ADDER

Cold, they’re coiled like a squeezed blackhead. Sunshine, they’re off, rubbing the warm earth, sashaying and pulsing, fattening to strike. Lies, all lies. Medusa the seducer shakes her pretty locks, accountants tot their tills, snake-oil merchants strut their stump, and viper zig-zags into hiding.

At Dorchester-on-Thames there’s a bell to repel all serpents. It’s called Big Dong. Tenor-toned, it was cast in Wokingham with the stamp of a dragon, and presented to the church in 1380 by Ralph Retwold. The bell is dedicated to St. Birinus, the local saint who had come from Milan to convert the King of Wessex. As Dorchester’s first Bishop, Birinus controlled a diocese extending to the Northumbrian border yet he was undone, not martyred, but killed by a snake-bite.

So, be careful if you wear sandals. However, the dying Birinus pronounced immunity to snakebite for his flock: ‘Stay within the sound of my church bells and you’ll be protected’. A ploughman ventured to Wallingford, found everyone dead, their feet swollen purple with poison, all the alabaster effigies in the churches scraped as smooth as eggs in futile search for an antidote. Since then the good Dorchester folk have never strayed.

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