# The Queen's Worm



## bearycool

_The King has come
The Queen layeth flat
The Joker turned down
The Pawn did that_.

_Where the worms lie
Hiding in Corbin
Killing passers-by
The bodies now morbid._

The King now dead
His coming now come
The Queen bed-ridden--
Her sanity undone. 

And the worms undying
Hiding in Corbin
now feast on the King
Now dead, and morbid.

His epitaph in Latin,
That none understood,
And many asked what happened
To this right stupid fool.

While his Queen laid flat
The Joker stood near
And a Pawn of his lord
did a thing for his king.

He laid the worm of Corbin
On the Queen now horrid.
And the Pawn whispered cooly
Now mad from the worm of Corbin:_Hello.
The king has come and we welcome you
Now the true worm lies on The Queen That Layeth Flat
Good 'morrow._​ 

And the Joker saw it all
And went to call the guard
And as the maw ate her all
The Pawn thought to kill himself--
And he did just that.


And when the Joker called the guard
The guard but turned him down
Thinking him to be a fool.

And there the Joker wept
And left the town of Corbin.

Thus is the meaning:
_The King has come
The Queen layeth flat
The Joker turned down
The Pawn did that_.

_Where the worms lie
Hiding in Corbin
Killing passers-by
The bodies now morbid._


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The background story of this poem comes from this (warning: there are a lot of cuss words, and the story itself is a bit creepy)

http://chanarchive.org/content/14_x/11960123/1360104928084.jpg
http://chanarchive.org/content/14_x/11960123/1360105000632.jpg

If you don't trust those links, here is a brief precis:

There was series of creepypasta (this is the name for short horror stories created on sub-culture forums like 4chan et al.) that was based off the lines "the king has come" and "the queen layeth flat". The former was a variety of the "chain mail" stuff that you get in e-mails and some other places. The queen layeth flat was an extension of this, most likely based off the story of Sir Lancelot slaying the Worm of Corbin. In both stories, the narrators are given a phrase in which their computer begins to go haywire and creating images and cryptic messages. This affects both of their sanity, and the end result for the latter narrator is-- as of yet-- unknown. 

The lines seem to have some sort of an anomalous quality to them that are based off unknown powers. As of this time, not much is know about these lines except for the Sir Lancelot story, the link to chain mails and the debatable sites and posts related to them.

As for the introductory stanza, it comes from this:


The king did come
The queen lays straight
The mad one hasn't gotten up
The pawn was to blame all along

This was from a Serbian ( Romanian, for sources indicate this as well) folk legend song that translates to this. I've been trying to find the folk song that people keep referencing to, but I can't seem to find it at the moment. All I know is that people in the Serbian and Romanian area sing that verse sometimes.


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## Ariel

Beary,

I'm not sure how to critique this as I don't know the story it is based on.

So, the rhythm works for the story being told as does the rhyme and repetition.  This could almost be a sestina, which if you're looking for a complete rewrite could be a fun challenge.

However, I'm not sure what is happening in the story being told.


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## AshenhartKrie

I do like this, and I understood it while at the same time not understanding it, if that makes any sense. 
Good job~


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## bearycool

Ashen put it nicely, amsawtell.  There is some understanding you can get from it, but partly you can't fully comprehend it. 

Superficially it's just about a king's death, his pawn going mad and killing the bed-ridden queen, and the joker being a witness that no one believes. And the antagonist is the worm. The deeper understanding is riddled in the story itself. And since the story has a bunch of loose ends and themes, the poem then takes on that aspect of the mystery and only deepens it.

Who were the King and Queen? What created this tragedy? Was it the worm, or something else related through the worm? That is: is the worm just a symbolic representation of something far worse?

We can guess and theorize, but not a lot of it will be concrete.

I would like to note also that the full Serbian Folk song was used to scare children into submission, and was based around something about "baba yaga".

Off topic: I might try making this a sestina; I just got to get off my butt and do it.


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