Oh, good people—men with the salt of the sea in your beards, women with the dust of the hills on your feet—come closer! The air grows cool, the oil lamps burn low, and it is time for the telling.

Tonight, I give you the story of Perseus and Medusa, the boy who faced a monster and returned with her head.

Long ago, in the land of Argos, there was a king named Acrisius, and the oracle told him: “You will be slain by the son of your daughter.”

To defy fate, he locked Danaë, his daughter, in a bronze tower—no man could reach her. But the gods do not respect bronze or kings. Zeus came to her in a shower of golden light, and from that union was born Perseus.

When Acrisius learned of the child, fear gripped him, but he dared not kill his own blood. Instead, he set mother and son adrift in a wooden chest upon the sea. The waves carried them to the isle of Seriphos, where a fisherman named Dictys took them in.

But the king of that isle, Polydectes, grew hungry for Danaë and weary of her son’s watchful eye. So he hatched a cruel plan: to send Perseus for the head of Medusa—a Gorgon whose gaze turned men to stone.

Now, you all know, my friends, no man faces the Gorgon alone and lives. But the gods favoured Perseus. Athena gave him a polished bronze shield, Hermes a winged pair of sandals, and Hephaestus a sword sharper than truth.

He flew to the edge of the world, where Medusa slept among her sisters, her hair a writhing nest of serpents.

He crept closer, eyes fixed not on her face but on her reflection in the bronze. One stroke—swift as lightning—and her head fell, hissing even in death.

From her blood sprang Pegasus, the winged horse who would carry heroes yet to come.

Perseus returned, the Gorgon’s head in a sack, and when Polydectes mocked him, he drew it forth—and the king became a statue, more perfect in stone than he ever was in flesh.

And so, my friends, remember this when the night is long and the sea is wide: the favour of the gods is like the wind—you cannot see it, but it can carry you to the edge of the world and back again.