A BRITISH FOLK MUSIC BAND AND A MUTTERING SCOTTISH WORM

This is a rather convoluted blog so please bear with me…I have been listening to the folk song The Wife of Usher`s Well by Steeleye Span(see photo) quite a lot recently, released in 1975 off the album All Around My Hat.

Some of the song’s lyrics refer to a long-neglected cryptid called a “channerin worm.” Here are the relevant lyrics: 

Then up and crowed the blood red cock

And up and crowed the grey

The oldest to the youngest said

It’s time we were away

For the cock does crow and the day doth show

And the channerin worm doth chide

And we must go from Ushers Well

To the gates of Paradise

I looked up the meaning of channerin worm and came across this definition; “to scold complainingly,mutter, grumble.” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/channer#:~:text=%3A%20to%20scold%20complainingly%20%3A%20mutter%2C%20grumble)

Furthermore, according to Wikipedia:  “The Wife of Usher’s Well” is a traditional ballad, catalogued as Child Ballad 79 and number 196 in the Roud Folk Song Index. An incomplete version appeared in Sir Walter Scott’s “Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border” (1802). So do we have a folk memory here of some kind of worm in the Scottish border regions capable of vocalisation?

Share This Article