb idea' they said, don't try to get out of it'...

...So off the daughter popped to the lake. On her way, she met George, who was pottering about in the general area. She told him to look lively and bugger off, or he'd be dragon dinner too. But George was having none of it: no upstart dragon was going to make a fool out of him...

...So George armed himself with the cross (and, crucially, a lance) and did this dragon over pretty sharpish, dealing him a 'grievous wound'. The (rather relieved) maiden then got her girdle, used it as a leash, and led the (rather chastened) lizardy menace back to the city...

...The townspeople were rather alarmed, but here George saw his opportunity (!), promising to slay the dragon once and for all if all the people promised to be baptised, which they duly did. George put the dragon out of its misery, & then baptised all 20,000 of them (busy day)...

The king built a huge church, from the altar of which flowed a spring that 'cured all diseases'. The king offered George a stack of cash, which he duly gave to the poor instead. He then told Silena to always honour the church & look after the poor, & slung his hook. Lovely jubbly