A folk tale told around Malton.

The spider & the worm

One day, when spider was making a web, worm came along and blundered through it, undoing all of spider’s good work. So spider spun a new web and guess what? Worm blundered right through it on the way back. Naturally spider was quite annoyed by this and the next day, before worm could blunder through her web, spider dropped down in front and said “excuse me but why are you breaking my web?” Worm was too busy to notice though and blundered right through her web again.

Spider was a patient type though so she just built it really strong and, sure enough, next day worm blundered right into it again. This time, however, the strands were too strong and sticky for worm to break.

And you know what, worm blundered so hard that he went right through but left the skin stuck behind and didn’t even notice. That’s how little notice that worm takes of the world.

This gave spider an idea.

The next day, when worm came blundering along it discovered another worm right in front of it! Amazed, worm stopped and peered at this new thing. Then the worm – which was really spider of course – said “Look at you, worm, paying no attention to the world. All the while there’s a worm here as big as you but you keep blundering past. I think you should go and blunder somewhere else.”

Worm considered this for a while and then he noticed that the worm who was speaking to him had eight eyes and so he realised that he was being tricked. Worm thought for a minute – which is a long time for worm – and then he bit the pretend worm into eight pieces and spat them all over the mountains.

As spider sailed in eight different directions at once – and that must have been painful! – worm said “you tried to steal my skin and that is unforgivable. It is the way of true spiders to spin their webs and see them broken. You are a false, deceitful spider who pretends to be what she is not.”

To this day, spider and her children have been trying to find all her legs so that she can get put back together. When she does she says she will show worm who is the boss and, of course, she still has the powerful magic of worm’s skin. To this day, though, spiders, no matter how big, have weak legs that are easily broken and some spiders can disguise themselves to look no different than you and me so you better watch out.