Yallery Brown

The crying came from nowhere a child could be. It was a warm July night in the Lincolnshire carrs, the flat wet country where the fields run on without a fold to hide anything, and a young farmhand walking the long way back to work followed a sound like a baby sobbing itself sick. He searched the hedge bottoms and the edge of the spinney, stung his hands raw on nettles, and found no one. The sobbing stayed at his very ear, tired and broken, until it shaped itself into words. A stone. A great stone, and something pinned beneath it.

He tore at a flat slab half sunk in the turf, one of the old wide stones the country people called the Strangers’ Tables, where the good folk were said to dance on moonlit nights. It lifted with a wet sigh. In the hollow underneath lay a thing no bigger than a year-old child, blinking up at the moon.

What he had freed did not look like a child for long. Its hair and beard were yellow and shining and silky, the soft fair hair of an infant, and they had grown so long they wound round and round its body until no clothing showed at all. The face inside that bright tangle was old past counting, a heap of wrinkles with two black eyes set bright in the middle, as though the creature had been young hundreds of years ago and never since. Its skin was brown, the exact brown of earth freshly turned in spring, and so were its bare hands and feet. It stood, and it did not reach the farmhand’s knee.

Where it came from, the story does not say. Asked its name, it pulled at its beard and thought, then offered Yallery Brown, because yellow and brown were its nature and a name would serve as well as any other. It would not say what it was. It was not a bogle, it told him, though it had been near enough to one, and he had better not ask further. No one knows how long it had lain under that slab. Long enough for its face to wear out while its hair stayed the colour of a baby’s.

It owed him something, and it meant to pay. It offered him the prettiest girl in the town, or gold enough to carry away, or help with his work. The lad had no use for a wife and did not believe in the gold, but he hated work with a steady, honest hatred, and he asked for the help. Yallery Brown agreed at once, and then it set its terms. He must never thank it. Not once. If he ever spoke a word of thanks, the help would end and worse would follow. It stamped one small foot and looked, for a moment, like a bull working itself toward a charge. Then it blew a dandelion head into his eyes, and when he could see again the hollow was empty.

The next morning there was nothing for him to do. The horses were already fed and the stable already clean, the floor swept by a broom that moved on its own, the corn ground by a quern that turned with no hand on it. Day after day his work did itself, and did itself better than he could have managed. He sat with his hands in his pockets and drew good wages for it.

Then the rest of it arrived. The same magic that finished his tasks unpicked everyone else’s. Buckets he had filled stood full while his neighbours’ were tipped over. His tools kept their edge while theirs went blunt. His horses came up clean and theirs came up splashed with muck. The other labourers saw small things working without hands in the daylight, and a little figure flitting through the dark like a will-o’-the-wisp that had lost its lantern, and they drew their own conclusions. They stopped speaking to him. They carried tales to the master. Word went round that he was a witch.

He could not even undo it by working himself. The brooms would not stay in his hands. The plough pulled away from him. The hoe kept sliding out of his grip. Whatever Yallery Brown had decided to do for him, he was not permitted to do for himself.

When the master finally sacked him, he stood in the field and shouted the creature up out of the ground. Yallery Brown came with a pinch to the back of his leg and that twittering, bird-thin voice. The farmhand told it he wanted no more of its help, that he would thank it to leave him alone. The word was out of his mouth before he heard himself say it. The creature screeched with laughter. He had thanked it. It had told him not to, and he had done it anyway.

What Yallery Brown said next, it kept to. It would never help him again and he would never see it again, but it had never promised to leave him alone, and it never would. He had been safe to free and a fool to thank. A wiser man would have had a friend and a tireless worker for life. He would have a born fool’s luck instead. Then it danced round him, singing, its yellow hair lifting and wrapping it about until it looked like a dandelion gone to seed, and it floated off over the wall on the wind and did not come back.

The rhyme it left behind ran like this. Work as you will, you’ll never do well; work as you might, you’ll never gain a thing; for harm and mischance and Yallery Brown, you let yourself out from under the stone. And it held. The farmhand turned his hand to this and that for the rest of his life, and nothing came right. His beasts never fattened. His children died. He grew old with the workhouse waiting in front of him, and still, sitting and trembling, he heard the rhyme going over and over like a bell tolling at a burial.

Its power was never in question. It knew his thoughts before he spoke them, answering the word “bogle” while it was still only a thought in his head. It could be called out of the earth by its name and would arrive in an instant. It could pour a man’s labour out of the air and grind his neighbours’ down to nothing in the same motion. Its only limit was the one it set for itself, and that limit was a trap dressed as a kindness. Thanks would not have weakened it. Thanks released it. The bargain was built so that the smallest ordinary courtesy, the kind a person gives without thinking, would spring it shut. The stone had held the creature because a stone has no manners. A man could not manage the same.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Yallery Brown?

Yallery Brown is a small, ancient fairy spirit from the folklore of the Lincolnshire carrs in England. It appears as a creature no larger than a year-old child, with brown earth-coloured skin and long, shining yellow hair and beard wound around its whole body. Despite its childlike size and bright hair, its face is deeply wrinkled and immensely old.

Why should you never thank Yallery Brown?

You must never thank Yallery Brown because being thanked releases it from any obligation to keep helping. The moment a person thanks Yallery Brown, its assistance ends and its curse of lifelong bad luck takes hold. In the tale, the farmhand thanks it without thinking while trying to dismiss it, and so dooms himself.

What happens to the man who frees Yallery Brown?

The farmhand who lifts Yallery Brown out from under the stone is rewarded with his work being done invisibly and perfectly. But the same magic spoils his fellow workers’ labour, and he is accused of witchcraft and sacked. After he accidentally thanks Yallery Brown, he is left with a “born fool’s luck” and suffers misfortune for the rest of his life.

What powers does Yallery Brown have?

Yallery Brown can complete any work without being touched, grant wishes such as wealth or a spouse, and read a person’s thoughts. It can be summoned out of the earth by name and vanishes by blowing a dandelion head. Its help also brings ruin, because it spoils the work of everyone around the person it favours.

Where does the legend of Yallery Brown take place?

The legend of Yallery Brown takes place in the Lincolnshire carrs, the flat wetland country of England where the fields run on without cover. Yallery Brown is found beneath one of the old, wide stones the local people called the Strangers’ Tables, where the good folk were said to dance on moonlit nights.

Related Entries

Tiddy Mun, Will-o’-the-Wisp, Boggart, Bogle, Hob, Hobgoblin, Hobbididance, Killmoulis, Brownie, Lubber fiend, Pixie, Redcap, Puck