This is a natural hill, not a barrow, but its top has been artificially flattened; it is a good vantage point for a close view of the Uffington White Horse, with which it is linked in local tradition. There is a conspicuously bare chalky patch on the top of it. Thomas Hughes gives the local story about it in his scouring of the White Horse (1859), a book which soundly base on first-hand observation though presented in semi-fictional form. A local man, pointing to a mound near the figure, tells him:
This is Dragon’s Hill, where St. George killed the Dragon in the old times. Leastways so they says about here, only they calls him King George instead of St. George. And this bare place is where his blood ran out, and nothing’ll grow on it since, not so much as a thistle.
This destructive effect of dragon’s blood on vegetation is also mentioned at Aller, Somerset. Hughes also quotes verses by a shepherd Job Cork, ‘two generations back’ (i.e. before 1800):
Ah, Zur, I can remember well
The stories the old volk do tell –
Upon this hill which here is seen
Many a battle there have been.
If it is true so I heard say,
King Gaarge did here the dragon slay,
And down below on yonder hill
They buried him as I heard tell.