Mester Stove Worm in Dennison’s Account

Overview

The original issue prints the name Mester Stove Worm. Dennison describes a vast sea serpent whose body and tongue extend for immeasurable distances. Its forked tongue acts as grasping tongs, lifting ships, breaking castle walls and drawing the inhabitants into its mouth. When its head lies near a kingdom’s shore, the people must feed it or face the land being swept into the sea and a poisonous exhalation fatal to people, animals and vegetation. In the selected account seven maidens are supplied every Saturday at sunrise, when it yawns nine times. A spayman says that surrendering the king’s daughter will end the danger; the king negotiates ten weeks in which to offer his daughter and kingdom to a successful destroyer.

At the last moment Mester Assipattle arrives. Dennison deliberately abbreviates the earlier life and planning of the hero: in the surviving account here he enters the monster’s mouth by boat, rows down its gullet, sets its oily liver alight and returns safely. The agony makes the serpent convulse. Its tongue catches a horn of the moon but slips and strikes the earth, cutting the sea-channel said to separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden, with the two inner bays attributed to its fork. Teeth falling during successive head-blows become Orkney, Shetland and the Faroes. Its coiled dead body becomes Iceland, where the burning liver explains flames rising from the mountains. These are the telling’s island-origin explanations, not measured geographical events or an inferred anatomical map.

Origins & earliest records

Walter Traill Dennison, Orkney Folklore: Sea Myths, The Scottish Antiquary, vol. V, no. 19 (cover dated December 1890), pp. 130–131, section 3.

Records & interpretation

Complete selected historical collector’s account in an inspected original issue scan; the printed issue date and narrative voice are retained.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

1. 01

   Orkney Folklore: Sea Myths, pp. 130–131, section 3

   Walter Traill Dennison, collector; account signed from West Brough, Sanday · December 1890 issue cover

   Volume V no.19 scan cover dated December1890, despite some later bibliographies assigning1891. Directly read printed pages, not a modern synopsis.

Family & connections

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References

Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.

1. Primary collected folklore account and issue metadataThe Scottish Antiquary V no.19: original issue scanResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

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