THE sibyl told John to fix spear-heads all over his armour, and meet the worm in the midst of the river Wear. But he must also slay the first living thing he met after the worm was vanquished, or for nine generations no Lambton would die in his bed.*
Everyone locked themselves in, and John arranged that on his signal, a dog would be released to be the first living thing he saw.
The worm flung itself on John, but the harder it squeezed him in its coils the more the spear-heads tore its flesh, and the swift river carried each piece away. Finally, John swept off its head, and it too was borne away on the stream. Then he triumphantly blew his horn.
Alas, out rushed his father, in his joy forgetting all about the dog. Of course, John could not slay his own father, and for nine generations after, no Lambton died in his bed.*
* A form of the vow of Jephthah in Judges 11:30-31, before going out to meet the people of Ammon in battle:
And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD’S, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.
This terrible vow was fulfilled, and his daughter sacrificed. St John Chrysostom (?347-407) and St Ambrose (?340-397) both cite it as an example of a vow that should never be made or kept, Chrysostom adding that God allowed the deed to go ahead (as he did not in the case of The Sacrifice of Isaac) as a warning to every succeeding generation. That is the moral paradox in this tale: the sorceress helps slay the strangling worm, but she leaves her own drop of venom behind.
* Four Lambtons subsequently died violently in one way or another, one by drowning, two in battle (one at Marston Moor in 1644) and the fourth in a carriage accident in 1761, encouraging the tradition that John Lambton, a fifteenth-century Knight of Rhodes who had spent some time abroad, was the John Lambton of this tale. He inherited his father’s estates in 1431.