Fenodyree

The meadow at Gordon lay flat by cock-crow, cut to the sods, the bog bean and the maiden hair thrown to the left in wet swathes that still smelled of sap. Nobody in the house had touched a scythe. The stack in the barn had been loosed the evening before, and by morning every sheaf of it was threshed and the flails were cold. Whatever had done the work was already gone up the mountain, out of the light.

The Manx called him the Fenodyree, and spelled it a dozen ways: Phynodderee, Phynnodderee, Fynnoderee. Archibald Cregeen’s Manx dictionary of 1835 splits the name into fynney, hair or fur, and oashyr, stocking, which gives the creature with hair for hose. Cregeen also records the plainer sense the Manx Bible had reached for in 1819, where the word stands in the ruined places of Edom at Isaiah 34:14 and means satyr. John Rhŷs, who spent the 1880s walking the island and writing down what people told him, noticed that oashyr is itself a loan from the Norse, so if the stocking etymology is right the name cannot be older than the longships. Joseph Train, the first to write him up at length in 1845, translated the whole thing as the hairy one and left it at that.

Those who saw him said he was big and shaggy, with fiery eyes, and stronger than any man. He wore nothing, and it was said he never felt the cold, the hair being coat enough. The size is the one physical detail the sources fight over. Morrison’s Manx informants made him huge, W. R. Hall Caine called him a giant, and Mrs J. W. Russell, writing in 1890, put him at two feet high, which would still make him a giant among the Good People. Nobody who met him stayed long enough to measure.

The strength, at least, is agreed. A blacksmith walking home from his shop one night met the Fenodyree on the road, and the creature put out a hand to be shaken. The smith, thinking fast, held out the iron sock of the plough he was carrying instead. The Fenodyree closed his fist and squeezed the iron soft as clay, then handed it back with a compliment: there were some strong Manx-men in the world yet.

How he came to be hairy is the only part of his story with an author’s fingerprints on it. He had been a fairy once, a knight of the fairy court, and he loved a mortal girl who lived beneath the blue tree in Glen Aldyn. On the night of the Rehollys vooar yn ouyr, the great harvest moonlight, when his own people were keeping their high festival in Glen Rushen, he was dancing with her instead. The Elfin King expelled him from the court and cursed him into a wild shaggy shape, to remain on the Island until doomsday. It is a beautiful story and it reaches us through nineteenth-century hands. Train printed it in 1845, and A. W. Moore reprinted the prose and verse in 1891 with the credit given to Mrs E. S. Craven Green. The older Manx material simply has a hairy thing in the fields and does not trouble to explain where it came from.

What is old is the work. He mowed with such speed that the ballad collectors knew him as yn foldyr gastey, the nimble mower, and the Manx song of that name has him stretched out across the meadow at grey cock-crow, cutting everything, skinning the field to the sods, stamping any leaf left standing under his heels. He threshed corn overnight. He carried quarried blocks up a mountainside in the dark, including one enormous white stone that all the men of the parish together had failed to shift. He got the sheep in before the weather turned. Fishermen said he mended their nets and their boats. He never asked for wages. A cream bowl, some scattered sheaves, whatever was left on the meal table, and the account was settled.

On the night of a great snowstorm, Juan Mooar Cleary got up to see to his flock and found the Fenodyree at the window telling him to lie down and take his sleep. The sheep were in. There had been one loaghtan yearling, he said, that gave more trouble than all the rest together, and he had been twice round Barrule Mooar after her, but he had caught her for all. In the morning the flock was safe in the cogee house, and in among them, panting, with two short tethers on it, was a big hare.

He was literal in a way that unsettled the people he worked for. Watching a farmer blow on his fingers to warm them, and blow on his porridge that evening to cool it, he announced that he did not like the man at all, because he could blow hot and blow cold with one breath. The same literalness cost him a cake. A woman sifting corn alone in the mill at Glen Garragh looked up to find a great head in the open half of the door, and had the presence of mind to hand him a sieve and promise him a cake as big as the water he could fetch from the river in it. He ran down to the water. Sieve, sieve, dash, he shouted as it drained, the more I put in, the more there is going out. By the time he came back the mill was dark and the woman was gone.

What finally beat him was kindness. Farmers who valued him kept trying to clothe him. The gentleman at Tholt-e-Will, whose stones he had carried, left out a suit of clothes as thanks. Big Gordon, seeing him bare in a hard frost, had breeches, jacket, waistcoat and cap made for him, great big ones, and gave them to him in the barn. The Fenodyree lifted each garment and named the sickness it would bring to the part of the body it covered. Cap for the head is injurious for the head. Coat for the back is sickness for the back. Then came the line every version keeps: if thine this little glen east and thine this little glen west, not thine the merry Glen of Rushen yet. He flung the clothes down and walked away west. Train says he went with a melancholy wail, and that afterwards his mourning could be heard in the wind on the mountains. The old people said it more flatly. There has not been a merry world since he lost his ground.

There was no ceiling on his strength that anyone ever found, and no lock or wall that could hold him out, but he could be lost, and losing him was easy. A farmer in the parish of Marown once complained that the grass had not been cut close enough to the ground. The next season the Fenodyree came along behind him stubbing up the roots so fast that the man barely kept his legs, and afterwards nobody would mow that meadow at all until a soldier worked out how to do it, starting at the centre and cutting outward in a circle, one eye on the scythe and one eye behind him. He would not touch a sheaf that had not been loosed for him first. He had rules, and the rules were not negotiable.

He ended on the top of Barrule with a wife, and they fell out one day over a pot of porridge. She ran. He threw a big white rock after her and it struck her heel, and the mark of the blood is still on the stone at Cleigh Fainey. While she stooped to bind the wound he threw a handful of smaller rocks, which sent her leaping two miles to the Lagg, and then he threw a rock with the pot-stick in it, which is in the Lagg river to this day. At that she took two jumps over the sea to the Mountains of Mourne, and for all anyone on the Island knows she is living there still.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Fenodyree?

The Fenodyree is a hairy, naked, immensely strong sprite of Manx folklore who does farm work at night: mowing meadows, threshing corn, herding sheep, mending nets and carrying stone. He is the Isle of Man’s equivalent of the Scottish and English brownie. He works unasked and accepts only food, such as a bowl of cream or the scraps left on the table.

Why does a gift of clothes drive the Fenodyree away?

The Fenodyree treats clothing as an insult and a kind of poison. In the best-known tales he picks up each garment and names the illness it would inflict on the body part it covers, a cap being injurious for the head, a coat sickness for the back, and then leaves the farm for good. The motif runs through Manx, Scottish and Irish tradition, where brownies and the púca are also banished by well-meant gifts of clothing.

How did the Fenodyree become hairy?

According to a tale first printed by Joseph Train in 1845, he was once a knight of the fairy court who fell in love with a mortal girl in Glen Aldyn and missed the great harvest moonlight festival in Glen Rushen. The Elfin King expelled him and cursed him into a wild, shaggy body, condemned to remain on the Isle of Man until doomsday. This origin story comes from nineteenth-century collectors rather than from the older Manx tradition, which simply describes a hairy creature working the fields.

What is “the nimble mower”?

Yn foldyr gastey, “the nimble mower”, is the Fenodyree’s nickname and the title of a Manx ballad about him, collected in A. W. Moore’s Manx Ballads and Music of 1896. The song describes him crossing a meadow at dawn cutting everything before him, skinning the field down to the sods and stamping any standing leaf beneath his heels.

What happened when someone criticised the Fenodyree’s work?

In a tale set in the parish of Marown, a farmer complained that the Fenodyree had not cut the grass close enough to the ground. The following season the creature followed him across the meadow tearing up the roots so quickly that the farmer nearly lost his legs to it, and for years afterwards no one dared mow the field until a soldier cut it in a spiral from the centre outward while watching his back.

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