Whisht! Lads, haad yor gobs, An Aa’ll tell ye aall an aaful story,
Whisht! Lads, haad yor gobs, An’ Aa’ll tell ye 'bout the Worm.

In The Northern Echo on Tuesday was this beautiful picture of a sunrise taken at Penshaw Monument. The monument, that overlooks the A1(M), is on the top of the National Trust’s Penshaw Hill, and we repeated the Trust’s claim that the hill was shaped by the Lambton Worm wrapping itself ten times around it.

“But,” wrote Mrs E Watson from Aycliffe Village, “the Lambton Worm coiled itself three times round Fatfield Hill, not Penshaw Hill. Fatfield Hill, known as Worm Hill, has a winding footpath said to have been formed by the worm.”

She is right – although she may also be wrong. Let me tell you the story.

Once-upon-a-time, a long, long time ago (no one knows when precisely), the young son of the local landowners, John Lambton, skipped church to go fishing in the Wear. He caught nothing except a black worm which, in dismay, he tossed in a well, and thought nothing more about it. He grew up, became a knight, went crusading in the Holy Land for seven years and returned to find the Lambton estate had been devastated in his absence by a serpent-shaped dragon, which had grown from the tiddler he had tossed into the well. Now it was a fire-breathing, woman-defiling, cow-consuming monstrosity that showed off its strength by wrapping itself three times, nine times, even ten times around local landmarks.

John knew he had to rid the land of the terrible infestation. He sought an old soothsayer, who advised him to cover himself in special armour and warned him that once he’d slain the dragon he should kill the first living thing he saw otherwise his family would be cursed.

Having arranged for his father to let loose a dog at the appropriate moment, he crept up on the dragon. It coiled itself around him, but he was saved by his armour, and he killed it in its lair in the Wear in the shadow of the hill.

His father was so delighted that he rushed out of Lambton Castle to congratulate him, forgetting to let loose the sacrificial hound. John couldn’t bring himself to kill his father, and so for generations afterwards, the accursed Lambtons suffered untimely and painful deaths.

This is a good story, recorded most famously in a song with the chorusline of “whisht” which was premiered at a panto in Newcastle in 1867.

But there are very similar worm stories across our area. My favourite concerns the Sockburn Worm, near Darlington, and there’s also the Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh, which wrapped itself around a Whin Sill hill in Northumberland. On the North York Moors, there’s the Nunnington Worm, the Slingsby Serpent and the “loathly worm” of Handale, which lured virgins to their deaths near Loftus. And there’s the Sexhow Worm which drained the Stokesley area of milk and coiled itself around Whorlton Hill.

As for the Lambton Worm, as Mrs Watson says, Fatfield Hill in Washington probably was its favourite, although Penshaw Hill also claims the story. But the truth is that dragons never existed at all – they were probably Viking invaders, who raped and pillaged until a brave knight ran them through and haad yar gobs for good.