Tarasque

The stretch of the Rhône between Arles and Avignon runs slow and wide, and the reeds along it grow tall enough to swallow a standing man. Medieval travellers crossing there had a habit of counting heads on the far bank. Sometimes a boat went out and came back lighter, with nothing to show for the loss but a slick of churned mud and a smell that clung to the hull for days, sulphurous and faintly sweet, the way a fire smells after someone has thrown meat on it.

What lived in the water was described in unusual detail for a medieval monster, and the earliest surviving description is also the most specific. It was fatter than a bull and longer than a horse. Its head and face were a lion’s, with a lion’s mane running back into a horse’s mane along a spine as sharp as a hatchet blade, and the scales on that ridge were bristling and keen enough to saw. It walked on six feet, and each foot ended in a bear’s claws. Behind it trailed the tail of a serpent, ringed along its length. Most peculiar of all, a shield of turtle shell curved down over each flank, so that from the side the thing looked less like a snake with legs than like an enormous armoured insect that had got hold of a lion’s skull. Later writers gave the tail a scorpion’s sting or a cockerel’s spur, but those are embellishments; the carapaces were there from the start, in a text written around the year 1200, which is worth saying because people have often assumed they were invented later to hide the men carrying the parade float.

Its parentage was traced with the same odd precision. The beast came out of Galatia, the offspring of Leviathan and a creature called the onachus, sometimes written bonnacon, a bull-like animal of the bestiaries whose only real defence was to void its bowels at whatever chased it. The dung came out like an arrow and burned what it touched. The Tarasque inherited the trick and improved on it, throwing a scorching spray across the width of an acre, bright as glass, setting fire to anything it landed on. From its jaws came hissing and roaring, and from its nostrils a pestilential smoke that killed anyone who came close enough to breathe it. Fire in front, fire behind. Whatever was hunting the thing was going to have a bad day at either end.

It hunted by patience. A ferryman poling out from the reeds, one man in a flat boat with the current pulling east, would see the water lift beside him without breaking. Then the boat would tip, and the river would close, and the reeds would go on moving in the wind exactly as before.

The people of the town, then called Nerluc, sent for Martha. She had come to Provence by sea from Judaea, according to the tradition, and she went into the wood alone and found the dragon partway through eating a man. She carried no spear. She sprinkled holy water on it and held up a cross, and the beast that had shrugged off armed parties simply stopped, and stood, and let itself be handled like a sheep. Martha untied her girdle, looped it round the creature’s neck, and led it out of the reeds into the open.

What happened next is the part the story never softens. The townspeople, who had lost brothers and sons to it, fell on the tethered animal with stones and spears and killed it where it stood, docile, still wearing a woman’s belt. Martha stayed and preached, and a great many of them were baptised, and the town changed its name to Tarascon after the thing it had murdered. The naming is the strangest gesture in the whole legend: not a monument to the saint, but to the monster.

The story survives in three near-contemporary Latin lives that agree closely with one another, the earliest probably the one attributed to a Marcella and written somewhere between 1187 and 1221, followed by Vincent of Beauvais in his Speculum historiale and Jacobus de Voragine in the Golden Legend around 1260, which is how the tale reached the rest of Europe. Gervase of Tilbury adds a local note, putting the lair in an abyss by the gates of Arles and in the rock beneath the castle at Tarascon, where the fortress still stands over the water.

The beast did not stay dead. By the fifteenth century Tarascon was carrying a Tarasque of wood and painted canvas through its streets, and in April 1474 René of Anjou formalised the games and founded an order of knights, the Tarascaires, to keep them running. Between four and a dozen men walk hidden inside the shell, which is hot, and blind, and heavier than it looks. A handler works the jaws from within so they clack. Rockets were once fitted into the nostrils and lit, so the thing spat sparks over the crowd exactly as the Latin promised, and the tail was swung to knock spectators off their feet. The processions ran at Pentecost and on Saint Martha’s feast in July, and the beast is now a listed piece of France’s intangible heritage, inscribed by UNESCO among the processional giants and dragons of Belgium and France.

Its powers are all of a piece with its breeding: the crushing bulk and the bear claws from the dragon side, the burning ordure and the poisonous exhalation from the bonnacon, armour that made spears pointless, and the river itself for cover. Against a hunting party it was effectively invulnerable, which is why the town had stopped sending them.

Its weakness was that none of that was any use against someone who did not attack it. Holy water and a raised cross undid the whole arsenal in a moment, and the girdle held a creature that iron could not. The armour faced outward; nothing in it was made for being approached gently. Once it had followed a woman out of the reeds it was finished, and it went to its death without using a single one of the things that had made it unkillable.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Tarasque?

The Tarasque is a dragon of French legend that lived in the Rhône between Arles and Avignon and preyed on people crossing the river. It had a lion’s head, six bear-clawed feet, a serpent’s tail, and turtle-like shells over both flanks. The town of Tarascon in Provence is named after it.

How did Saint Martha defeat the Tarasque?

Saint Martha subdued the Tarasque without weapons, sprinkling it with holy water and holding up a cross, which made the beast instantly docile. She tied her girdle around its neck and led it back to the town, where the inhabitants killed it with stones and spears while it stood tamed. The story appears in Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend, compiled around 1260.

Where did the Tarasque come from?

According to the medieval accounts the Tarasque came from Galatia and was the offspring of the biblical Leviathan and a bull-like beast called the onachus or bonnacon. From the onachus it inherited the ability to fling burning excrement at anything pursuing it, a spray said to cover the width of an acre and to burn whatever it touched.

Is the Tarasque still celebrated in Tarascon?

Yes. A large effigy of the Tarasque, carried by four to a dozen men hidden inside it, is still paraded through Tarascon, a tradition formalised by René of Anjou in 1474 when he founded the order of the Tarascaires to run the games. The tradition is inscribed by UNESCO among the processional giants and dragons of Belgium and France.

What did the Tarasque look like?

The oldest surviving description, written around the year 1200, gives the Tarasque the face and head of a lion with a horse’s mane, teeth as sharp as swords, a back ridged like a hatchet with bristling scales, six feet with bear claws, a serpent’s tail, and a turtle-like carapace covering each side. It was said to be fatter than a bull and longer than a horse.

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Gargouille, Drac, Peluda, Lou Carcolh, Melusine, Beast of Gévaudan, Bonnacon, Leviathan, Saint George, Víbria, Tarantasio, Wyvern, Basilisk