Worms Crawl In, Worms Crawl Out

by Heather Maring

As Halloween approaches, I am reminded of the Old English poem Soul and Body I, in which an army of worms, led by their war-captain Gifer (a word meaning “ravenous” or “greedy”) decomposes an anonymous body. The worms’ insatiable appetite is like an act of war that brings about the corpse’s degradation:

Bið þæt heafod tohliden, handa toliðode,
geaglas toginene, goman toslitene,
sina beoð asocene, swyra becowen,
fingras tohrorene.
Rib reafiað reðe wyrmas,
beoð hira tungan totogenne on tyn healfa
hungregum to frofre; forþan hie ne magon huxlicum
wordum wrixlian wið þone werian gast.
Gifer hatte se wyrm, þe þa eaglas beoð
nædle scearpran. Se genydde to
ærest eallra on þam eorðscræfe,
þæt he þa tungan totyhð ond þa teð þurhsmyhð
ond þa eagan þurheteð ufan on þæt heafod
ond to ætwelan oðrum gerymeð,
wyrmum to wiste, þonne þæt werie
lic acolod bið þæt he lange ær
werede mid wædum. Bið þonne wyrma gifel,
æt on eorþan. þæt mæg æghwylcum
men to gemynde, modsnotra gehwam! (Krapp, ed., lines 108–26; see also Soul and Body II)

The head is split asunder, hands divided, jaws made to gape, palate wounded by bites, sinews sucked, the neck gnawed, fingers falling to pieces. Fierce worms plunder the rib cage; as a comfort to the hungry the tongue is split into ten pieces. Thus deformed, they cannot exchange words with the weary soul. “Gifer” is called the worm whose teeth are sharper than needles. He presses before all others into the earth-grave so that he rends the tongue, and creeps through the teeth and eats through the eyes upon that head and makes space for others at the feast, for worms at the meal, when that weary body is cooled, the body that long ago clothed the soul. It is food for worms, meat in the earth. May that be memorable to everyone, the ones who are wise!

With Gifer clearing the way through a corpse for his wormy minions, these lines seem grotesque, like an early horror film in poetic form, but the poem also serves as a momento mori, a reminder of death for those focused on the pleasures of life rather than — from the Christian perspective voiced by the poem — the hellish consequences that could await them in the afterlife. In “Soul and Body I,” the soul visits the corpse to lament its foolish choices during life, but (as we have seen) the dead body can return no answer.

Why, then, did some medieval English poems focus explicitly on the ingestion of the corpse by worms? Why not dwell instead on the suffering soul in hell or the ecstasy of heavenly bliss? The body’s piecemeal destruction offers something far more tangible and disgusting. Our present-day horror films often delight in grisliness for the sake of grisliness — the bloody mess of death brought into the realm of improbability — and present-day Halloween decorations delight in grisliness dressed up in cuteness: stylized tombs and skeletons, purple ghosts, fluffy spider webs, and bowls of gummy worms.

In comparison to “Soul and Body I,” horror flicks and Halloween encourage us to take death lightly. In my front yard, a fake skeleton’s arm extends from a planter — a parody of the impermanence of life and domesticity. “Soul and Body I” may, however, describe something closer to the actual process of decomposition, with flesh then bone being targeted (by various members of the food chain).

If modern customs mask death’s consequences, is it then difficult for today’s readers to consider medieval poems on a corpse’s destruction as anything other than pleasurably disgusting? After all, funereal practices in the U.S. could be described as distinctly “wormless,” once the desanguinated corpse soaked in preservatives has been entombed in its semi-indestructible casket. Few of us have been privy to scenes of decay other than the occasional encounter with a wild animal’s corpse, a downed pigeon, or worms baked into the concrete. In contrast, most medieval peoples did not outsource the preparation of the body for burial and some may have witnessed the removal of human remains to new grave sites. Being more familiar with corpses meant that they became sites for imagining the relationship between life, an afterlife, and the mechanisms of judgment. Karma, so to speak.

We have only one Old English “soul and body” poem and its variant, “Soul and Body II.” Middle English “soul and body” poems are more copious. These tie how worms devour the dead body to the misdeeds of the sinful person during life. In this way, soul and body poems suggest a progression of fitting punishments that follow death, beginning with the devouring of the body in the grave and progressing (sometimes implicitly) to the torments of the soul in hell. Like the many prose homilies describing the tortures of hell, these poems seek to elicit purer behavior from the living through horror at the fate of the unrepentant sinner, on the one hand, and theologically informed argument, on the other.

Debasing images of the body may also encourage disgust with the body and better avoidance of the sins such as gluttony, lust, and greed. Each poem handles differently the aptness of the corpse’s manner of consumption. In “The Soul’s Address to the Body” (Worcester, Worcester Cathedral Library F.174), Fragments C and D the soul addresses its dead body:

Þus <ageþ> nu þin siþ efter þin wrecche lif.
Þe sculen nu waxen wurmes besiden,
<þeo> hungrie feond þeo þe freten wulleþ;
heo wulleþ þe frecliche freten for <heom> þin flæsc likeþ;
heo wulleþ freten þin fule hold þeo hwule heo hit fin<deþ>;
Þonne hit al biþ agon heo wulleþ gnawen þin bon,
þeo orlease wor<mes>. Heo windeþ on þin ærmes,
heo brekeþ þine breoste and borieþ þ(urh) ofer al,
<heo c>reopeþ in and ut: þet hord is hore owen.
And so heo wulleþ waden wide in þi<ne wom>be,
todelen þine þermes þeo þe deore weren,
lifre and þine lihte lod<liche> torenden,
and so scal formelten mawe and þin milte … (Moffat, ed. C. 37–49)

Thus, now is your journey, after your wretched life. Now worms must grow beside you, the hungry enemy that desires to consume you. Greedily, they want to devour you, for your flesh pleases them. They want to devour your foul carcass for as long as they find it. When that is all gone, they intend to gnaw your bones, the merciless worms. They encircle your arms, they break into your breast and everywhere bore into you. They creep in and out: that hoard is theirs. And so they intend to wade about in your belly, sharing your entrails that were dear to you, loathsomely splitting your liver and lungs. And so must seep away your maw and spleen.

The passages characterize worms as the hungrie feond (hungry enemy) and the body as a hord (hoard) to be invaded. Images of the worms destroying the body by eating it and of the body as a wormy treasury recall the trope of the ideal heroic king who distributes gifts from his hoard to loyal thanes. The worms windeþ on þin ærmes (encircle your arms), resembling the arm-rings that a lord might give a loyal and successful retainer. In Fragment D, the image of the hord returns as a symbol of the worms’ own making: the brainpan within the skull houses the worms, providing them with a place to be fostered, a haven, and a treasury of flesh. The reason for the corpse’s manner of punishment is clear: the body as a hoard for worms is a fitting outcome for a man who did not show generosity for lufe (for love) during life.

In my favorite medieval corpse poem, the body speaks directly to the worms, rather than its soul. “A Disputacioun betwyx Þe Body and Wormes” is an early fifteenth-century poem “collected with other didactic pieces and meditations for the instruction of Carthusian clerics in a monastery in northern England,” in which pride during life influences the protagonist’s horrified reaction to the worms that eat her corpse. She decries the way that they are ruining her flesh and calls for a knight to defend her: “bot alway ȝe synk sowke and byte / Day tyme ne houre with how is no abstynence /Bot ay redy agayne me with vyolence.” (Rytting, ed., lines 48–50; But always you sink, suck, and bite in the daytime, there is no abstaining at any time, but always you are ready with violence against me.)

Yet, rather than representing a sadistic punishment of pride, the poem develops into a debate that educates the corpse and leads presumably to its salvation. This outcome differs profoundly from that in poems such as, “Þe Disputisoun Betwen þe Bodi and þe Soule,” where the soul tells the body that its prayers are too late:

“Al to-gidere we gon o gate, swilk is Godes hard wreche. / Ac haddest thouȝ a lutel er, ȝwile us was lif to-gidre lent … Sithen we ne mouwen us sulven schrive, ne schulde us into blisse bringe (Wright, ed., p. 338; 7 manuscript witnesses)

All together we go out the gate, such is God’s hard vengeance. Had you only [repented] a little earlier, while life was loaned to us together … [now] we are not permitted to shrive ourselves, nor ought we bring ourselves to bliss.

In a similarly punitive manner, “In a Thestri Stude Y Stod” represents how the body’s abhorrence of worms leads to chastisement by the soul: “Wormes shulen ete thy fleyshe for al thyn heye parage” (Fein, ed., line 32; worms must eat your flesh despite all your noble lineage). The soul announces what sounds like an irreversible judgment: “Hy shal into helle for thi trespass” (95; “you will hasten to hell for your sins”). Seldom does the body have a chance to renounce and be purified of its sins after death.

“ A Disputacioun betwyx Þe Body and Wormes” differs from the body and soul poems in its explicit focus on pride and vanity (versus, say, greed and gluttony). The problem of pride and vanity motivates several moves that further differentiate this poem from other soul and body poems. Most obviously, the poem has made the corpse female and its interlocutor the devouring worms rather than the soul.

These changes facilitate a digression on the ways in which the living body already faces “venomous worms,” including some typical biters (snakes, adders, vipers, fleas, lice, leeches, and spiders) and some less typical (cockatrices, basilisks, dragons, lizards, tortoises, newts, scorpions, and toads) (103–28). The grave worms say that these other “worms,” whose sole intention is to eat the body, are their heralds (122).

Of þis may þou on no wyse say nay
Bot þat sum both þi womb and stomak hent
Owdyr lyce or neytes in þi hede alway
Wormes in þe hands, flees in þe bed, I þe say.
With oþer venomosnes dyuers and sondry
To warne ȝow of vs to make ȝow ready. (129–33)

Of this may you in no way deny, but that some [worms] take over both the abdomen and stomach, other lice or nits always on your head, worms in the hands, fleas in the bed. I tell you, against other diverse and sundry venomous types, to warn you of us to make yourself ready.

By shifting the beginning of the body’s decomposition to life, the poem can attack pride in physical beauty on several fronts. The body in life already endures the attacks of “worms.” The body in death achieves its most clene state, when reduced by worms to scowred and pollysched (scoured and polished) bones (61, 60). Acceptance of the corpse’s fate thus begins with renunciation of her pride and bodily vanity: “Alas, alas now know I full well” the corpse cries, ruing her pryde in myne abowndant bewte (159, 160; pride in my abundant beauty) and warldly plesaunce gret delyte hafying (161; great delight in worldly gratification).

The poem ends on a note of acceptance, because the worms have pointed out their presence in life as well as in death. In soul and body poems, the sinful soul seldom reaches the point where it can exclaim, “Lat vs be frendes … Let vs kys and dwell to gedyr euermore” (193, 195; Let us be friends … Let us kiss and dwell together evermore) in hopeful expectation of rising again “With þe body glorified” (198). The image may have been purposefully comedic: the dead lady “kissing” the worms on her lips, wrapped in their eternal embrace.

The soul-and-body and worm-and-body poems probably have no direct historical relationship to medieval European commemorations of All Saints’ Day (Nov. 1) and its eve (Oct. 31). What they do share with our Halloween festivities is an interest in representing the scary and disgusting aspects of death within the lively medium of human artifice. Poems, no matter how
didactic, play out rhythms that parallel the beating of the heart and the ebb and flow of breath. Their acoustic patterns (whether rhyme, alliteration, assonance, or ictus) organize human language into echoes of patterned organic life (such as flower petals, cats’ eyes, fish scales) and inorganic systems (such as astronomical, geological, meteorological cycles) that constitute our worlds. This is to say, the living know how to represent.

Happy Halloween!

Heather Maring is Associate Professor of Literature in the English Department at Arizona State University. In 2017 she published Signs That Sing: Hybrid Poetics in Old English Verse.