The Myth of the Hero slaying the Dragon The hero slaying the dragon is one of the few myths that have survived for thousands of years in almost all the cultures of the world. Numerous songs, ballads and fairy tales retell the story of a dragon that created a serious disturbance in the community, and had to be vanquished by the hero. This study attempts to analyze and compare the Romanian ballad Iovan Iorgovan, the hero who set to slay the dragon, with different versions of the ancient myth as part of the Indo-European cultural complex.
Dragons are mythical characters having the body of a very large serpent with one or several heads, spitting fire through their mouths, with many tongues and sharp fangs, and sometimes having a set of bat-like wings. In the various
European traditions they are monstrous and fierce symbols of the chaos in Nature, belonging to the precosmic era. Gods or heroes had to reassert their sovereign power over the dragon’s force of destruction and chaos, and thus create or restore the cosmic order. As an obstructer of waters, the dragon has been vanquished by the god of storms, who thus frees the rain and returns fertility and prosperity to the community. The Romanian tradition describes the dragon, ‘balaur’, as a huge and strong serpent, with wings and golden scales, having three or nine and sometimes twelve heads, blowing fire through his mouths. Killing him was the greatest achievement of the legendary Iovan, or the fairy tale hero “Făt Frumos”/ Prince Charming. In a cosmogonic legend Fârtate, the world creator, punished the dragon for his continuous mischief by