In the timbers of Fennario1
the wolves are running ’round
The winter was so hard and cold
froze ten feet ’neath the ground
Chorus:
Don’t murder me2
I beg of you, don’t murder me
Please
don’t murder me
I sat down to my supper
’Twas a bottle of red whiskey3
I said my prayers and went to bed
That’s the last they saw of me
(Chorus)
When I awoke the Dire Wolf4
Six hundred pounds of sin
Was grinning at my window
All I said was “Come on in”
(Chorus)
The wolf came in, I got my cards5
We sat down for a game
I cut my deck to the queen of spades6
but the cards were all the same
(Chorus)
In the backwash of Fennario
The black and bloody mire
The Dire Wolf collects his due
while the boys sing round the fire
(Chorus)
Words by Robert Hunter
Music by Jerry Garcia
Mentioned in the folk song “The Bonnie Lass of Fenario” (variously titled “Peggy-O,” “Fennario,” “The Bonnie Lass of Fyvie-O,” “Pretty Peggy-O,” “Pretty Peggy of Derby,” etc.). The relevant line is “As we marched down to Fenario,” which in turn is spelled variously as “Fernario,” “Finario,” “Fennario,” “Finerio,” etc.
The question becomes, is this really a place? I’ve seen the question posed and debated, usually facetiously, on many a Grateful Dead conference and email exchange, but no one has yet come up with anything approaching a definitive answer. So, in the absence of the definitive, I’m going to go out on a limb and propose a theoretical answer. This answer lies within the realm of “folk etymology,” since I am not a trained etymologist. “Fennario” seems related to the word fen, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as
Low land covered wholly or partially with shallow water, or subject to frequent inundations; a tract of such land, a marsh . . . esp. the fens: certain low-lying districts in Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, and some adjoining counties.
Combining this root with the suffix -ario could indicate “in the general vicinity,” i.e., area of the Fens.
Hunter uses the word fens in another lyric, which seems to lend support to the identification of “Fennario” as a district of marshy lands; namely in the “Ivory Wheels/Rosewood Track” lyric of the Terrapin suite as performed by Hunter himself:
The demon’s daughter used to lay for gin
In a shack way back on the skirts of the fens
Of Terrapin.
And marshes appear elsewhere in Hunter’s lyrics as well: the Mangrove Valley and Marsh King’s Daughter of “Mountains of the Moon.”
So Hunter’s “Fennario” is a rural, wooded, marshy region of the imagination, which bears no particular relation to the actual geographic “Fenario” referred to in the “Peggy-O” folk song lyric and its variants. (Child, in his English and Scottish Popular Ballads, places the “Peggy” ballads within the tradition of ballads gathered under #299: “Trooper and Maid.” Sharp, in his English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, names the collection of tunes gathered under #95: “Pretty Peggy-O.”)
David Gans interviewed Alan Trist on KPFA in June 1990, and the following exchange took place:
Gans: Maybe you can tell us if there’s a place called Fennario—and if so, where and what?
Trist: Well, David, I was able to find the answer to that question. If you’re a songwriter and you need a word, you might refer to Alan Lomax’s Song Archivist, and there he suggests that Fennario is a perfect place-name, if you need a generic name for an indeterminate place, because it has four syllables: fen-na-ri-o. If you a need a three-syllable place-name, you might use “Fyvie-O.” So Fennario is a place in the imagination. The syllabic imagination, perhaps.
Gans: I was hoping there was some history to it.
Trist: [Laughs] You were hoping it was a real place that had a lot attached to it. Well, I think you can attach those things to it yourself. It’s a very evocative name. 28
Compare the folk song “I’m All Out an’ Down”:
Doncha murder me,
Please, baby,
Don’ murder me.
Garcia:
I wrote that song when the Zodiac Killer was out murdering in San Francisco. Every night I was coming home from the studio, and I’d stop at an intersection and look around, and if a car pulled up, it was like, ‘This is it, I’m gonna die now.’ It became a game. Every night I was conscious of that thing, and the refrain got to be so real to me. ‘Please don’t murder me, please don’t murder me.’ It was a coincidence in a way, but it was also the truth at the moment.’ (Krassner)
The band Stiff Dead Cat, in their version of “Dire Wolf,” sings this line as “Don’t kill me,” on their 2003 recording Snake Oil, to great and hilarious effect.
From The Book of Bourbon:
There is solid evidence, however, that by the mid-1800s, some whiskeys were being aged long enough to give them a decent amount of color. In The Lincoln Reader, 1947, editor Paul M. Angle, included a personal recollection of one James S. Ewing, who was an eyewitness to an 1854 meeting between Abraham Lincoln and his formidable debating rival, Stephen A. Douglas. In Ewing’s account of the event, he referred to a decanter of “red liquor”—a term for bourbon that would become widely used by the end of that century. When whiskey is first distilled, it is clear—it looks exactly like vodka. Only time in wood gives it color, and only time in charred wood results in the crimson-hued tint that is peculiar to bourbon. So we can draw from Ewing’s reference to red liquor that in the mid-nineteenth century some whiskey was being aged in charred casks, and it was aged long enough for it to gain bourbon’s characteristic crimson hue.
Dire Wolf, Canis dirus . . . One of the most common mammalian species in the Rancholabrean, the dire wolf has been found at more than 80 sites in North America ranging from late Illinoian and Sangamonian to late Wisconsinan. . . . The range covers most of the United States and Mexico and extends to Peru in the south.
Equaling a large gray wolf in size, Canis dirus was markedly heavier of build, with a very large and broad head and sturdy limbs with relatively short lower segments. The dentition was more powerful than that of any other species of Canis, the carnassial teeth being, on the average, much larger than those of Canis lupus. The braincase is relatively smaller than that of the gray wolf. The dire wolf may be referred to the subgenus Aenocyon, of which it is the sole known species. (Kurten)
Wolf: Symbolic of valour among the Romans and the Egyptians. It also appears as a guardian in a great many monuments. In Nordic mythology we are told of a monstrous wolf, Fenris, that would destroy iron chains and shackles and was eventually shut up in the bowels of the earth. It was also said that, with the twilight of the gods—the end of the world—the monster would break out of this prison, too, and would devour the sun. Here, then, the wolf appears as a symbol of the principle of evil, within a pattern of ideas which is unquestionably related to the Gnostic cosmogony. . . . The myth is also connected with all other concepts of the final annihilation of the world, whether by water or fire. (Cirlot) 29
This summary presents an interesting link back to “Uncle John’s Band,” with its lines about knowing the fire from the ice, which similarly summon apocalyptic associations.
The queen of spades corresponds to the queen of the tarot suit Swords, and is characterized as follows:
She stands with upraised sword. Her left hand is raised as if to signify recognition or generosity. She is one who has suffered a great loss.
Divinatory meaning: This card means a sharp, quick-witted, keen person. Possibly the bearer of evil or slanderous words. . . . Mourning. Privation. Loneliness. Separation. (Kaplan) 30
There is a short story by Alexander Pushkin, a Russian writer of the early nineteenth century, titled “The Queen of Spades.” In the story, a young Russian engineer kills an old woman to learn a gambling secret. The secret is for a card game in which the player selects a card and bets that the card the dealer draws will match it. The old woman’s ghost appears to the engineer and tells him to bet on three, seven, ace. He goes to the gambling house and wins the first two bets. He selects an ace for his third card, and when an ace is dealt, he tries to collect his winnings. The dealer kindly asks him to show his card. He looks at it, and it is a queen of spades, with the old woman’s face on it.
Studio recording: Workingman’s Dead (May 1970).
First documented performance: June 7, 1969, at the California Hall in San Francisco. Performed usually several times each year since, peaking in 1978 with twenty-seven performances.
Hunter’s electronic journal entry from July 29, 1996:
There’s a large house visible across the fields which is reputed to be haunted by the ghost of a dog, probable inspiration for the Hound of the Baskervilles (an old local family). Funny tie in there. The song “Dire Wolf” was inspired, at least in name, by watching The Hound of the Baskervilles on TV with Garcia. We were speculating on what the ghostly hound might turn out to be, and somehow the idea that maybe it was a dire wolf came up. Maybe it was even suggested in the story, I don’t remember. We thought dire wolves were great big beasts. Extinct now, it turns out they were quite small and ran in packs. But the idea of a great big wolf named Dire was enough to trigger a lyric. As I remember, I wrote the words quickly the next morning upon waking, in that hypnogogic state where deep-rooted associations meld together with no effort. Garcia set it later that afternoon. 31