Tradition / Region: Swiss Mythology
Alternate Names: Dragon of Hirschensprung
Category: Dragon
The Myth
In the narrow pass known as the Hirschensprung, where the land road is forced between steep rock faces to avoid the flood-prone Rhine plain, an old legend tells of a monstrous dragon that once lived among the cliffs.
The place itself already carried a name tied to danger and escape. It was said that a stag, hunted and cornered, once leapt across the chasm to evade its pursuers—an impossible jump that gave the site its name: Hirschensprung, the “stag’s leap.”
But long after that, something far worse inhabited the pass.
A dragon took up residence among the rocks, a grotesque and terrifying creature that threatened everything living in the area. It haunted the narrow route, making travel dangerous and filling the surrounding lands with fear. Neither man nor beast could pass safely while it remained.
The local farmers, unable to endure the threat any longer, devised a practical but brutal solution. Rather than confronting the creature with weapons, they used cunning.
They heated a ploughshare—an iron blade used for cutting earth—until it glowed red-hot. Then, approaching the dragon, they provoked it into opening its jaws. At the right moment, they hurled the burning iron straight into its mouth.
The dragon, driven by its insatiable hunger, swallowed it instantly.
Moments later, the heat consumed it from within. After a brief but violent death struggle, the creature perished.
Yet the story does not end with its death.
The dragon, according to local belief, still remains at Hirschensprung—but no longer alive. Its body turned to stone in the place where it died. Even now, people claim that its form can be seen in the rock itself: its head and gaping jaws protruding from the cliff face, while its tail stretches across the landscape toward the pass.
The position of the stone formation suggests that, in its final agony, the dragon twisted violently before becoming fixed forever in the mountain.
Sources
sagen.at contributors. (n.d.). Der Drache am Hirschensprung. In sagen.at, from https://www.sagen.at/texte/sagen/schweiz/st_gallen/hirschensprung.html