#seventh son

“Are you the seventh son of the seventh son?” The voice was inhumanly low and it shook the fear in his bones loose.

“Yes!” he screamed. “Yes! Cursed, blighted, whatever you bloody want! Just get it over with.”

There was a short, tense silence.

“I have not come to kill you, human. I want to offer you a deal.”

His eyes opened in shock. “You what?”

The dragon was sitting a few paces away from him, its scaly claws crossed over one another and its massive, shimmering wings folded behind its hulking back. The look in its glittering eyes was intelligent and calculating, but not unkind, certainly not threatening. It waited.

“What—what kind of deal?” he stammered, heart racing with a wild, terrified hope.

“I understand that you have been left here to die by your fellow humans, because you are an extremely rare type of human, that they are afraid of. Is that correct?”

He studied the dragon’s interested expression for any trace of sarcasm, but there was none. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“Well then!” the dragon exclaimed. “I propose to you this: I will break your chains and save you from the humans, and in return you will join my hoard and live in my nest.”

“I’m sorry. Join your—what do you mean live in a nest. Humans don’t live in nests.”

The dragon gave a sideways movement of its massive head, scales glinting in the sun. “There is plenty of room. It used to be a cavern in a mountain, of very respectable depth and dimensions, but during one of my hibernation some humans built a castle on top of it, so it is very suitable for humans.”

He was almost baffled enough to no longer be scared. Almost. “What happened to the people who built it?”

The dragon, somehow, managed to arch a nonexistent eyebrow. “They live there,” it replied, slowly, as if it feared that he was rather slower on the uptake than expected. “That was the start of my hoard, you see.”

He hadn’t misheard it. It did say ‘hoard’. “But...dragons hoard gold, jewels, riches…”

“Uninspired amateurs,” the dragon sniffed. “All very well for one’s hatchling years, but honestly.” The glittering eyes squinted down at him. “Do you not want to join my hoard?”

“I…” Living in a castle with a dragon for a protector sure beat being chained to a rock by feral townsfolk, there was no doubt about that. And what other choice did he have? He swallowed. “I do.”

“Wonderful!” Joyful sparks snapped off the dragon’s jaw as it gracefully leapt upright. “I shall do away with those pesky chains.” And he came towards him with remarkably light steps.

“Do you live very far away?” he blurted out, nervously watching the dragon as it studied the iron rings hammered into the stone. “Will I be able to—I cannot just leave my brothers behind!”

The dragon, who had just crushed one end of the chain to warped bits of broken iron in its claw, looked up distractedly. “Whatever are you talking about? All your brothers are at my nest already. Who do you think told me where to find you?”

His heart leapt in his chest. He didn’t even notice the heavy weight of the chains fall away as they slid to the ground. “You...you’d want to keep my brothers too?”

SEVENTH CHILD

The seventh son of a seventh son, or the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, is commonly said to have magical gifts, particularly the gift of healing. This old and very widespread belief is sometimes stretched to include any seventh child of a family, whether the parent of the same sex was similarly born or not. More usually, however, the magical gifts are looked for only in the second generation of sevens. In some districts, it is thought necessary for the child's birth to be preceded by those of six brothers (or sisters) in an unbroken line, with no child of opposite sex intervening.

A person so born is, or was until very recently, believed to share with kings the power of curing the King's Evil, or scrofula, by touch. He or she can also cure goitre, ringworm, and the pain of burns in the same way. In the Scottish Highlands, a seventh son is said to have 'the power of the Magic Foot', which enables him to cure foot-troubles in others by placing his own foot on that of the sufferer. In most parts of Scotland, seventh children are credited with Second Sight and the ability to foretell the future. Almost everywhere, they are believed to make good doctors, quite apart from their power to heal certain diseases magically by touch.

Traditionally, the seventh child heals by laying his hand on the diseased part, sometimes, but not always, murmuring a secret prayer or charm as he does so. The rite is usually performed in the carly morning, while the healer is still fasting. In the early years of this century, a Somerset man cured scrofulous patients in the Brendon Hills district by touching, when thus fasting, on a Sunday morning, repeating at the same time certain words which no one was ever allowed to hear. He would not attempt a cure on any day but Sunday. Near Dulverton, at about the same period, a seventh daughter healed goitre by stroking the swelling.

Alexander Polson, in his Highland Heritage of Folklore (1926), records a more elaborate rite. The healer visited the sick person before breakfast on seven consecutive mornings, and washed the afflicted part with water drawn from a north-facing well. Here too, a secret incantation was used, and also spittle, for the seventh son spat in the water before it was applied. On the Isle of Lewis, after touching his patient, he hung a sixpence on a string round the latter's neck. If this was afterwards removed, the malady returned. The same belief attached to the gold angels formerly hung on white ribbons round the necks of people who had been touched for scrofula by the King.

The actual presence of the seventh child was not always necessary. It was believed that he could convey his healing powers to water, which could then be bottled and taken away. To do this, he first dropped a gold sovereign into the water, dipped his hand into it, and pronounced a blessing over it. If the patient was subsequently washed or sprinkled with the water so prepared, a cure was expected without any further rites.

Henderson mentions a Scottish Border belief which does not seem to be general in other parts of Britain. This was that the magical cures effected by a seventh child had to be paid for by a loss of his own vital energy. If he was required to perform such cures too often, he pined away and eventually died of exhaustion.