Read the folk tale Anna loves
The Dragon of Wawel Hill
A hungry dragon beneath a castle hill terrifies an entire town, until a clever young shoemaker outsmarts it with nothing sharper than a little cunning.
Long ago, beneath the limestone hill where the castle of Krakow now stands, there lived a dragon in a deep, dark cave. Smoke curled from its nostrils, its scales clinked like coins whenever it moved, and every so often it lumbered out to help itself to a sheep, or two, or three, from the fields below.
The townsfolk tried everything. Knights rode out with swords and spears, but the dragon’s scales turned every blade aside, and one by one the knights returned home without so much as a scratch on the beast. The king offered his own daughter’s hand in marriage to whoever could finally rid the town of the dragon, but even that grand promise did not help much, since nobody could get close enough to try.
A shoemaker’s idea
At last, a young shoemaker’s apprentice named Skuba, who had watched knight after knight fail, thought of a different plan altogether. Instead of a sword, he took a sheepskin, and instead of stuffing it with wool, he filled it with a pinch of sulfur from the blacksmith’s forge, sewed it neatly shut, and left it out in the field where the dragon liked to hunt.
The thirstiest dragon in Poland
The dragon, smelling something that seemed like an easy meal, gobbled the sheepskin down in one bite. Almost at once, a terrible burning feeling spread through its belly, and the dragon rushed to the river to drink. It drank, and drank, and kept drinking, gulping down the cool water of the Vistula by the mouthful, trying to put out the fire inside.
The dragon drank so much river water that its belly grew round and heavy as a hill, and its eyes grew heavier still, until at last it could not take another step. With one enormous, sleepy yawn, it curled up on the riverbank and fell into the deepest sleep of its life. When it finally woke, days later, it felt so foolish, and so full, that it slipped quietly into the water and swam away downriver, never to bother the town again.
A city named for its hero
The grateful townsfolk built their city right there on the hillside above the dragon’s old cave, and named it Krakow, after the clever young man some say became its very first ruler. To this day, if you visit the hill, you can find a statue of the dragon at the cave’s mouth, and it still, every so often, breathes out a puff of warm smoke, just to remind everyone it was once there.
A sword never once touched the dragon, the story reminds us. It was one clever, patient idea that finally sent it on its way.
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A, A, A, Kotki Dwa
Play this softly while you read: a traditional handplayed Polish lullaby, the same culture this tale comes from.
More stories, more lullabies
This is one tale in a growing collection of traditional stories from around the world, each one paired, where we can, with a real lullaby from the same culture.