Wawel Dragon&The Unfortunate Queen
The Legend of the Wawel Dragon (A Polish traditional legend)
One upon a time in Poland in the bottom of Wawel Hill, there lived a terrible dragon. None of the inhabitants of the city Krakow (Cracow) from the poorest beggar to His majesty King Krak didn't know where it had come from and how it got there.
Everyone always trembled with fear. Always having the scary thought that the knigths guarding the dragon made their hair stand on end when they heard the monster roar. People said there was no weapon and no way that they were going to defeat the dragon.
As the days past the dragon made himself feel more at home living there which scared the villains even more.
One day King Krak told a poem to the people of Krakow:
He who once and for all puts this dragon
Shall recieve my sceptre and my royal crown,
So come and defeat this most horrid beast
And win my daughters hand and a wedding feats.
After that many brave and valient knights made their way from different countries to reach Poland to defeat the dragon.
Swords and arrows shattered on its scaly body as if on a shield. But nobody was able to kill this dragon or even drive it away. Time passed, the dragon laid waste to the grounds of Krakow. Fewer knights came every day. More people cam to desert the town, until one day a young man, a shoemaker known to know one, knocked on the gates of the town. He bore no arms and wore no amour. Some twine, a needle,and sharp mind were his only weapons. The guards wouldn't let him in unless he immediately went to see the king.
King Krak had heard what the boy was saying and decided to put some trust in him so he could have a go. The boy said that he would need: lambskin, some sulphur and mustard seed. The king nodded his acceptance to him.
All night long the shoemaker spent hard working on his plan. Local residents would peer through the window staring at his work. He took the lambskin, filled it with sulpher, pitch and mustard seed, and skillfully sewed up the hole of the lambs belly.
Everyone was now wondering what the morning would bring.
At sunrise the shoemaker set off to see the dragon with his bag of his ideal plan.There he laid his bait and quickly hid in the nearby bushes waiting to see what was going to happen.
The dragon awoke. The dragon knew he was hungary so he walked a bit for food. Suddenly the dragon saw a dead lamb(as it looked to him), looked at it and greedily jumped down to eat it and swallowed it whole with his jaws.
The dragon suddenly went "BANG!" and exploded. Exactly what the shoemaker had planned.
The villagers went silent. Then the sudden cheer began. All the knights ran to the bottom of the hill. The dragon was dead. But one thing was not. The river Wistula had been gulped up.
You can watch the stories based on this legend here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FxyLJ0RPBw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHokyXUZe1o
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vR4eqDRC9EjsNJxjSwdPQqTJ83Wi7o2SNYM9NLLGnlZFw_KmNrRsY-rHzQIIwUwho3rRvRKygU6jWlN/pub
AMALASUNTA, THE UNFORTUNATE QUEEN
Amalasunta was the queen of the Goths and the only child of Teodorico, king of the Ostrogoths. She was born in Ravenna in 494 a. D. She grew up in the Roman culture and she was a clever and well-educated woman. Her husband Eutarico Cillica died early, after giving birth to two children Matasunta and Atalarico, this last one was the chosen successor to the throne. After Teodorico’s death in 526 a. D., Amalasunta became queen since her son was underage. The Goths fought against Amalasunta, because she wanted to join both the barbaric culture and the roman one in her reign. Her son of poor health, died on the second of October 534 and for Amalasunta it was difficult to govern by herself.
To keep on ruling, she married the cousin Teodato, but after their marriage he became the king and he thought of getting rid of Amalasunta. So he proposed to the sad Queen a "policy" travel, from Tuscany to Rome but while they were traveling between Bolsena and Montefiascone, in the centre of Italy, Amalasunta fell into an ambush organized by her husband. She was carried by boat on the Martana island in the lake of Bolsena where she was killed on 30th April 535.
The island is in the province of Viterbo in the middle of a lake of volcanic origin, the biggest one in Europe. In this lake there are two little islands: the Bisentina and the Martana. The Martana is very small and it is in front of the small village of Marta, from which it gets the name.
We don’t know how the Queen died, there are a lot of hypotesis: strangled while having a bath, stabbed in bed, drowned in the lake or pushed off a high cliff of the Martana island.
Anyway historical sources never say about the exact place where Amalasunta was killed. The writer Procopio di Cesarea describes her death in an island that may be the Bisentina one, where there was a fortress at that time, but according to a well-established tradition, the Martana was the fatal island to the queen of the Ostrogoths.
Her death, full of mystery, has always fed legends and today the old people of the village still say that after her death the body was placed in a golden carriage and buried in one of the seven hills facing the island and every night in full moon her ghost hunts the rock caves. In addition to this many fishermen affirm that during the days of strong wind it is still possible to hear the hideous screams of the unfortunate queen.
In August 1994 the queen Amalasunta was remembered on 1,500thanniversary of her birth and many boats went through the lake in her honour.
https://youtu.be/E7UjLKEPoF8