龍

北直界有堕龙入村，其行重滞，入某绅家。其门只可容身，塞身而入。家人尽奔。登楼哗噪，铳炮轰然。龙才出来。门外停贮积水，浅不满尺。龙入，转侧其中，身尽泥涂，极力腾跃，尺余辄堕。泥蟠三日，蝇集鳞甲。忽然大雨，就霹雳拏空而去。 房生与友人登牛山，入寺游观。忽然椽间一块黄砖堕，上盘一条小蛇，细裁如蚯蚓。忽然盘旋一周如指，又一圈已如带。共惊，知是龙，群奔而下。方到山半，听到寺中霹雳一声，天上黑云如盖，一条巨龙在其中夭矫，过了一阵而没。 章丘小相公庄，有民妇适野，遇大风，尘沙扑面。觉一目眯，如含麦芒，揉之吹之，终不愈。开睑而审视，睛本无恙，只有赤线蜿蜒于肉分。有人说："这是蛰龙。"妇忧惧待死。积三月余，天暴雨，忽然巨霆一声，裂眦而去，妇无少损。袁宣四说："在苏州，遇阴晦，霹雳大作。众人见龙垂云际，鳞甲张动，爪中握一个人头，须眉毕见；过了一阵，入云而没。也未听说有失其头的。"

In the northern district a dragon fell into a village; it moved heavily and stiffly, and made its way into the house of a certain gentleman. The door was barely wide enough for its body, and it forced its way in, while the whole household fled. They mounted the tower, shouting and clamoring, and let off their muskets and cannon with a great bang, and the dragon came out. Outside the gate was a pool of standing water, less than a foot deep. The dragon went into it and rolled about, covering itself with mud, struggling to leap up, but falling back after every foot. It lay coiled in the mud for three days, and flies settled on its scales. Then a great rain fell, and with a crash of thunder it soared up into the sky and was gone. A student Fang, with a friend, climbed Ox Mountain and went into a temple to look about. Suddenly a yellow brick fell from the rafters, on which coiled a small snake no thicker than an earthworm. Presently it coiled round and round till it was as thick as a finger, and again till it was like a girdle. All were alarmed, knowing it for a dragon, and rushed down the hill. When they were halfway down, there was a clap of thunder in the temple; black clouds covered the sky like a canopy, and a great dragon writhed among them, and after a while vanished. At Xiaoxianggong Village in Zhangqiu, a peasant woman went into the fields and was caught in a great wind, with sand and dust blowing in her face. She felt something in one eye, as if a grain of wheat awn had lodged there; she rubbed and blew at it, but it would not go. When the lid was turned back and looked at, the eyeball was unhurt, but a red line wound through the flesh. "That is a dormant dragon," someone said. The woman, in fear and dread, waited for death. Three months and more passed, when a great rain fell and a clap of thunder burst, and the thing tore open the eye and went away, without harm to the woman. Yuan Xuansi said: "At Suzhou, one dark and rainy day there were great crashes of thunder. The people saw a dragon hanging in the clouds, its scales spreading and moving, holding in its claws a human head, with beard and brows plainly visible; after a while it went up into the clouds and vanished. Nor did they hear that any head had been lost."