Where Dragons Soar: And Other Animal Folk Tales of the British Isles

by Castle, Pete;

  One year, when things had reached a terrifying low, Llud went to his brother Llefelys for help, to see if he could offer any explanation. Llefelys had at his disposal all the best brains in Gaul and could summon help from all over the continent and soon he was able to explain Llud’s problem. The shrieks and screams, he said, were caused by two dragons engaged in a never-ending battle. As they fought they roared out their pain and anger. To stop the disaster happening every year, Llud would have to stop the dragons fighting. They could not be killed, so he had to capture them and imprison them somewhere from which they could never escape.

  Now that he knew what he must do Llud returned home and began making preparations to achieve his aim. The first task was to measure his kingdom from north to south and from east to west and find the dead centre. It turned out to be just outside the town of Oxford. There Llud had a huge watertight pit, or cistern, dug and when it was complete he filled it with mead. An enormous brocaded cloth was made to cover the pit.

  On the eve of Beltane, Llud sat beside the pit and saw two terrifying, unimaginable beasts fighting. As they fought they changed. They went through every bloodthirsty animal known to man and many which aren’t. They were bears, they were lions, they were basilisks and griffons. They became hounds and wolves, leopards and endless coiling snakes. They grew large, they shrunk small. They tried to trick each other. As the night grew old they changed into dragons and soared into the air to continue their fight. As they swooped and battled they let out the deadly shrieks which had ravaged his kingdom for so long.

  After a night of fighting in which first one and then the other dragon had seemed to have the upper hand, they both sank to the ground by the cistern where they changed into giant pigs. Smelling the mead the pigs plunged into the pit and quenched their thirsts with gallons of the intoxicating liquid. Then they collapsed in a drunken stupor. Llud was then able to bind them up in the brocaded cloth and have them transported away to the distant mountains of North Wales, where they were interred in a cave far under the ground where they could do no more harm.

  Llud became a hero to his people and ruled them well for the rest of his life. They thought that the threat of the warring dragons was a thing of the past and gradually the suffering they had caused faded from memory. Centuries passed and new peoples came to the country, new wars were fought and new kings ruled. One of these was called Vortigern. Vortigern had made his stronghold in the mountains of Caernarfon in North Wales on an isolated, rocky outcrop. He called it Dinas Ffaraon Dandde, or ‘the fortress of the fiery pharaoh’. From there he ruled a wide area of land, but in order to make himself stronger and even more powerful he needed to expand and strengthen his castle. The trouble was, every time he constructed a new tower or a new wall, it cracked and tumbled down.

  Vortigern consulted his advisors, all the wisest sages and cleverest magicians he had at his disposal, and they told him that the only remedy was to find a boy who had no natural father and to sacrifice him. But what kind of boy has no natural father? Vortigern eventually found one, a young lad called Merlin whose father was a demon or shapeshifter, so he was ‘no natural father’. Although he wasn’t a shapeshifter like his father, Merlin did have more than natural powers and he was able to explain that Vortigern’s advisors were wrong. Sacrificing him would make no difference. The towers and walls kept falling down, he said, because the castle was built over a vast cave in which two warring dragons were trapped. It was their writhing which shook the ground and caused the towers to fall.

  Following Merlin’s advice Vortigern ordered his men to dig, and sure enough they opened up a huge underground cavern from which two vast dragons, one red, one white, soared into the skies and continued their age-long battle. All the people were terrified and fled, except Merlin, who stood by the cavern applauding them on. Eventually one of the dragons was defeated and fell to earth, where it died. The other gave a great roar of victory, transformed itself into a huge serpent and crawled off into the earth to await a time when it might return to aid one or other of the peoples of these islands.

  Whether the victor was the red dragon of Wales or the white dragon of England depends, of course, on who is telling the story, so I’ll leave that to you to decide for yourself.

  When is a Dragon a Worm?

  The previous story depicts the classic dragon: a gigantic creature with wings, which flies through the air, breathing fire down on to its enemies and collects to itself a hoard of gold that it then guards jealously. That kind of dragon is sometimes found in British folklore, particularly in Welsh tales. It is also the kind of dragon that occurs in more recent fantasy fiction, from Tolkien onwards.

  But the real British dragon is a worm – sometimes spelled ‘wurm’ or ‘wyrm’. The word comes from the Germanic languages and is the word for a serpent, a snake or a dragon. (I once stayed for a very short night at a hotel near the German/Austrian border called Hotel Wurm, which had as its sign a sort of ‘St George and the Dragon’ type picture. As I said, it was a very short night, they didn’t speak English and I don’t speak German, so I didn’t find out whether there was a local legend attached to it, but I’d bet there was. It’s a story found worldwide.)

  There are plenty of worms in British folklore and it is quite a commonplace name. A quick look at major places in the road atlas comes up with about twenty towns and villages starting with Worm … some of those are thought to be named after a man named Worm/Wyrm (in other words they are Mr Worm’s town), rather than after creatures, but about half are places where snakes were found – Wormwood Scrubs being a prime example.

  There is a Worm Hill near Washington in Tyne and Wear, and that is associated with this next famous tale …

  THE LAMBTON WORM

  Young Sir John Lambton was the heir to his family fortune and a large estate in County Durham. But he was not interested in estates, and only in fortunes if they meant that he could enjoy himself. Rather than study he preferred to hunt, and rather than go to church on Sunday he preferred to go fishing in the nearby River Wear. That is what he did one fateful Sunday.

  On his way to the river young Sir John met one of his father’s old retainers, a man who had known him since he was a toddler so wasn’t scared of giving him a word of advice. He warned John that no good would come of fishing on a Sunday and he should go back and go to church as all respectable people do. John ignored the old man and went down to the river and set up his gear. It was a perfect morning for fishing and John was a skilled fisherman, but that morning he could catch nothing. (If you are a fisherman I expect you have had mornings like that.)

  He could catch nothing … that is, until he heard the distant church bell ring out the end of the service and at that very moment he felt a tug on the line. Only a small tug, it’s true, and when he pulled it in he found on his hook a strange little creature, more like a worm than a fish. It was not much bigger than his thumb and it had nine tiny holes down each side of its head. John didn’t know what it was, he’d never seen a fish like it, but he was fascinated by it, so he took it home with him in a jug. By the time he’d got home, though, he’d lost interest. The fish wasn’t all that fascinating so he tipped it into a well.

  Soon Sir John Lambton went off with other young men of similar rank to fight in the wars in Palestine – the Crusades. They were all hoping for excitement and glory. They wanted riches and adventures and Crusading seemed the surest way of finding them. They were gone for many years.

  In the years that Sir John Lambton was away that little worm in the well grew and grew until it was too big for the well and it crawled off to live in the River Wear. At night it would come out and eat all the livestock it could find – cows and sheep and, if it was really hungry, it would rear up its head, poke it through the window of a house, and take small children sleeping in their cradles. Sometimes it would spend the day lazing in the sun with its tail curled round Penshaw Hill, or the nearby hill which now bears its name – Worm Hill.

  Word of the monster wor
m spread near and far and many warriors came and attempted to win themselves glory by killing it. They all failed because any part of the worm they chopped off immediately joined back on and it became whole again. Even if a knight managed to chop the worm in half the two halves always managed to rejoin.

  After many years in the Holy Land, Sir John Lambton returned home to find his estates in ruins and his lands barren and empty because of the depredations of the worm. He went into Durham and consulted an old wise woman who advised him on how he should set about killing the worm.

  Following her advice, Sir John covered his armour with sharp spikes so that when the worm tried to coil round him parts of it would be cut off. He then went to face it in the middle of the River Wear so that the parts which came off would be swept away by the current and could not rejoin. The old woman also told Sir John that after he had killed the worm he should be sure to kill the first living thing he saw. If he failed to do this, a curse would fall upon his family and none of them would die peacefully in their beds for nine generations. To prevent this from happening Sir John arranged with his father that when the worm was dead he would sound his horn three times. His father would then loose young John’s hunting hound, which would run to him and be sacrificed.

  Young Sir John Lambton put on his spiky armour, took the huge two-handed sword he’d used to good effect in the Holy Land and taunted the worm into fighting him in the middle of the fast-flowing river. Every time it coiled round him parts were cut off and washed away and Sir John hacked off other parts. Gradually the worm grew smaller and smaller and weaker and weaker, and then the battle was over and the worm was no more. Young Sir John took his horn and blew the three blasts of victory. His father heard them, but in his excitement he forgot all about the hound and ran to embrace his son himself. Young Sir John could not bear to kill his own father and so the curse fell upon the family. Old and young Sir John Lambton both died in tragic circumstances, as did their descendants for nine generations. The last of those, Sir Henry Lambton, died in his carriage while crossing Lambton Bridge in 1761.

  Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs,

  An’ aa’ll tell ye aall an aaful story,

  Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs,

  An’ aa’ll tel ye ’boot the worm.

  Back in the 1970s, when I first got into folk music, the song of the Lambton Worm was often sung in the clubs, usually with an excruciatingly bad Geordie accent. It is an old legend that Joseph Jacobs used, which inspired a pantomime and influenced several novels, including Bram Stoker’s The Lair of the White Worm, which is so bad it’s good!

  ASSIPATTLE AND THE

  MUCKLE MESTER STOORWORM

  A Story from the Far North

  Assipattle was the seventh son of a seventh son, but there seemed very little else that was special about him. All day long his father and brothers herded cattle and in the evening they sat in the kitchen and whittled spoons from cow horn. All day long, while they worked, Assipattle lay on the ash pile by the fire with his hands behind his head, dreaming of the day when he would marry a princess and inherit a castle and have lands to rule. His parents shook their heads over him and his brothers kicked him and cursed him for a fool and a lazy good-for-nothing.

  The farm belonging to Assipattle’s father lay in the very north of the country, close to the roaring river that girds the world. In that river, swimming like a monstrous eel against the current, lived the muckle mester Stoorworm. The Stoorworm was one of the nine fearful curses that plague mankind. Its eyes were like lakes, its teeth were like precipices, and its tail was long enough to wrap right around the earth. Its breath was so venomous that when it was angry and blew out a loud gust, every living thing for miles around fell down dead. When it felt hungry the Stoorworm heaved its head on to the land, flicked out its forked tongue and began swallowing human beings like a lizard swallows flies.

  The Stoorworm’s favourite food was children, and every year the soldiers of Assipattle’s country tied up seven boys and seven girls like parcels and left them on the beach for the Stoorworm to eat. This went on for many years and gradually there came to be fewer and fewer children in the land. Eventually, the only child left in the whole country was the king’s own daughter, Gem-de-Lovely, a princess just turned fourteen.

  ‘Send messengers all around the kingdom,’ commanded the king, ‘and if a champion can be found to kill the Stoorworm, his reward will be my daughter’s hand in marriage, and a castle and lands to rule.’

  ‘What if we find no champion, highness?’ asked the messengers.

  ‘Then I’ll fight the beast myself,’ said the king.

  The messengers rode out and champions from every corner of the kingdom came and gathered at the king’s castle. At first there were 333 of them, feasting and drinking all at the king’s expense. But as time passed and the day of the contest came nearer, some of them quietly sneaked away. A week before the fight only thirty-three were left; three days after that there were just three; and two days later there were none. The king ordered his royal boat to be moored by the shore ready to ferry him to fight the Stoorworm, and his royal armour to be fetched out and polished. It would either protect him or it would make a grand funeral costume.

  On the evening before the fight Assipattle was dozing on the ash pile as usual when he heard his mother and father talking. ‘Get out my best clothes,’ his father said, ‘and make sure that the horse Teetgong is saddled and bridled, for as soon as it is dawn I am going to watch the king fight the Stoorworm.’

  ‘How can I bridle Teetgong?’ asked the wife. ‘He won’t stand still for anyone but you.’

  ‘If you want him to stand still you pat his right shoulder; if you want him to prance you stroke his left ear; and if you want him to gallop you blow on that goose-quill whistle in my pocket,’ said her husband.

  Assipattle lay still and when everyone else was asleep he filled a porridge pot with embers from the fire, took the goose-quill whistle from his father’s pocket and crept to the stable. At first Teetgong shied and reared but he patted the horse on his right shoulder and at once he stood quiet while Assipattle saddled and bridled him. Assipattle climbed into the saddle and stroked Teetgong’s left ear and the horse pranced out into the moonlight. The clatter of hooves woke Assipattle’s father and brothers and they ran out to catch the thief, but before they could even mount their horses Assipattle blew the goose-quill whistle and Teetgong galloped away as fast as the wind.

  When they came to the coast Assipattle patted Teetgong’s neck, jumped down and let him loose to graze on the headland. Not far out to sea was what looked like a dark, green island, breathing gently. It was the Stoorworm’s head. Bobbing in the bay beside the shore was the king’s royal boat. Assipattle put the pot of embers down and began gathering driftwood and dry seaweed. The boatman heard the rustle of wood and weed, woke up and said, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Lighting a fire,’ said Assipattle. ‘Why not step ashore and warm yourself?’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ said the boatman, ‘suppose someone sneaked up while I was ashore and stole this boat?’

  ‘Please yourself,’ said Assipattle. He cleared the fireplace and then began scrabbling at the earth and shouting, ‘Stay away! Stay away!’

  ‘What’s the matter now?’

  ‘Nothing! Stay away! I never mentioned gold!’ said Assipattle.

  As soon as the ferryman heard the word ‘gold’ he splashed ashore and began scrabbling in the dirt of Assipattle’s fireplace. Assipattle snatched up the pot of embers, jumped into the boat and set sail for the Stoorworm, leaving the boatman waving his fists in the air and cursing.

  The sun was just rising and its rays shone full into the Stoorworm’s face and wakened it. The Stoorworm opened its jaws and yawned, and the yawn sucked a great cataract of seawater into its mouth and down its throat. Assipattle set his course straight for the gap, and the current drew him in under the Stoorworm’s teeth, into its cavern-mouth and on down its throat with a mass of seaw
eed, dead fish and ship’s planking rushing along beside him. At last the boat grounded on a shelf of flesh and Assipattle threw out his anchor, hauled down his sail and splashed out to explore the Stoorworm’s innards.

  Using the pot of coals to light his path he threaded his way along the Stoorworm’s inside passages and tunnels like a man in a labyrinth, and at last he came to the liver, hanging overhead like an enormous purple cliff. Assipattle clambered up it till he found a fold, emptied the potful of embers into it and blew on them to make them glow. The liver-oils spluttered, burst into flame, and soon the Stoorworm’s whole liver was sizzling like roasting meat. As quickly as he could Assipattle ran back to his boat and hauled up the anchor. Just in time.

  The Stoorworm felt the fire burning deep inside. The pain made it writhe and gulp down water to quench the heat. Assipattle’s boat spun like a twig in a torrent, and he clung to the mast while the torrent roared all round him. At last, with a massive heave, the Stoorworm opened its mouth and spewed out a mouthful of water that carried Assipattle, his boat, and all the children the Stoorworm had ever swallowed on to the beach for, by some miracle, they hadn’t died but had been able to live deep down in the Stoorworm’s innards.

  The Stoorworm continued to lash and writhe, snorting steam and fire. Then the flames reached the very centre of its liver and at last, overcome by agony, it flung itself out of the sea and reached up with its tongue to snatch the moon from the sky to crush the fire. But the tongue missed its target and just snapped off one of the moon’s horns and sent it crashing to earth. The Stoorworm fell with it and broke into pieces as it fell.

  The Stoorworm’s tongue made a trench between the countries of Denmark and Sweden, and seawater rushed in to fill it. Where the tongue landed became the Baltic Sea. The teeth fell from its jaws and made the islands we call the Orkneys and Shetland, and its tail-splinters made the Faroes. With its dying strength, the monster coiled its body into a ball and sank like a stone to the bed of the northern sea. Even then, it was so huge that its back stuck up above the surface of the ocean in the shape of the country we now call Iceland, and to this very day, its liver-fires continue to blaze under the ground and sometimes erupt out in spectacular displays of molten rock and smoke.