The Dragon of Og

I’ve never seen Rumer Godden’s The Dragon of Og on a list of classic children’s books, but if it were up to me it would be there. I picked it up at the library last week and read it to my kids, and all of us were charmed.

I have Rumer Godden classified in my mind as a heartbreaking writer. I’m not sure why. I know I read The Diddakoi, but I don’t remember much of it at all.

The Dragon of Og is only briefly heartbreaking. And although it concerns a dragon, it isn’t scary, but whimsical. The pictures by Pauline Baynes, some in color and some in black and white, are lovely and look like medieval tapestries.

The basic situation is that a dragon has lived quietly in his cave in a pool in Scotland for years, eating a bullock every two or three weeks. Angus Og decides he should not be allowed his bullocks anymore. A battle of wits ensues — between Angus and his spirited wife Matilda, his steward Donald, and the knight Sir Robert Le Douce, who’s commissioned to come and deal with the dragon.

The ending leaves you with the feeling that even though you don’t live in Scotland, and even though you live in the twenty-first century, the whole thing just might have happened very close by, so you’d better keep your eyes open:

This was all a long time ago. Angus Og and Matilda lie in the churchyard now, and all the little Angus Ogs and Matildas. On the hill there is no Castle, only an ordinary house and where the bailey used to be there is a garden. The meadows are still rich in grass and clover though the forests are only woods, but the Water of Milk still runs and the big pool is there; people say so is the Dragon but no one has seen him which is not surprising as he is now very old and spends most of his time asleep.

Now and again, the taste comes back to him of junket and mead; then he gives a sigh that sets the pool water swirling. People think it is the wind, but it is the Dragon…