Just realised that xfd doesn't even look at font-cursor-misc but rather~/.icons, /opt/pkg/share/icons, /opt/pkg/share/pixmaps .. the two later don't exist BTW..
Oh well, tried the following:
richard@devzoneX:~$ fc-list | grep cursor /opt/pkg/share/fonts/X11/Type1/cursor.pfa: Cursor:style=Regular /opt/pkg/share/fonts/X11/misc/cursor.pcf.gz: cursor.pcf:style=Regular
I just came across the following: http://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-devel/2010-July/011051.html will see what libXfont with --disable-builtins brings about...