Snakes, Serpents, Worms and Wyrms

Still looking through my new book, Devils, Demons and Witchcraft, it's quite topical and Halloweeny.  I was interested to see in the old woodcuts how little differentiation there is between snakes, worms and wyrms.  Corpses arising from their graves (surprising how often this occurs in folktales and folk illustration) are always illustrated with worms crawling on and through them:

Surprising How Often This Occurs

The wormy grave motif is also quite common in folk songs, especially in the "My Dead Love" variety.  However, looking at the illustrations in my new book, I saw how often corpses and graves were represented filled with some creature that looks much more like a serpent:

Serpents or Worms?

This type of illustration crosses over with a type of illustration which depicts the hellish punishments for the seven deadly sins.  One of the punishments in Hell is being thrown into a snake pit:

Hellish Snake Pit

You will also see here that the snakes raining down from the sky also include what we would call dragons, or wyrms in Old English (like The Lambton Worm and The Laidly Worm of Spindlestone Heugh).

What an interesting confusion.  But then thinking back to the writing of Keith Thomas, and this biography of Thomas Bewick:

A Good Book

We see that it was well into the nineteenth century before classification of animals started to be scientifically studied.  Before then, there was no strict differentiation made between different species, and animals could be known by their metaphorical or allegorical meaning rather as separate creatures.  It is well worth reading about.