giant, Cubbie Roo
|In this article, Orcadian author Gregor Lamb's challenges
the long-accepted theory that the historical figure Kolbein
Hrúga and folklore's Cubbie Roo were one and
In his book, History of the Orkney Islands,
written at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Reverend George Barry, minister
of Shapinsay, said of the island
its centre, on a fine green hillock, which has a commanding view of the adjacent
islands, is situated the castle of Coppirow, or Cubbirow. An Orkney gentleman,
about the middle of the twelfth century, erected it in that form. His name was
Kolbem Hranga (sic) ....and the name which the castle bears is so similar in point
of fact to that of the founder, that we need trace it to no further derivation."
Barry was the first to suggest that Coppirow/Cubbirow
and Kolbein Hrúga
were one and the same person and ever since it has been assumed that this is true.
Every Orkney guide rightly makes mention of Cubbie Roo's
Castle in Wyre and goes on to explain
that the name derives from Kolbein Hrúga, the 12th century Norse chieftain
who built it.
However, we have to ask ourselves the question
- is it really possible that the name and nickname of a Norse chieftain could
be passed down through folk memory over a period of more than five hundred years?
A good example of folk memory the writer came across in
Orkney is an instance from South
Ronaldsay. There, at the beginning of the 20th century, James Thomson
of Quoys told the Reverend Craven that the Reverend Edward Richardson, a previous
incumbent of South Ronaldsay who lived in the middle of the 17th century,
had an unusual deformity - three thumbs on each hand.
is an extraordinary example of the power of folk memory, which had handed down
knowledge over a period of two and a half centuries! It is impossible that James
Thomson had read such a fact.
Walter Traill Dennison recalled
details of the wrecking of the Spanish Armada in Orkney - tales which went back
300 years at the time they were written. In 19th century Sandwick,
local people knew that one of the Kirkness family had been a knight and subsequent
historical research proved indeed that Sir Thomas Kirkness had lived at the end
of the 14th century.
We would have to conclude, therefore,
that there is a slim chance that local people could have known that Kolbein Hrúga
had inhabited the castle on Wyre. However, there are several strong arguments
against equating him with Cubbie Roo.
Apart from several
saga references, the earliest reference to the castle in Wyre is found in Jo Ben's
Descriptio Insularum Orchadiarum, a document dating from the first quarter of the 16th
He writes of the castle in Wyre:
"Here in times past lived a tall giant,
and the foundation of his house yet remains."
Notice that there is no mention of Kolbein Hrúga
here. Ben does say, however, that the occupier was "a tall giant".
Kolbein's nickname hrúga meant that he was a big "heap" of a
man. Did 16th century locals know the castle had been inhabited by a big
man but no one at that point in time could remember his name? Or was the term
"giant" used in the sense of a huge mythical being?
- the first clue
Of all the Norse first names associated
with Orkney, Kolbein has the longest history.
We find it as an element in the
island of Copinsay, which we can safely assume to mean the "island of Kolbein"
and which could place the appearance of the name as early as the 9th century.
the 15th century onwards the name crops up again and again, eventually establishing
itself as the surname Cobban.
Writing in 1900, Hossack,
in his book Kirkwall in the Orkneys, talks of the "late Miss Cobban"
who lived in Kirkwall's Victoria Street. As can be seen, the interesting thing
about the development of the name Kolbein is that, though it loses the '"l",
it never loses the "n". For this reason alone
we would have to reject Cubbie Roo as being the same person as Kolbein Hrúga.
let us consider the possibility that, at different times, two different people
occupied the castle - one being Kolbein Hrúga, the other being Cubbie Roo.
The most convincing argument that Cubbie Roo has nothing
to do with Kolbein Hrúga is Cubbie Roo's association with many physical
features in the Orkney landscape.
Cubbie Roo's Lade, a
pile of stones on the beach near Rothiesholm Head, in Stronsay,
and supposedly the beginning of a bridge from Stronsay to Shapinsay, derives from
the Old Norse trolla-hlad, a giant's causeway.
Roo's Burn, in Shapinsay, flows through a channel by the name Trolldgeo. Most remarkable
is the number of large stones in Orkney which, it is alleged, have been thrown
or dropped by Cubbie Roo. These are found in Stronsay,
Rousay and Evie.
Sometimes he dropped a load of stones that he was carrying. It is said that the
Skerry o the Sound, in Evie, was formed due to Cubbie's carelessness!
the length and breadth of Britain, and indeed Europe, similar tales are told of
giants, or of the Devil, wandering around with an overladen apron of stones! In
Orkney dialect the phrase "tae cairry a deil's burden" is to carry such
a large load that something is sure to fall off!
name is also associated with ancient man-made features in the landscape.
Roo's Burden is a chambered cairn in the Brinyan district of Rousay and Cubbie
Roo's Castle was, until it was taken into care, an enigmatic heap of stones in
But Cubbie Roo has nothing to do with Kolbein Hrúga.
By the greatest of coincidences, Kolbein's name approximates
the name of a mythical spirit - giant, troll, monster, devil, whatever you like
to call him - whom our Norse ancestors believed was responsible for what might
be described as superhuman creations in the landscape.
Roo - Norse chieftain or supernatural spirit?
Let us take
a close look at the name Cubbie Roo.
As we noted at the
beginning, Barry referred to him as Coppirow or Cubbirow. Up until the beginning
of the last century, the last element was always written "row" and not
It would seem that once the sagas became
widely available and readers noted that Kolbein Hrúga had lived in Wyre,
it was assumed that "roo" had to be the correct pronunciation. In fact,
the second name Row represents the Old Norse word raud meaning red. So Cubbie
Row becomes Cubbie Red and this helps greatly in the interpretation of the
Cubbie Roo is in fact a spirit. A being of enormous
power who, in common with many such supernatural creatures, was believed to be
red in colour.
Redcap is an evil goblin who lives in the
Scottish borders and Redshanks are Somerset spirits. The horde of evil spirits
who followed in the train of Lusse, the evil monster of Norwegian folklore, wore
red hoods and the so-called kaboutermannekin, brownie-type figures from Holland,
also wore red caps.
A spirit which haunted the coast of
the West Mainland of Orkney, and whose name is recorded in a number of caves,
is known as Watty or Walter Red. The colour red is symbolic of the blood of the
spirit's victims. Redcap, the evil spirit of Scottish folklore, periodically redyed
his cap red with human blood.
Rawhead or Bloody Bone(s)
was a hideous spectre with blood streaming down his face who was believed to inhabit
the wilder parts of the north of England. Raw in this instance may also be the
Old Norse raud since in some of the placenames of northern England, such as Rawmarsh
in Yorkshire and Rawcliffe in Lancashire, for example, it is known that the original
forms of raw come from the Norse for red.
"heap" of a man?
So much for Roo, the second
element of Cubbie Roo's name. What of the first element, Cubbie, or as it was
earlier written Cobbie?
Cobbie as a spirit is a roundish,
heavy figure. In English dialect, the word cob has a variety of meanings, which
includes "big strong man".
The same cobbie-type
element is found in Dutch kaboutermannekin and German kobold, both relating to
supernatural creatures. This latter word came into French in the corrupted form
gobelin and into English as goblin.
The German and Dutch
names for this spirit might help us to understand a little more about the spirit
Cobbie. It is believed that the German word Kobold originally took the form Kobwalt, where the last element means power, as in Norwegian vald or English wield.
is of particular interest here is that the same element - walt - also occurs in
the name of that other Orkney demon, Watty or Walter Red. It would be reasonable
to conclude that Cobbie, meaning spirit, falls into the same group as the German
kobold and Dutch kaboutermannekin who, it will be remembered, wore red caps!
the greatest of coincidences, Kolbein Hrúga's name was very close to that
of a local demon, whose name would have approximated kobvald raudr, alias Cobbie
Row. It was in this way that the castle, which had become no more than a heap
of stones, came to be called Cubbie Roo's Castle!
West Mainland of Orkney, kobvald raudr became Valdi Red, Watty Red or Walter Red,
and one of the caves in which he lived can still be seen on the Brough
He had another cave on the Stromness shore and sometimes favoured a hole on the Heddle Hill in Firth! He also seems to have been referred to merely by the name
Row, since we have the Hole o Row in Sandwick
and the Hole o Row in Flotta.
Roo and Walter Red were also known by the name Gunni. The goblin name Gunni is
found in a variety of spelt forms in Sweden, Shetland and on the island of Tiree
on the west coast of Scotland. In Wiltshire, a Bronze age tomb is known as Gun's
In Orkney, Gunni sometimes took up residence in
Gunnie's Geo, a cleft in the rocks in Rousay but sometimes he chose Gunyasilya,
a cave on the Birsay coast. He also
spent some time in a saddle in the Orphir
Any doubt in my mind that Cubbie Roo was really
a spirit was dispelled when, some years ago, I was at a wedding in Norfolk and,
by sheer coincidence, found myself sitting beside an old lady who had been born
in Westray but who left as a young child.
name is not recorded in Westray but
he must have been well known there for local folklore tells us that it was from
here that he launched some of his largest missiles.
Once we had got over the shock
of having a common homeland, the lady recalled some of her earliest childhood
memories. She tried to remember a little bedtime saying
of her mother's and after several attempts came out with this remarkable little
"Hush thee bairn,
An dinna fret thee,
Nivver git thee."