The Lambton Worm–when a dragon shows up that close to Pemberley, one must take notice!

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Part 3

The last couple of weeks we’ve been talking about how it is even remotely possible that the world of Pride and Prejudice could make any sense with dragons. With the help of Uther Pendragon and the various dragon mythos of Britain and Europe   I hope you’ve started to see the possibilities.

Last week we left off having populated the world with dragons, but having little idea of how dragons and humans might interact. Today we’ll dive back into mythology to find inspiration for the rules of the world that Blue Order rules (and maybe meet a prototype for Mr. Darcy along the way.)

So, there were several questions I wanted to answer in this deep dive. First, how do dragons get along with other dragons.

In brief, they don’t. The tale of the red and white Welsh dragons depicts two dragons at war with one another. None of the myths I read gave any suggestion of dragons living together peaceably with one another, much less cooperating with one another. So maybe, left to their own devices, these creatures would tend to be in a perpetual state of war with one another.  Not a bad place to start a story, really.

Secondly, how did dragons get along with people. With the exception of the legend of the Dragon of Mordiford (which we’ll talk about next week) there was pretty much universal agreement—dragons killed men and men killed dragons. They did not cooperate with one another, they did not get along, and that was all there would be to the matter. Unless—and of course this is a great story premise—someone very special, like Uther Pendragon maybe intervened and changed the situation. And that ladies and gentlemen became the starting point for the Pendragon Treaty and the Pendragon Accords which created the Blue Order and established the way humans and dragons (and the various dragons) would all live together in harmony.

But since large dragons were not apt to get along well, how could the Pendragon Accords be structured to manage their natural territorial instincts? The majority of dragon myths have the dragons tied to specific locations, wells, rivers, towns etc. So perhaps, the sensible approach would be to assign dragons specific territories according to their type and strength. If hereditary Keepers were assigned to each dragon and territory, they might watch over the dragons, making sure local populations avoided their territory and ensuring the dragons’ needs were met. Since in many stories the right to rule over a piece of land was earned by vanquishing the resident dragon, it felt like a perfect fit!

The world was taking shape quite nicely. Now to populate it with some heroes! Enter the tale of the Lambton Worm. What better place to start fleshing out Mr. Darcy, whose estate, Pemberley, (according to Austen) was in walking distance from Lambton.

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. 

And Darcy was not the only one shaped by dragon legends. The Mordiford Dragon informed the character of Elizabeth. But that is a story for another time—next week in specific!

So what was the last time you found inspiration somewhere and what came of it? Tell me in the comments!

You can find previews of Jane Austen’s Dragons here:

Pemberley: Mr. Darcy’s Dragon

Longbourn: Dragon Entail

Netherfield: Rogue Dragon

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Check out the Jane Austen’s Dragons series here:

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