 The story may have been partly inspired by the local Sunderland area legend of the Lambton Worm, and the tale of the Sockburn Worm while writing in Croft on Tees and Whitburn in Sockburn.The concept of nonsense verse was not original to Carroll, who would have known of chapbooks such as "The World Turned Upside Down" and stories such as "The Great Panjandrum".Nonsense existed in Shakespeare's work and was well-known in the Brothers Grimm's fairytales, some of which are called lying tales or "lügenmärchen".