The Legend of The Lambton Worm
A Folk-Tale from North-East England
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After reading a recent account of a Romanian myth from Emilia about The man who sacrificed his wife, I was reminded of another folk-tale from closer to my own home in North-East England which also centres around the theme of sacrifice — the legend of The Lambton Worm.
The Lambtons were a local aristocratic family headed by the ‘Earl of Durham’. Even when I was growing up, the current Lord Lambton was a well-known and colourful local character and Conservative member of parliament, infamously photographed in bed with two prostitutes while smoking a joint.
The story of The Lambton Worm, however, is much older than that, and involves a medieval ancestor of his, one John Lambton, and his epic battle with a giant ‘worm’ — an old-English term for ‘dragon’. The tale starts with young John going fishing one Sabbath in the local River Wear. His catch was disappointing, amounting to nothing more than some ugly, unidentified eel-like creature.
Disgusted, John throws the creature down a well and heads home.
Time passes and John goes off to the Holy Land fight in The Crusades where, after many battles, he ‘wins his spurs’ and returns home a hero. However, on arriving home, he finds that not all has been rosy in his absence.
It seems the creature that John threw down the well as a youngster has grown to mythic proportions in his absence and regularly slithers around the local countryside at night, eating sheep, cows and young children. Many have tried to slay the beast, but the worm simply crushes them in his massive scaly coils.
Feeling, no doubt, more than a little responsible for this turn of events, and bolstered by his new status as returning hero, John resolves to vanquish the creature himself. Not wanting to meet his end in the deadly coils of the fearsome worm, however, he first visits a local ‘wise-woman’ or witch, who advises him to craft a special suit of armour with long spikes.
There is a price to pay, however. The woman tells John that in return for his victory over the giant worm he must kill the first living thing he sees afterwards. Failure to do this, warns the witch, will bring a curse on John and his family for nine generations and none of them will die peacefully in their beds.
John speaks with his father and together they hatch a cunning plan: after he’s killed the dragon, John will sound his hunting horn three times to let his father know, whereupon his father will release John’s most faithful hound. When the hound runs to the sound of John’s hunting horn, John will slay the poor, unsuspecting dog, thus keeping his promise to the witch.
So, dressed in his spiked armour, John sets off to find the great worm, who spends the daylight hours coiled around a local hill. When the dragon sees John, he uncoils himself and descends on the knight like a snake on a rat. Wrapping John around with his fearsome coils, the worm squeezes with all his might and in doing so, of course, kills himself on the giant armoured spikes.
Triumphant, John sounds his hunting horn three times but on hearing it, his father is so overwhelmed with joy that he forgets to release the hound and instead runs to congratulate his son. John cannot bring himself to slay his father, so they return to the kennel and slay the unfortunate hound, hoping this will avert the curse.
But the damage is done, the promise is broken and the curse is cast. And so it came to pass that for nine generations, no head of the Lambton family died peacefully in their beds…
Actually, I don’t know whether this last bit is true. It certainly held true for at least several generations, with various drownings, accidents or deaths in battle recorded in the history books, but whether it held for nine generations I cannot say.
What I can attest to, though, is the presence an ancient well outside an old country pub called The Inn Between (one of my favourite pub names, nestled as it was in between two other pubs on either side) and sometimes we’d stop and stare into the well, half expecting to spot the fearsome coils of a weird-looking eel-like creature…
There is also a weird, steep-sided hill named, aptly Worm Hill, that rises from the local landscape where, as kids, we would go at Easter to roll eggs down the grassy banks, a vestige of the ancient pagan festival of Ostara or Ēostre. In winter we would go there for sledging. Always, we’d be reminded that this was the hill where the Lambton Worm round himself around each day to sleep off his meal of sheep, cow or unsuspecting human child…
