CHAPTER V

THE FENODYREE AND HIS FRIENDS

Emoi de hai sai megalai eutychiai ouk areskousi, to theion epistamenô hôs esti phthoneron..--Herodotus.

The last chapter is hardly such as to call for a recapitulation of its principal contents, and I venture to submit instead of any such repetition an abstract of some very pertinent notes on it by Miss M. G. W. Peacock, who compares with the folklore of the Isle of Man the old beliefs which survive in Lincolnshire among the descendants of Norse ancestors [144]. She was attracted by the striking affinity which she noticed between them, and she is doubtless right in regarding that affinity as due in no small degree to the Scandinavian element present in the population alike of Man and the East of England. She is, however, not lavish of theory, but gives us interesting items of information from an intimate acquaintance with the folklore of the district of which she undertakes to speak, somewhat in the following order:--

1. Whether the water-bull still inhabits the streams of Lincolnshire she regards as doubtful, but the deep pools formed, she says, by the action of the down-flowing water at the bends of the country becks are still known as bull-holes.

2. As to the glashtyn, or water-horse, she remarks that the tatter-foal, tatter-colt, or shag-foal, as he is variously called, is still to be heard of, although his visits take place less often than before the fens and carrs were drained and the open fields and commons enclosed. She describes the tatter-foal as a goblin of the shape and appearance of a small horse or yearling foal in his rough, unkempt coat. He beguiles lonely travellers with his numberless tricks, one of which is to lure them to a stream, swamp, or water-hole. When he has succeeded he vanishes with a long outburst of mockery, half neigh, half human laughter.

3. The fenodyree, one is told, has in Lincolnshire a cousin, but he is diminutive; and, like the Yorkshire Hob or Robin Round-Cap, and the Danish Niss, he is used to befriend the house in which he dwells. The story of his driving the farmer's sheep home is the same practically as in the Isle of Man, even to the point of bringing in with them the little grey sheep, as he called the fine hare that had given him more trouble than all the rest of the flock: see pp. 286-7 above.

4. The story of this manikin's clothing differs considerably from that of the fenodyree. The farmer gives him in gratitude for his services a linen shirt every New Year's Eve; and this went on for years, until at last the farmer thought a hemp shirt was good enough to give him. When the clock struck twelve at midnight the manikin raised an angry wail, saying:--

Harden, harden, harden hemp! I will neither grind nor stamp! Had you given me linen gear, I would have served you many a year!

He was no more seen or heard: he vanished for ever. The Cornish counterpart of this brownie reasons in the opposite way; for when, in gratitude for his help in threshing, a new suit of clothes is given him, he hurries away, crying [145]:--

Pisky new coat, and pisky new hood, Pisky now will do no more good.

Here, also, one should compare William Nicholson's account of the brownie of Blednoch [146], in Galloway, who wore next to no clothing:--

Roun' his hairy form there was naething seen, But a philabeg o' the rushes green.

So he was driven away for ever by a newly married wife wishing him to wear an old pair of her husband's breeches:--

But a new-made wife, fu' o' rippish freaks, Fond o' a' things feat for the first five weeks, Laid a mouldy pair o' her ain man's breeks By the brose o' Aiken-drum.

Let the learned decide, when they convene, What spell was him and the breeks between: For frae that day forth he was nae mair seen, And sair missed was Aiken-drum!

The only account which I have been able to find of a Welsh counterpart will be found in Bwca'r Trwyn, in chapter x: he differs in some important respects from the fenodyree and the brownie.

5. A twig of the rowan tree, or wicken, as it is called, was effective against all evil things, including witches. It is useful in many ways to guard the welfare of the household, and to preserve both the live stock and the crops, while placed on the churn it prevents any malign influence from retarding the coming of the butter. I may remark that Celts and Teutons seem to have been generally pretty well agreed as to the virtues of the rowan tree. Bits of iron also are lucky against witches.

6. Fairies are rare, but witches and wizards abound, and some of them have been supposed to change themselves into dogs to worry sheep and cattle, or into toads to poison the swine's troughs. But they do not seem to change themselves into hares, as in Man and other Celtic lands.

7. Witchcraft, says Miss Peacock, is often hereditary, passing most frequently from mother to daughter; but when a witch has no daughter her power may appear in a son, and then revert to the female line. This appears far more natural than the Manx belief in its passing from father to daughter and from daughter to son. But another kind of succession is mentioned in the Welsh Triads, i. 32, ii. 20, iii. 90, which speak of Math ab Mathonwy teaching his magic to Gwydion, who as his sister's son was to succeed him in his kingdom; and of a certain Rhudlwm Dwarf teaching his magic to Coll, son of Collfrewi, his nephew. Both instances seem to point to a state of society which did not reckon paternity but only birth.

8. Only three years previous to Miss Peacock's writing an old man died, she says, who had seen blood drawn from a witch because she had, as was supposed, laid a spell on a team of horses: as soon as she was struck so as to bleed the horses and their load were free to go on their way again. Possibly no equally late instance could be specified in the Isle of Man: see p. 296 above.

9. Traces of animal sacrifice may still be found in Lincolnshire, for the heart of a small beast, or of a bird, is necessary, Miss Peacock says, for the efficient performance of several counter-charms, especially in torturing a witch by the reversal of her spells, and warding off evil from houses or other buildings. Apparently Miss Peacock has not heard of so considerable a victim as a sheep or a calf being sacrificed, as in the Isle of Man, but the objects of the sacrifices may be said to be the same.

10. Several pin and rag wells are said to exist in Lincolnshire, their waters being supposed to possess healing virtues, especially as regards eye ailments.

11. Love-spells and prognostications are mentioned, some of them as belonging to Allhallows, as they do partly in the Isle of Man: she mentions the making of dumb cake, and the eating of the salt herring, followed by dreams of the future husband bringing the thirsting lass drink in a jug, the quality of which indicates the bearer's position in life. But other Lincolnshire practices of the kind seem to oscillate between Allhallows and St. Mark's Eve, while gravitating decidedly towards the latter date. Here it is preferable to give Miss Peacock's own words:--'Professor Rhys' mention of the footmark in the ashes reminds me of a love-spell current in the Wapentake of Manley in North Lincolnshire. Properly speaking, it should be put in practice on St. Mark's E'en, that eerie spring-tide festival when those who are skilled may watch the church porch and learn who will die in the ensuing twelvemonth; but there is little doubt that the charm is also used at Hallow E'en, and at other suitable seasons of the year. The spell consists in riddling ashes on the hearthstone, or beans on the floor of the barn, with proper ceremonies and at the proper time, with the result that the girl who works her incantation correctly finds the footprint of the man she is to marry clearly marked on the sifted mass the following morning. It is to be supposed that the spirit of the lover is responsible for the mark, as, according to another folk-belief, any girl who watches her supper on St. Mark's E'en will see the spirit of the man she will wed come into the room at midnight to partake of the food provided. The room must be one with the door and windows in different walls, and both must be open. The spirit comes in by the door (and goes out by the window?). Each girl who undertakes to keep watch must have a separate supper and a separate candle, and all talking is to end before the clock goes twelve, for there must not be any speaking before the spirits. From these superstitions, and from the generally received idea that the spirits of all the parishioners are to be observed entering the church on St. Mark's E'en, it may be inferred that the Manx footprint is made by the wraith of the person doomed to death.' Compare pp. 318-9 above.

What Miss Peacock alludes to as watching the church porch was formerly well known in Wales [147], and may be illustrated from a district so far east as the Golden Valley, in Herefordshire, by the following story told me in 1892 by Mrs. Powell of Dorstone, on the strength of what she had learnt from her mother-in-law, the late Mrs. Powell, who was a native of that parish:--

'On Allhallows Eve at midnight, those who are bold enough to look through the church windows will see the building lighted with an unearthly light, and the pulpit occupied by his Satanic majesty clothed in a monk's habit. Dreadful anathemas are the burden of his preaching, and the names of those who in the coming year are to render up their souls may be heard by those who have courage to listen. A notorious evil liver, Jack of France, once by chance passed the church at this awful moment: looking in he saw the lights and heard the voice, and his own name in the horrid list; and, according to some versions of the story, he went home to die of fright. Others say that he repented and died in good repute, and so cheated the evil one of his prey.'

I have no list of places in Wales and its marches which have this sort of superstition associated with them, but it is my impression that they are mostly referred to Allhallows, as at Dorstone, and that where that is not the case they have been shifted to the beginning of the year as at present reckoned; for in Celtic lands, at least, they seem to have belonged to what was reckoned the beginning of the year. The old Celtic year undoubtedly began at Allhallows, and the day next in importance after the Calends of Winter (in Welsh Calangáeaf) was, among the Celts, the beginning of the summer half of the year, or the Calends of May (in Welsh Calánmai), which St. Mark's Eve approaches too nearly for us to regard it as accidental. With this modified agreement between the Lincolnshire date and the Celtic one contrast the irreconcilable English date of St. John's Eve; and see Tylor's Primitive Culture, i. 440, where one reads as follows of 'the well-known superstition,' 'that fasting watchers on St. John's Eve may see the apparitions of those doomed to die during the year come with the clergyman to the church door and knock; these apparitions are spirits who come forth from their bodies, for the minister has been noticed to be much troubled in his sleep while his phantom was thus engaged, and when one of a party of watchers fell into a sound sleep and could not be roused, the others saw his apparition knock at the church door.' With an unerring instinct for the intelligent colligation of facts, Miss Peacock finds the nearest approach to the yearly review of the moritures, if I may briefly so call them, in the wraith's footprint in the ashes. Perhaps a more systematic examination of Manx folklore may result in the discovery of a more exact parallel.

For want of knowing where else to put it, I may mention here in reference to the dead, a passage which has been copied for me by my friend Mr. Gwenogvryn Evans, from Manuscript 163 in the Peniarth Collection. I understand it to be of the earlier part of the sixteenth century, and p. 10 has the following passage:--

Yn yr ynys honn [Manaw] y kair gweled liw dyd bobyl a vvessynt veirw / Rrai gwedi tori penav / eraill gwedi torri i haelode / Ac os dieithred a dissyfynt i gweled hwynt / Sengi ar draed gwyr or tir ac velly hwynt a gaent weled yr hyn a welssynt hwyntav.

'In this island [Man] one beholds in the light of day people who have died, some with their heads cut off and others with their limbs cut off. And if strangers desire to see them, they have to stand on the feet of the natives of the land, and in that way they would see what the latter had seen.'

A similar instance of the virtue of standing on the feet of another person has been mentioned in reference to the farmer of Deunant, at p. 230 above; the foot, however, on which he had to stand in order to get a glimpse of the fairy world, was a fairy's own foot.

Lastly, the passage in the Peniarth Manuscript has something more to say of the Isle of Man, as follows:--

Mawr oed arfer o swynion a chyvaredion gynt yn yr ynys honn / Kanys gwraged a vydynt yno yn gwnevthvr gwynt i longwyr gwedir gav mewn tri chwlm o edav aphan vai eissie gwynt arnynt dattod kwlm or edav anaynt.

'Great was the practice formerly of spells and sorceries in this island; for there used to be there women making wind for sailors, which wind they confined within three knots made on a thread. And when they had need of wind they would undo a knot of the thread.'

This was written in the sixteenth century, and based probably on Higden's Polychronicon, book I, chap. xliv. (= I. 42-3), but the same practice of wind making goes on to this day, one of the principal practitioners being the woman to whom reference was made at p. 299. She is said to tie the breezes in so many knots which she makes on the purchasing sailor's pocket-handkerchief. This reminds one of the sibyl of Warinsey, or the Island of Guernsey, who is represented by an ancient Norse poet as 'fashioning false prophecies.' See Vigfusson and Powell's Corpus Poeticum Boreale,