The dragon (Beowulf) Grendel's mother and Grendel, Beowulf returns to homeland and becomes king of the Geats. Fifty years pass with Beowulf leading as a wise king, when a local dragon is angered when a slave enters its lair and takes a cup from its treasure. The creature attacks the neighboring towns in revenge. Beowulf and a troop of men (“the Geats”) leave to find the dragon’s lair. The Geats run away in fear, leaving only Beowulf and his young companion Wiglaf to slay the dragon. Beowulf receives a fatal wound from the dragon, but Wiglaf impales the dragon’s belly to reduce the
The dragon (Beowulf) 1935 work "Beowulf and the Seventh Century", Ritchie Girvan writes that "Beowulf" should be seen as having some degree of historical accuracy despite the presence of a dragon in it; he argues that "Tales of dragons as well as a belief in dragons survived till recent times, and the popular mind is apt to accept with credulity stories of water-monsters. The stories, moreover, are often attached to real persons and localized precisely in time and place. The habit is so well known that examples are superfluous". Raymond Wilson Chambers, in his "Beowulf: An Introduction to the Study of the Poem