The legend of the Lambton Worm originates from County Durham in North East England, near the River Wear. In it, John Lambton, an heir of the Lambton Estate, battles with a giant worm (an early reference to a dragon) that had been terrorizing the local villages.
John Lambton is actually responsible for the presence of the worm himself. As a young man, he skipped church on Sunday and went fishing in the River Wear. There he caught an odd creature whose description varies with different tellings of the myth. All agree that it was ‘no fit fish’ he caught and he discards the creature in a nearby well that later became the wishing-well known as “Worm Well.”
John forgets about the creature and goes off to fight in the crusades as penance for his youthful follies. When he returns, he discovers that his father’s estate has been laid waste by the creature even though His father had tried to placate it with daily offerings of twenty gallons of milk. Realizing he is responsible for the creature, John seeks the advice of a witch that allows him to defeat the creature in an epic struggle.
So many inspirations in this tale! Dragons and the landed class tied together; a dragon in Lambton, so near Pemberley, and connected to a local landowner; the land owner seeking advice from a woman on how to deal with the dragon; a baby dragon who grows up abandoned in a strange place…oh so many things that came to play in crafting Pemberley: Mr. Darcy’s Dragon.
Recent Comments