The Whitby Wyrm was a dragonlike serpent that lived in Whitby, according to folklore. Another local legend tells of Saint Hilda turning a plague of snakes into stone.
For this gansey, I did the time-honoured gansey thing and “borrowed” a nice zigzag motif from a sock pattern by Cookie A. Gansey knitters have always borrowed motifs from other knitters. It’s tradition. In fact, it is how motifs became so universal across the British Isles. My other inspiration and starting point was the gansey of Robert Harland which used traveling stitches to create a zigzag design. This zigzag is simpler but more contemporary – it makes a change from the old pattern Marriage Lines that you can see in Parthenope (page 174).