Beasts & cryptids

The Serpents of Worm's Head

Also known as: Pen Pyrod

Worm's Head, Rhossili, Gower

The name itself is the oldest piece of lore here. Seen from Rhossili, the Head rises and dips out of the sea like the back of a great serpent with its head raised at the far end, and the English name calls it the worm. The Welsh name, Pen Pyrod, is different and less dramatic.

Marie Trevelyan, listing the haunts of dragons and winged serpents in Wales, includes the Lleyn peninsula, the Berwyn mountains, Cader Idris, Radnor Forest, the Brecon Beacons, the Carmarthen marshes, and 'the lands around Worm's Head, in Gower'. She gives no individual story for Worm's Head, so this is a record of a reputation rather than a tale.

The Head does have a real and well earned reputation for danger. The causeway floods quickly, and people are rescued from it regularly; Trevelyan's phantom coach of the Lord and Lady of Rhossili is said to race along the sands towards it before storms.

The Head is reached by a tidal causeway only around low tide; people are regularly cut off, so check tide times with the National Trust at Rhossili.
Evidence
Long-standing local tradition
Access
Open ground
Location
51.565, -4.325 (Parish-level only, treat as an area)

Sources: Marie Trevelyan, Folk-Lore and Folk-Stories of Wales (1909), full text at Internet Archive [public-domain]; Wikipedia, "Worm's Head" [other]

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