Maud and the Wyvern (also known as The Dragon of Mordiford) is a recounting of the legend of the dragon of Mordiford, a village in Herefordshire.
According to the legend, a young girl named Maud was terribly lonely and longed to have a pet. However, due to the rules of her parents, she was prevented from doing so.
One day, while wandering the forest adjacent to her village one day, Maud had found a small bright creature with a snout and small, translucent wings prowling around a small group of flowers. Excited by the creature and by the possibility of at last having a companion, the girl took it home to show to her parents. Immediately her mother and father realized the creature was a baby wyvern and commanded Maud to take it back to where she had found, lest it cause trouble in the village. Maud, indignantly resisting, agreed, but instead disobeyed her parents and brought the infant dragon to a hiding place in the forest. There she nurtured her "pet" with milk, playing with it and watching it try to fly. However, the Wyvern matured quickly and it grew enormous, with strong green scales and vast, thick and powerful wings.
After reaching maturity, the dragon's hunger could no longer be satiated by milk and the creature began taking livestock in its quest for meat. The local farmers tried to kill the creature but to no avail, instead themselves ending up a meal for the beast. Finding human flesh to be delicious, the wyvern also began targeting human victims as well. Only Maud herself remained immune to the wyvern's insatiable appetite, for she was the only one the wyvern considered friend. She implored the creature to stop its rampage, but the dragon, its true nature emerged, could not change its ways.
Eventually, the townspeople grew exhausted of the constant attacks from the dragon and desperate for aid, sought help from the noblemen of Mordiford. A man from the local and influential Garston family set out in full armour to end the beast's reign of terror and kill it, finding the beast nearly camouflaged into the forest's many plants. The dragon almost instantly released a blast of fire with its first attack, Garstone barely deflecting it. He aimed a lance at the wyvern's throat, releasing it and fully penetrating through the dragon's scales. As he was about to finish off the dying dragon with his sword, Maud, insane with rage and grief, burst from the surrounding forest and came to mourn her past pet, frightening knight and his horse alike. Unnerved and strangely perturbed at his success, Garston rode away to inform the villagers of the dragons death as Maud lay weeping over her friend; the innocence of her childhood brought to a sudden and savage end.