a terrifying comet

'In the year 1543 a terrifying comet in the shape of a dragon was seen, a star larger than a millstone, with its tail turned toward the south. From it fire fell upon the Earth; it drank from a brook and drained it dry; afterwards it sprang upon a field and devoured all that was upon it; then it leaped into the sky once more, but left a mark behind it, namely much sickness and dying.'

'a sixteenth-century account, quoted by Rudolf Thiel in And There was Light, translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston, 1957.