Worm-Charming at Willaston

A hot afternoon at the end of June. I am sitting in the shade of a tree in front of a school playing field marked out into 144 squares, ready for the annual Worm-charming championships at Willaston near Nantwich. This is a quintessentially English event – in equal measures silly and serious. The contest is hedged about with rules and etiquette – no digging, no drugs (including water!) to be poured into the ground. The object is to encourage as many worms as possible to leave the safety of their dark burrows and venture out into the light. Blackbirds do this by scurrying around, making a sound like rain. Up come the worms, down comes the beak.

Today’s competitors approach this problem in different ways. Some hammer the ground with plastic tubes, or, indeed, plastic hammers. Others push a garden fork into the turf and strike it. Others play deep notes on a double bass, or tempt the worms with the music of a mouth organ. One person, in an inflatable fat suit, circles around on stilts. I hope the worms can see him, but I doubt it. In half an hour, the friendly worm containers are heaving with the results of this non-banned form of hunting. The winner has gathered about a hundred and fifty – hugely impressive on such a dry day, but a long way from T. Shufflebotham’s ground-breaking (but not if he kept to the rules) five hundred and eleven, back in 1980!

I thought such an event needed a charm, so produced this long thin poem in the form of an Anglo-Saxon kenning, where the worm is named extensively – in the hope that if you hit the true name, the worm will come to you.

come
come to me
blind-lurker
burrower
mulch-eater
twist-curler
soft survivor
stone-wriggler
rot-cleaner
self-splitter
flexible friend
cranny-squeezer
shade-lover
moist-drinker
dew-sipper
leaf-hauler
root-loosener
tube-dweller
snakelet
siphon
death-sign
life-sign
fish bait
skin-breather
humbleworm
mortalworm
beak-tugger
bird-resister
ground-clinger
earth-stitch
living string
elastic stretch
compost-blender
world-chewer
tiny miner
soil-sapper
spaghetti loop
micro-gut
only an eater
consumer
devourer
squiggle-writer
lawn-scribbler
icing-tube
cast-piper
screw-threader
ground-gripper
slinky-striped
muscle-ringed
knot-twister
cold-sleeper
spring-waker
rain-unraveller
clammy
self-knitter
cord-winder
neglected
ignored
come to my
charm