Composting dragons: recovery and eco-radicalisation of local folk tales in a Gloucestershire landscape

Abstract

This practice-based study reports on a project to reconstruct from Gloucestershire's surviving folklore 30 stories able both to entertain a live audience and serve an 'ecobardic' intention of stimulating ecological consciousness. The article focuses on the legend of 'The Deerhurst Dragon', which belongs to a 'composted' tradition of dragon-slaying stories. Inspired by local history and field observation of the landscape of the legend, the author reconfigures the tale to expose the conflict likely to arise between large predators and an expanding human population. By attracting empathy to both dragon-slayer and dragon, he hopes to spark questions with implications for realworld conflicts at the same time as enchanting the locality with renewed knowledge of the legend.