The Last Dragon in Wales was killed in Newcastle Emlyn….
Long ago, the townsfolk were gathered for the annual fair at the foot of the hill behind the castle of this small market town. Drovers with horses, cattle, pigs and sheep. Flower girls with baskets, milk maids with churns. Tailors, butchers and bakers with stalls. Children taking apples from the old women’s fruit tables. Jugglers, fiddlers and clog dancers with music and song.
They drank ale, picnicked and some cooled in the hot sun by splashing in the glistening waters of the surrounding river Teifi and its cascading white water weir.
Suddenly, a dark shadow came overhead and with it a strange noise…loud and roaring.. like a wild fire on the rampage. The people looked up above the castle. Some froze in fear, and others quaked in their leather boots and wooden clogs …for there, in the sky above them, was an enormous winged serpent…a dragon… circling down towards them.
They watched with bulging eyes and open mouths as this scaly green creature landed near the mast of the flag flying high upon one of the turrets. And there it drew in its huge wings, as if to rest, or even sleep. The people below ran around in panic. Flowers scattered, milk spilled, apples rolled all over the ground and stalls crashed in the chaos.
One amongst them, a tall young man strode to the front of the crowd, a red shawl under his arm, and a musket over his shoulder. He waded in to the river until he was waist deep and spread the shawl over his shoulders and took steady aim. A shot rang out. The hero dived beneath the water and swam to the far bank.
The fatally wounded Dragon swooped towards the remaining red floating shawl and in its dying fury, ripped at it with its black talons. Writhing in a whirlpool of blood, shawl and venom the serpent sank beneath the water as the river washed its body away, never to be seen again.
The Last Dragon of Wales had been killed.