Lambton Worm

The story takes place around the River Wear, and is one of the area's most famous pieces of folklore, having been adapted from written and oral tradition into pantomime and song formats.

The story states that the young John Lambton was a rebellious character who missed church one Sunday to go fishing in the River Wear.

John Lambton does not catch anything until the church service finishes, at which point he fishes out a small eel- or lamprey-like creature with nine holes on each side of its salamander-like head.

The villagers start to notice livestock going missing and discover that the fully-grown worm has emerged from the well and coiled itself around a local hill.

The worm terrorises the nearby villages, eating sheep, preventing cows from producing milk, and snatching away small children.

She tells him to cover his armour in spearheads and fight the worm in the River Wear, where it now spends its days wrapped around a great rock.

[8] John prepares his armour according to the witch's instructions and arranges with his father that, when he has killed the worm, he will sound his hunting horn three times.

The story was made into a song (Roud #2337), written in 1867 by C. M. Leumane, which passed into oral tradition and has several slightly different variants (most notably the use of "goggly" or "googly" eyes meaning bulging and searching, a term formerly widely used on Wearside).

Tune from Tyne Pantomime 1867[13] The Lambton Worm (1978) is an opera in two acts by the composer Robert Sherlaw Johnson with a libretto by the Oxford poet Anne Ridler.