Banyoles Monster

On still mornings the Lake of Banyoles lies flat as poured metal, and at certain points along the shore the air carries a faint smell of rotten eggs. The town has a sulphur spring, the Font Pudosa, and a perfectly good geological reason for it. It also has an older reason. Something used to live under the water here, and it had bad breath.

Banyoles sits in the hills north of Girona in Catalonia, beside the largest natural lake in the region, a body of water fed from below by underground springs. Lakes that fill from beneath and drain through cracks in the rock tend to collect stories, and this one collected a dragon. The fullest traditional account is the one the Barcelona folklorist Joan Amades printed in his Costumari català in the middle of the twentieth century. The Banyoles naturalist Pere Alsius had gathered local versions in the nineteenth century, and Joan Soler i Amigó gave the beast an entry in his 1998 encyclopedia of Catalan popular fantasy. In Catalan it is simply the Drac de Banyoles. “Monster” is the newer word, and the one that travels in English.

The story is set in the eighth century, in the years when the Franks were pushing south across the Pyrenees. A dragon had made its lair in a cave under the lake at a place called La Draga. Amades describes it as enormous and ferocious, a creature equally at home in the air, in the water and on land. It came out at dusk and took what it liked. A shepherd on the eastern shore would hear his flock go quiet, then feel the wind of something large passing overhead, and count his sheep in the morning to find the number wrong. Its breath did as much harm as its teeth. It hung over the plain like a fog, and the stench was said to sicken the whole district. Some versions add the detail that gives the legend its edge: the people of Banyoles had to hand over a child every day to keep it fed.

Knights came and failed. Then came the greatest knight available. Charlemagne, on his way to take Girona from the Moors, was asked to rid the town of its dragon, and accepted. In the versions that give the fight in detail he rode at it on his white horse with his famous sword Joyeuse, struck, and watched the blade shatter on the scales. The emperor of the Franks turned his horse and left the field. The legend treats this as the first defeat of his life, and seems to enjoy it.

What steel could not do was done by a monk. Sant Mer, also called Emeri or Emer, is a half-legendary holy man said to have been born in Narbonne and to have come south in the baggage of Charlemagne’s army. He walked up to the lair alone, unarmed, and blessed the animal. It lay down. In one telling he threw his cloak across its back; in another he looped his belt or his stole round its neck and led it into the camp like a dog on a lead, past soldiers who had run from it the day before.

What happened next depends on who is telling it. In the harshest ending the townspeople, seeing the dragon tied and harmless, killed it in the square. In a gentler one the saint scolded it and put it on a diet of herbs and fish, and it sank back into the lake and troubled no one again. In another it gave up meat altogether and lived on vegetables the townspeople brought it. In the gentlest, it followed Mer to his hermitage at Sant Esteve de Guialbes and the two of them lived there together until the old man died. A dragon that ends its days as a hermit’s vegetarian companion is not the usual outcome.

There is no settled account of where it came from. No telling gives it parents, a curse or a creator; it is simply there when the story opens, as much a part of the lake as the springs. The place names do the work an origin story would. La Draga, on the eastern shore, is where the lake spills over in wet years, and nearby is the Clot del Drac, the Dragon’s Pit, a cleft in the ground into which the overflow disappears. Local people said that anyone who climbed down into it would come to grief.

The history behind the legend is thinner than the legend. Girona did pass to the Franks in 785, but the city handed itself over, and Charlemagne was not there. The tales of his conquest grew up later, some of them to give lustre to local monasteries and to the cathedral of Girona, and the dragon rides along with them. Pere Alsius read the beast as a figure for sin and for the old paganism giving way to the new faith. Folklorists have also pointed out how closely the story follows that of the Tarasque of Provence, another river monster that defeats armed men and is led into town on a leash by a saint, Martha in that case, and then killed by the crowd.

In recent decades the dragon has been recast as a lake monster in the modern style, a Catalan cousin of the Loch Ness Monster, and popular books have tried to pin boating accidents on it. Nothing in the record supports that. The old story is better anyway.

Its powers are those of a dragon bred by a lake. It is at home in three elements, it is armoured against any blade, and its breath poisons at a distance, so that it never needs to come within reach of a lance. Its weakness is of a different order altogether. Force does nothing to it, and it wins every fight it is offered. Faced with a man who does not fight, it has no answer. A blessing and a length of cloth are enough to hold it, and once it is held it is as helpless as any animal on a rope.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Banyoles Monster?

The Banyoles Monster is a dragon from Catalan legend, known in Catalan as the Drac de Banyoles. It lived in a cave under the Lake of Banyoles, near Girona, and preyed on the animals and people of the shore. Its foul breath was said to sicken the whole district.

Who defeated the dragon of Banyoles?

The monk Sant Mer, also called Emeri, tamed the dragon of Banyoles. He approached it unarmed, blessed it, and led it away with his belt, stole or cloak. Charlemagne had already tried to kill it and failed.

Did Charlemagne fight the Banyoles dragon?

In the legend, yes. Charlemagne attacked the dragon with his sword Joyeuse, but the blade shattered on its scales and he retreated. Historically, Charlemagne was not present when Girona passed to the Franks in 785, and the stories of his conquest grew up later.

What happened to the Banyoles Monster in the end?

The tellings disagree. In one, the townspeople killed the tamed dragon in the square. In others it returned to the lake and lived on herbs and fish, became a vegetarian fed by the town, or followed Sant Mer to his hermitage at Sant Esteve de Guialbes.

Is the Banyoles Monster like the Loch Ness Monster?

Only in modern retellings. The traditional Banyoles Monster is a medieval-style dragon tamed by a saint, closer to the Tarasque of Provence than to a lake cryptid. Recent popular accounts have recast it as a Catalan Loch Ness Monster, without support in the record.

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