You know that feeling when you find a long lost tenner/what ever heathen monetary unit you use? That warm sense of luck and gain? Like Christmas morning before you open all the socks?

Whilst sifting through the mass that I choose to call notes, only because such flagrant misuse of forestry needs some form of excuse, I discovered a dog eared print out. It had on it a number of folk tales from various European countries, but one in particular caught my eye.

THE DRAGON
Once upon a time a man fell into a gorge. He saw a hole at the bottom of the gorge, climbing through he saw a dragon, it said:
“Oh son of man, what are you doing here”?
Noticing the dragon was surrounded by snakes, he told his story:
“Ah great creature, I am a poor human being, I fell into this gorge while I was wandering about. Please help me to get out of this place.
“If I help you to go out of here, you’ll be my doom”.
Because the skin of a human being who has seen the dragon becomes browning strips. This man’s body had become brown, too. He begged.
“Please take me out of here. I promise not to tell anyone and I’ll cover my body with clothes. Please leave me to my children”.
Dragon couldn’t bear his pleads and took him out of the gorge back to earth.
A short while after this event the Sultan of that age fell ill. The doctors said the disease would be cured if the Sultan drank blood from the trunk of the dragon. After much torture the man told the sultan of the dragon, filled with shame he went to warn the beast.
“Ah dragon, I beg your pardon. I couldn’t keep my promise but they forced me”.
“Don’t worry. I knew what would happen while I was sending you back to earth. I’m not angry with you, it’s my fate.
The dragon ordered his snakes not to harm the people of earth and said:
“I have something to do on earth. Sleep and don't move till I come back”.
He was taken to the place where he would be slaughtered and then it warned the man.
“Now they’re going to slaughter me. The man who slaughters me will drink my head’s blood and will be the Lokman Hekim (a legendary ancient doctor), the patient will drink the blood of my trunk and will be cured and they will make you drink the blood of may tail and you’re going to die immediately. Do not drink it. Change my head’s blood with tail’s blood. Thus you’ll become the Lokman Hekim and the other is going to die.”
The dragon was brought to the bath of Tarsus to be slaughtered. After the slaughtering was finished, blood from head, body and tail were put into three different glasses and brought before the Sultan. On the way to the Sultan, the man changed the places of other two, without touching the blood from the trunk. The man who had slaughtered the dragon drank the tail blood and died. Sultan drank trunk blood and was cured. The man who showed the dragon’s place drank the head blood and became the Lokman Hekim. It is said that the snakes are still sleeping and if they hear that the dragon has died, they will give great harm to the earth.

Some of you may be ahead of me here.

A tale of the drinking of the blood of a dragon? An act that cures the Sultan, kills his Doctor and makes the Dragons ally the Lokman Hekim? The game, Dear Watson is afoot!

This is an old Turkish myth. Now, the Order of the Dragon, of which Vladimir Tepes’ father was a member, helped hold the Ottoman Turks from the principalities of Romania for nearly two centuries. Vlad Tepes, son of Vlad the Drac, Dracul, Prince of the principality of Wallachia is seen as one of the heroes of this war.

Now, read the story again, and assume that the Dragon is a metaphor for Rumania.

Nothing doing? How about this. One of the things that made the Lokman Hekin famous is that he was supposed to have discovered a source of immortality, which was later taken from him from Allah. This source was in the form of Garlic seeds.

Now read it again. Any thoughts?