The Wawel Dragon

Long, long ago, beside the wide river Vistula, Prince Krak built a castle on the high hill of Wawel. Around the castle grew the city of Kraków, with its market, its bakeries, its smithies and a small shoemaker’s workshop right at the foot of the hill. All would have been well, except for one thing: inside the hill, in a deep cave above the water, lived a dragon.

And what a dragon it was! As long as three farm carts, covered in green-brown scales, with a spiky ridge down its back and a tail that swept the ground like a broom. When it yawned, smoke poured out of its mouth. When it sneezed, every shutter in Kraków rattled.

Every morning it crawled out of its cave, thumped its tail on the stones, bang! bang!, and roared so loudly that ripples ran across the Vistula:

"R-r-r-roaaar!"

It meant only one thing: "Breakfast!" So every day the people had to drive three calves or three sheep to the cave. And if they didn’t, the dragon went to the pasture itself, and then the sheep scattered in every direction, and the shepherds hid in haystacks with their feet sticking out.

The dragon never chewed its breakfast. Gulp! It swallowed everything whole. Then it drank for a long time from the Vistula, slurp, slurp, slurp, because its own smoke always left its throat dry.

"At this rate we’ll soon have no sheep left," sighed the housewives.

"And no calves," groaned the shepherds.

"And no pies!" grumbled the baker, because the dragon always roared just when his dough was rising, and the dough sank in fright.

Prince Krak called his knights together.

"Whoever drives away the dragon will get a generous reward!" he announced.

The first to ride out was a knight in armour so shiny it hurt to look at him. Clink-clank, clink-clank, his armour jingled with every step.

"Hey, dragon! Come out and fight!" he shouted at the mouth of the cave.

The dragon stuck out its head, saw itself reflected in the shiny breastplate, blinked in surprise, and puffed. Pfff! Black smoke wrapped around the knight from head to toe. His horse snorted, spun round and carried him back to town. The knight came home as black as a chimney sweep, with only his teeth showing white.

"He... sneezed on me," the knight coughed.

The second knight took a spear, a very, very long one.

"I won’t go anywhere near him," he explained. "I’ll reach him from far away!"

But the dragon only snapped its teeth, crunch!, and all that was left of the spear was a stubby handle, just right for stirring porridge.

"Now I have the shortest spear in Kraków," the knight said sadly.

The third knight hid behind a shield as big as a barn door. The dragon lazily flicked its tail, bam!, and the shield flew into the Vistula. Splash! And the knight dashed home so fast that he lost a boot on the way.

That same evening he hobbled in one boot to the shoemaker’s workshop at the foot of the hill. There, by candlelight, sat Skuba the shoemaker, a short man with a moustache, a leather apron and an awl tucked behind his ear. Tap-tap-tap went his little hammer.

"Will you make me a new boot?" the knight asked, blushing. "My old one is lying in the dragon’s bushes."

"I will," nodded Skuba. "But you can’t beat a dragon with a sword, sir knight. It takes cleverness."

The knight laughed.

"Cleverness! Maybe you’ll beat him with a needle, too?"

Skuba said nothing. He only looked at the needle in his hand and smiled into his moustache.

In the morning he went up to the castle. He stood before the prince, twisting his cap in his hands and feeling shy, because he had never been in such tall halls before.

"Your Highness, I am not a knight, I am a shoemaker," he said quietly. "But every morning I watch from my doorstep as the dragon has its breakfast. It doesn’t chew the calves, it swallows them whole. And then it drinks and drinks from the Vistula. So I thought..."

And he told his plan.

The knights standing around looked at each other and giggled.

"A shoemaker against a dragon! What a warrior!"

But Prince Krak raised his hand, and everyone fell silent.

"We have already tried swords," he said. "Let us try a needle. Give the shoemaker whatever he asks for."

And Skuba asked for very little: a calf’s skin, a big sack of sulphur, yellow and burning, the kind that tickles your nose, and a candle for the whole night.

All night long the little window of the workshop glowed. Skuba stuffed the skin tightly with sulphur so that not a single grain could spill out. Then he sewed it up with stitches so tiny you couldn’t see them even up close. He sewed on floppy ears and a tail with a tassel, and with a bit of charcoal he drew the eyes.

"Moo," he said for the calf, winked at himself and laughed quietly.

At dawn Skuba set the "calf" right by the cave. And all of Kraków hid behind the walls and peeked between the battlements: what would happen?

Smoke drifted out of the cave. Scales rustled. A huge head poked out. The dragon sniffed the air, saw the calf, licked its lips, and gulp! It swallowed it whole, as always, without even chewing.

For a moment all was quiet. Then the dragon blinked once, blinked twice, and yellow sparks puffed from its nostrils. Pfff! Pfff-ff! The sulphur sizzled in the dragon’s fire and burned as if it had swallowed a whole stove.

The dragon roared and rushed to the Vistula as fast as it could. It plunged its snout into the water and began to drink. Slurp-slurp-slurp! It drank and drank. It drank and drank. The water in the river sank lower and lower. The fish stared in surprise, and the frogs sat on the bare sand, not knowing where to hop. But the dragon kept on drinking.

And it kept on swelling. First it was as big as a barrel. Then as big as a cart. Then as big as a haystack. Then as big as a whole house! Its paws barely reached the ground, and its tail stuck up in the air like a frightened cat’s.

"Something’s about to happen," someone whispered on the wall.

And it did.

BOOOOM!

Over the Vistula rose such a cloud of white steam that for a moment it hid the river, the hill and the whole castle. People covered their ears, the hens in town flew up onto the fences, and the baker’s cap flew off his head.

When the steam cleared, the dragon was gone. No head, no tail, no ridge. Only an empty cave, a quiet river slowly filling with water again, and one small puff of steam that drifted away on the wind, far, far away.

Oh, how Kraków rejoiced! Bells rang, pipes played, the shepherds drove their flocks out to the meadows and feared nobody, and the baker baked the biggest pie of his life that very day.

Prince Krak summoned Skuba to the castle and rewarded him generously: a chest full of silver, a new house with a red roof and a workshop so roomy that three old ones would fit inside.

"The swords failed, but the needle succeeded," said the prince in front of all the knights. "Thank you, master."

Skuba blushed, bowed and said:

"Thank you too, Your Highness. And now, with your permission, I’ll be going. I promised a boot to a certain knight."

The dragon’s cave is still there today. It lies under Wawel Castle in Kraków and is called Smocza Jama, the Dragon’s Den, because "smok" means dragon in Polish. You can go down a steep staircase and come out right on the bank of the Vistula, where the dragon once drank and drank until it vanished.