Digory The Dragon Slayer

face.
    ‘That’s my boy,’ she sniffed proudly. ‘I didn’t know he had it in him.’ Then, curtseying to the Squire in her leather apron, she carried Digory off home to dunk him in the water barrel.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT CLEVERNESS

    Now, the name of Digory’s village was Batty-by-Noodle, which may give you some idea of the sort of people who lived there. No one from Batty had ever done anything clever.
    One night Farmer Ragwort saw a shooting star fall into the pond but, though he fished all night, he never caught it. And Meg the cowgirl claimed she could talk to cows, but nobody was interested to hear what a cow had to say, so they didn’t think much of that.
    People thought Squire Paunch was the cleverest man in the village because he was the Squire. But none of them was clever enough to know how clever he really was. And the Squire himself, if he was clever, didn’t know anyone cleverer to compare himself to, so how could he tell? Well, you get the picture.
    So, when Digory came home with a dragon’s tooth in his hat no one thought too hard about it. Somehow it slipped their minds that Batty-by-Noodle never had dragons living nearby. In fact, it was quite the wrong sort of a place for dragons altogether. There were no rocky caves, the forest was thin and weedy and most days it drizzled with rain, which of course is not healthy for a dragon’s fiery breath. Who’s going to be afraid of a dragon that only snorts steam from its nostrils?
    But, you see, you would need to be clever to know this sort of thing.
    So when the Batty villagers saw a tooth and heard it came from a dragon they believed without doubt that they’d all been spared a horrible fate.

THE UNHAPPY DAY

    Meanwhile, a feast was arranged, with a ceremony to make Digory a knight, and nothing Digory could say would persuade anybody otherwise. If he tried to explain the truth people just thought he was being modest, which made him even more of a hero.
    Arthur and Tom were very jealous that their younger brother had fought with a dragon. They tried to make Digory tell them about it by twisting his arm in twelve painful ways. But, as there was nothing to tell, Digory didn’t say a word. At last they gave up and shook his poor numb hand in admiration.
    ‘You’re a good chap, brother Digory,’ they said.
    ‘Nobody likes a person who boasts about what he’s done. You deserve to be a knight. We’re proud of you.’
    And so he even won the respect of his bold, tough brothers.
    But poor Digory didn’t want to be a knight. In fact, he didn’t even know what knights were expected to do.
    He asked his father, who was collecting eggs in the garden. His father sat down and scratched his head.
    ‘Well now, Digory,’ he puzzled, ‘I could tell you what the baker does, or the miller, but I’ve never met a knight, son. They say knights are always chivalrous, but I don’t know what chivalrous is.’
    ‘It sounds like the sort of thing you feel when you have coughs and sneezes,’ said Digory glumly. His father agreed.
    (Poor Digory. He might have felt better if he’d known that chivalrous really meant kind, honourable and brave. Still, that wasn’t the worst of it...)
    ‘Well then,’ continued his father, ‘when they’re feeling all chivalrous they ride around the land saving damsels in distress.’
    Digory’s heart sank. The only damsel he knew was Ethelburg, and she was certainly never in distress. In fact, some people might say that Ethelburg and her friends caused quite a bit of distress around the village with their mudflinging and wild rampaging games. Digory always tried to keep well away when the distress was happening.
    ‘Oh yes,’ his father remembered, ‘and you probably have to marry a princess too. That won’t be so bad, son, will it?’
    Ugh! A princess! Digory felt even more miserable. He tried to imagine Ethelburg cleaned up a bit, with a crown on her head, but this only made him feel worse. With a heavy heart he went off to the woods.
    As he shuffled through the leaves Digory thought about what had happened. How did everything get into such a muddle? he sighed. 1 was having such a simple sort of life, a Digory sort of life, with songs and trees and picnics in it. Now I have to go away and be a knight, feeling shiverous and looking for distress. If only 1 hadn’t picked up that tooth in the forest. And, climbing up into an acorn tree, he composed a sad song called ‘The Unhappy Day’.
    Meanwhile, Digory’s mother