The Dragon of La Trinità: an Italian Folk-Tale.
The following tale was taken down almost word for word from the lips of a charcoal-burner in a Tuscan roadside inn at Le Bagnore on the edge of the great forest on the slopes of Monte Amiata, which raises its cone-shaped summit 5500 feet above the plains and swamps of Maremma. This district formed the border-land between Tuscany and the old Papal States, and has retained a distinctive character of its own. The teller was a tall lean fellow with glittering eyes and high cheekbones, and with the wild and uncivilised aspect common to the men who live an isolated life in the depths of the forest as their forefathers have done before them. The tale was told by him to a group of his companions about the log fire of the inn kitchen, on a wild wet night in late autumn, while I sat back in the shadows.
"I will tell you the story of the dragon of La Trinità. Once long ago, before any of us were born, a monster, a dragon they called him, lived in a cavern high on the mountain among the pines, up where you now see the convent of La Trinità. He used to come out and devour whatever he could find. The peasants could no longer send their sheep and goats out to pasture on the mountain side, and cows and oxen he did not fear to attack. Not only so, but human beings he killed and devoured,—and even friars were not safe. Yes, two or three friars he also ate. Then the great Duke Sforza, who lived in the castle over yonder at Santafiora, said,—"I will deliver the land from this fierce beast." So he put on his armour, and took a long lance, and mounted his horse, and rode up the valley. But, when the dragon saw him, it withdrew into its den as was its way when people came out armed against it. But what did Duke Sforza do? He fastened a red flag to the end of the lance, and thrust it into the entrance of the cavern. The dragon thought it was a piece of meat, and rushed at it, and the Duke drew it back so that the dragon came rushing out of the cavern with his great mouth wide open. And the Duke grasped his lance, and waited there, erect on his horse, for the onslaught of the monster. It came on, always with its great mouth open, and, as it rushed at him, the Duke received it on his lance, and the lance went right down its throat—down,—down,—and it died. And the Duke cut off its head, and brought it to show to the people. And its great jawbone is kept in the sacristy of the convent of La Trinità, where the sacristan keeps it in a box. You may see it there still. I have seen it myself, and that is how I know that the story is true."
I may add that I also have seen an enormous upper jawbone, something like that of an alligator, which is kept, as he described it, in the lonely little Franciscan Friary of La Trinità up miles of stony mule track on the slopes of Amiata.