#Lambton Worm

[atomic-chronoscaph]

The Lair of the White Worm - art by Pamela Colman Smith (1911)

[fhtagn-and-tentacles]

13 LAMBTOWN WORM

by Andréa Boloch

[jurakan]

Do you have a fun fact in these trying times?

Tell me, friend, do you know the story of the Lambton Worm? If not, then Today You Learned about it.

[This story is in, like, ALL the dragon books.]

The story goes that some time in the ages of the Crusades, the town of Lambton was doing its usual Sunday business of going to Mass–except for the young heir to the Lambton Estate, John Lambton, who was going fishing instead. He got a few disapproving looks from people on the way to church, but he kept fishing because he was a rebel like that. He had trouble catching actual fish, but as Mass was wrapping up, he caught something!

A worm that looked like the Devil.

Okay, so ‘worm’ in those days can also mean a serpent, and Wikipedia describes it as something eel-like. Just… he picked up something on his fishing line that was limbless, not that big, but ugly as all getout. John Lambton was freaked out by this, and he chucked it in the local well. Deciding this was punishment for his non-churchgoing ways, Johnny grows up, trying to forget about the worm. When he grows a little older, he even takes the Cross and goes on Crusade as penance.

Except the worm survived. And it grew down in that well, poisoning the water with its venom or perhaps its general ugliness. The worm eventually grows large enough to slither out of the well and starts to eat things–small animals, mostly. Then it starts drinking cows’ milk (which is a bad thing to feed dragons if you don’t want them to grow bigger), and THEN it gets big enough to start eating cows and small children.

This, as you may realize, is A Problem.

The people of Lambton, and its lord, realize that they can placate the thing by offering it milk and cows, but it keeps growing bigger, and they try to get people to come kill it. And of course knights come along and try to kill this dragon worm thing. It doesn’t work, though. Maybe they hack off a piece, but it grows back, and the worm wraps itself around a man in armor and squeezes him to death.

Finally, John Lambton, heir to Lambton, comes back from Crusade. He realizes what’s going on, and knows that it’s a problem he started in the first place, so he has to fix it. Though he sees that no one’s had much luck in killing it. So he goes to a local wise woman, and she tells him that he can kill the Worm, but first he has to make a special suit of armor, one with spearheads fused all over it. Then, when he chops it to bits, he must dump the remains in the river. And THEN, after the deed is done, he must kill the first living thing he sees. Otherwise, the house of Lambton will be cursed for nine generations.

Well, Johnny Lamb commissions the suit of armor, and then he tells his dad to arrange that when he’s done the deed, he’ll blow a horn, and so then a hunting dog will be released and John will kill it.

Lambton faces the Worm, which of course, wraps around him to constrict him. But it doesn’t work! Because his armor is covered in spikes! And so the worm pierces itself on his armor! And he has enough room to start chopping this thing to pieces. Then he throws those in the river, where the pieces are swept away before they can put themselves back together. 

[C.E. Brock's illustration.]

Lambton blows the horn to signal victory. But ohes noes! His father is so happy that he forgets to release the hound, and runs to his son and kills him. John Lambton obviously cannot go through with killing his father, so he tries to kill the hound anyway, but it doesn’t work to avert the curse. For nine generations, none of the Lambton heirs died a peaceful death in their beds.

And that’s the story of the Lambton Worm, friendo!

[John Dickenson Batten's illustration]

[dwollsadventures]

Hey, here's where Dirtifer came from. I was actually really surprised to see a dockalfer show up in Wizard School Mysteries Book 1, I think I designed him before the book was released? Related was my attempt to draw a Beelzebub to varying results.

Most of this page is dedicated to the knucker and Lambton worm. The knucker was designed after seeing the kettles and pot-hole lakes named after knuckers. It made me think of them as a type of pest which lodges themselves into these holes, with spikes to prevent people from removing them. Their ears also have long scales or hairs to mimic reeds. The Lambton worm was drawn to make it look a little more like an eft, or juvenile newt, which the worm was supposed to resemble.

Finally at the bottom, Drake lets his hair down, to the admiration of his friend. We'll see more of her on the next sketch page, but she's part of an extended friend group, a "TDG Junior" if you will. Fun facts: her name is Angel and she predates both Ariel and Drake!

[spatheandspadix]

Illustration of the Lambton Worm by C. E. Brock from English Fairy and Other Folk Tales.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot since reading Poli and Stoneman’s 2020 paper about the link between fossil club mosses from ancient coal swamps and dragon lore.

Looking deeper into a few tales reveals their relationships to the plant fossils’ appearance as well as their locations. Ac- cording to lore, John Lambton yanks the Lambton worm from the Wear River on the end of a fishing line and flings it into a well, where it reaches enormous size [38]. Years later, pieces of the worm are hacked off in an effort to kill it, but it regenerates these parts and lives on. Lambton’s worm grows so large that it can wrap itself around a hill seven times, a feat that causes a (still-visible) circular indentation around Worm Hill, located near a documented fossil site. Eventu- ally, Lambton hacks the worm to pieces, which float down the Wear before the worm is finally torn completely apart, having impaled itself on Lambton’s armor. Note that Lamb- ton’s estate sits at the site of lead, coal and limestone mines that have operated for centuries. Interestingly, up until the seventeenth century, coal was believed to be a living thing with “special seeds for its reproduction and growth under the ground” [39]. Could the pieces of the Lambton worm that washed down the Wear River have been the coal-black, scaly fossils of Lepidodendron?

https://direct.mit.edu/leon/article/53/1/50/46847/Drawing-New-Boundaries-Finding-the-Origins-of

[artistrichardhfay]

HUMAN ARTISTS, use only one piece to convince people to follow you

One of my personal favorites — "Lambton Worm and Knight".

[blacjaq1]

[greenpanda-basicfakewitch]

The Lambton Worm | Myth

Can't believe I forgot this story, I should start putting in stories based on my own culture [Britain] than following the popular americans and anything thats common.

The legend of the Lambton Worm is believed to date from the 14th century, and the earliest published version of the legend was by Robert Surtees, the well-known Durham historian who recorded the traditional oral version of the legend as recounted by Elizabeth Cockburn of Offerton.

So the Lambton worm myth, was the story about a worm tossed into a well then suddenly grew into a large dangerous dragon. The same man responsible for creating the dragon has to slay it. But of course once he did and returned he had to slay the first thing he saw, and so he told his father to release the hounds so he would kill them on sight and not any loved one.

His father forgot, and so the man slayed the hounds instead and thus the family line were cursed.

[In depth source YES it's wiki, but I was a kid at primary school when I first heard the story and this seems accurate to me Source]

[saucylobster]

One of two books aout dragons I used to check out of the local library constantly

The Lambton Worm, by Stephen Cartwright.

From Dragons (Usborne Story Books, 1979).

[bretwalda-lamnguin]

Maybe I've been thinking too much about Northumbrian worm myths but I wonder if Glaurung could have been tamed or at least appeased by giving him milk...

[theharellan]

🪱

oh worm? | not accepting | @nobodyexpectsthe

He laughs- snorts, even. Living up to the name Varric has set for him.

"Was that a serious question?"

Pirith's expression yields no answer one way or the other, almost uncanny in how little it divulges. Green eyes passive and expectant, staring with the narrow focus of a cat watching its prey.

"I suppose it would depend on which manner of worm. I have known some to be quite fearsome in reputation. They say the hills around Amaranthine still bear the terror of one's reign."

He smiles, albeit lightly, expression laden with skepticism for Fereldan folksong.

"It is admittedly difficult to picture you as the more diminutive sort. Easier to imagine you wrapped around one of Skyhold's towers than tilling the earth.

"I suppose, to answer your question: my feelings would not change, but you would hardly be capable of posing such... unique questions. Your present company would be missed, nevertheless."

[nerdwatching]

Do you all want to see my OCs for a story I’ll probably never write?

Hope so!

(If you haven’t already guessed, I like Northern English folklore)

[drachenwiki]

If this was the Lambton worm, I'd add "curse for john lambton! curse for john lambton for Nine Generations!!!!"

The Dragon of Wantley,174

4engraving by John June

[ex0skeletal-undead]

Inktober 13 - Lambton Worm by Andréa Boloch

[artistrichardhfay]

Poem "The Lambton Worm" originally published Dec 2007 in the webzine Aphelion and also published Aug 2023 in Cosmic Journeys and Gothic Visions: A Speculative Poetry Collection.

Background illustration "The Lambton Worm" by Richard H. Fay.

The Lambton Worm

By Richard H. Fay

youthful roguery Holy Sabbath spent fishing strange evil hauled in

squirming eldritch worm a nearby well deep and dark fell catch discarded

brave crusading knight seven long years overseas folly forgotten

a growing menace wound three times around a hill ravenous devil

woolly flocks consumed every dairy cow drained dry countryside ravaged

diabolic beast severed pieces recombine immortal terror

the castle threatened costly daily ritual destitute estate

lordly dilemma wise-woman consultation clever solution

spike-studded armour bloody fight in the river the worm defeated

[bestanimal]

Round 2 - Chordata - Petromyzontida

(Sources - 1, 2, 3, 4)

Petromyzontida is a class comprising one order, Petromyzontiformes, commonly called “lampreys.”

Like their closest living relatives, the hagfish, lampreys bear a cartilaginous skull and rudimentary vertebrae. Adults lack a jaw, and are characterized by a toothed, funnel-like, sucking mouth. They have elongated, eel-like bodies reaching up to 1.3 metres (3.9 ft) long. They have one nostril atop the head, seven gill pores on each side of the head, two well-developed eyes, and two parietal eyes. Only 18 species are predators or scavengers, the rest (all freshwater species) do not feed as adults, instead living off the reserves gained as juveniles. Carnivorous species are marine, though 9 of them migrate into freshwater to breed. They use the suction cup around their mouths to cling to rocks or prey, using their tongue to either rasp blood from prey or algae from rocks. They also use this suction cup to climb up rocks when migrating upstream to breed.

Adult lampreys spawn in nests of sand, gravel and pebbles in clear streams. After hatching from their eggs the larvae, called ammocoetes, will drift downstream with the current until they reach soft and fine sediment in which to burrow, taking up an existence as filter feeders, collecting detritus, algae, and microorganisms (image 4). Their eyes are underdeveloped, only capable of discriminating changes in light. Lampreys spend the majority of their lives as these filter-feeding ammocoetes. Most species spend up to 8 years, though some may spend as little as 1-2 years. The ammocoetes will then undergo a metamorphosis which generally lasts 3-4 months, during which they do not eat.

The oldest fossil lamprey, Priscomyzon, is known from the Late Devonian. Other stem-group lampreys, like Pipiscius, Mayomyzon and Hardistiella are known from the Carboniferous. While they appear relatively unchanged, stem-lampreys lack the specialised, heavily toothed discs with plate-like laminae present in modern lampreys, and their larvae resembled the adults, rather than having a distinct stage. The earliest lamprey with the specialised toothed oral disc typical of modern lampreys is Yanliaomyzon from the Middle Jurassic.

Propaganda under the cut:

Many species change color as ammocoetes, becoming dark during the day and pale at night.

Lampreys have been extensively studied because their relatively simple brain is thought to reflect the brain structure of early vertebrate ancestors, thus providing insight into our origins.

Lampreys are valued as food in the Northwest United States, throughout Europe, in Russia, Japan, and in South Korea. King Henry I of England is claimed to have been so fond of lampreys that he often ate them, late into life and poor health, against the advice of his physician concerning their richness, and is said to have died from eating "a surfeit of lampreys".

In the county of Nakkila (Finland) and Carnikava Municipality (Latvia), the European River Lamprey (Lampetra fluviatilis) is the local symbol, found on their coats of arms.

The legend of the Lambton Worm from County Durham in North-East England concerns a lamprey being fished out of the River Wear by a young boy skipping church. He declares that he had “caught the devil” and disposes of it down a nearby well. Over the years, the lamprey grows into a giant, poisonous Worm, wrapping itself around a local hill and terrorizing the village. Hijinks and witch-curses ensue.

Lampreys were highly appreciated by the Ancient Romans, not only as food, but also as pets. Lucius Licinius Crassus was mocked by Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus for weeping over the death of his pet lamprey, who he was said to have adorned with earrings and small necklaces, training it to respond to its name and swimming up to eat what was offered. Crassus retorted that Domitius had lost three wives himself and Crassus had never seen him shed a tear.

Publius Vedius Pollio was reportedly an exceedingly cruel Roman soldier who kept a pool of carnivorous lampreys to which he would feed slaves who had displeased him. This went on until Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus was visiting his mansion and witnessed Pollio about to dispatch a slave who had broken a crystal cup. Augustus had all of Pollio’s cups destroyed, as well as his mansion, and filled in his pond. This is likely an urban legend, but honestly, I feel like it should have ended with Pollio going down with the lampreys.

Dams and other human development have made it hard for lampreys to migrate upstream to breed. Some scientists are hoping to design ramps that will utilize lamprey’s climbing ability so that they can bypass dams.