The Black Dragon of the Enchanted Wool
(taken from an actual old Spanish letter)
From the Captain-General of all huntsmen from the Rising to the Setting Sun, and from
the Orient to the Occident
To you, Alvar Garcia, Marshall of the Welsh March.
We have read the account which you sent us in which you say that while passing through
the mountains populated by the Welsh , at a place called St Peter Between the Waters, you
uncoupled your hounds after a boar, and that without noticing it you had found the Black
Dragon of the Enchanted Wool (which you call more simply 'This Damned Animal'). If it
was as you described it, then the first name is certainly the correct one, and not 'This
Damned Animal', as you put in your letter.
You also say that although you knew that it was not the quarry you were seeking, you
could not refrain, for greed, from putting hounds after it, and they followed it all day until
nightfall, and pushed it through the armada two or three times, and it received two rather
insignificant wounds. On this point we reply that you have our sympathy as a hunter, for
we know the trials you must have undergone. We are pleased that the beast is alive, and
we pray God that its wounds may be indeed slight, so that it may not die a sudden death in
the far-off wilderness which is its home, without hearing the voices of terrestrial angels,
Amen. You say that hounds and huntsmen were with it until the first sleep, and that from
then onwards they gave up one by one, except for two brave and stubborn hounds which
continued alone. As for the huntsmen, men of Extremadura and Gallicia alike, to whom
you sent word that they should go out through the snow across a sierra with the beast: poor
fellows! Even from here I feel pain for them, so harried and shelterless, and for their sighs
and groans, and the curses they must have called down on those who had brought them
there. And you, wretched Alwar Garcia, heard them unmoved.
.... But let us suppose that all this happened; what did you and the huntsmen do that
night? Or the following day? It appears that from that point onwards you did nothing,
even though you say that there was snow on the ground and you had with you men who
knew the area well. If you failed because of some non-hunting matters which you had to
attend to in the service of the King or the Count, his son, I am sure that spending two days
on pursuing such an adventure as this, even unsuccessfully, would have displeased the King
less than abandoning it for some other cause, and his son the Count too.
If you abandoned it for lack of hounds, we believe that an adventure such as this could be
achieved with the few which you had. Even if they were weary, if the huntsmen had
followed the trail by sight and taken the hounds with them until they were near the place
where the Beast lay, there was nothing to stop the hounds getting on his trail, especially
with snow on the ground. If you say that you gave it up through stress of weather, because
you could not find the resolution of true huntsmen, that is the only true reason you can
offer. If that is how it was, you should write to me to tell me how you could have the heart
to pursue it and then to be dissuaded by bad weather, lest I think you a poor huntsman,
since you had found such an adventure and undertaken it.
But even in reply to this reason, which is the real one, the Evangelists Santo Domingo
Pascual, San Joan de Fuenteovejuna, San Anto de Valdeiglesias and San Pero Pelay say
that you should have waited on the weather two or three days in order to achieve such an
adventure as this, with the persistence of true huntsmen. Et qui vivit et regnat Deus per
omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.
And may God grant it to us some November to be had in that land where walks that great
monster which we have dubbed the Black Dragon of the Enchanted Wool, so that we may
redeem something of your failure, and give you some recompense for the penance you
underwent on that harsh day and evil night when you did battle with it.