Rocky wrote: ... the Lambton Worm, a well-known legend in the north-east. The baby Worm is put in a well by the Lambton son and heir (called Jack of course!) and in due course poisons the water. Meanwhile Jack goes off for a mystical seven-year period on crusade to the Holy Land where he gained enough know-how to kill the worm, by now a full-size dragon.
It is said to have been inhabited by a dragon called the Sockburn Worm, which may have inspired Lewis Carroll to write Jabberwocky.
Because here, "aet Soccabyrig", in AD780, Higbald was consecrated as the Bishop of Lindisfarne. And here, at a monastery called "Sochasburg", in AD796 bishops Higbald, Ethelbert and Badulf met to consecrate Eanbald as the Archbishop of York. ...It has a spring - perhaps of holy water. And its prized possession is a tumbledown Saxon church, full of wondrous carvings by skilled stonemasons mixing Scandinavian mythology with Christian symbolism - perhaps working as a centre of excellence for the whole Northumbria region. ... For fact, we know that when Aldhun was Bishop of Chester-le-Street between AD990 and AD1018, a chap of Viking descent called Snaculf gave "Socceburg and Grisebi" to St Cuthbert's monks who were settling at Durham and building a cathedral.
About a century later, the monks gave the Sockburn estate to the Conyers family. Why? Of course, it was because Sir John Conyers had slain the dragon which, for seven long years, had laid waste to fields for seven miles around, its voracious appetite only satisfied by a bath in cows' milk or the blood of a pretty young maiden.
Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot] and 142 guests