Journal of Geomancy vol. 2 no. 3, April 1978
ENGLISH DRAGON LEGENDS NUMBER 3.
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Apart from the rather more notorious dragons of St. Leonards Forest, Sussex is remarkably scant with regard to actual surviving dragon legends. However, one remaining legend that I have been able to uncover concerns the village of Lyminster, near Arundel in west Sussex.
The KNUCKLER HOLE, a deep pool, is situated about 150 yards north-west of the village churchyard wall. This pool was the home of a fierce dragon who lived solely on a diet of ‘fair damsels’. With rapacious appetite he is supposed to have devoured all the ‘fair damsels’ in the district until only one was left alive, that being the daughter of the King of Sussex.
The King therefore in despair at the possible loss of life of his only daughter offered her hand in marriage, together with half his kingdom, to whoever could slay the dragon. A valiant knight, as always, stepped forward and successfully put paid to the dragon and his activities and thus reaped his reward from the King, settling in the area and marrying the daughter.
The successful knight is unusually not named, and unlike with St. Leonards Forest, there was no recurrence of any further dragon legends in the area.
The village church really has the key to the antiquity of this legend, however, because situated in the north transept is an early Norman coffin slab locally called the ‘slayer’s stone’, which is regarded as being the tombstone of the valiant knight. The dating of this coffin slab itself indicates the possible age of the legend and the church is also early Norman, although the site indicates to me that it could be much older. More evidence on this comes from Ekwall’s Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names, where etymologically the name Lyminster dates from at the earliest 880 AD, and means ‘The church of Lulling, or Lulle’s People’.
The KNUCKLER HOLE could also have been a holy well, due to its proximity to the churchyard, possibly sanctified after the expulsion of the dragon from his lair. Indeed, I have disagreed with Ekwall’s definition of place-names before, and I am wondering whether the village name could not have instead been derived from Leo, as indeed is Leominster in Herefordshire, thus representative of the lion. If so this would indicate that the legend would have greater geomantic implications for the area than would at first appear.
The dietary differentiations between the Lyminster Dragon and the St. Leonards Forest Dragons are interesting. The Lyminster Dragon lived on ‘fair damsels’, while one of the St. Leonards dragons lived on a diet of rabbits. Whether merely this is just local coloration in later stages by local people of the legends or whether there are other implications involved I would like to find out.