Legends

It would be strange indeed were legend and story to be unconnected with this place — a scene which possesses so many elements fitted to stir the imagination and the fancy, and we need not be surprised therefore to find that there are no end of traditions accounting for the catastrophe which devastated this fair Barony of Culbin. Human misfortunes and physical calamities have been commonly associated by the old superstitious feelings of the country with moral turpitude and wickedness, and the traditions of the place, differing in detail as they do, all tell the same tale — that it is a case of divine retribution, that a curse had fallen upon the place”.

One story represents it as a judgment which came upon the Laird of Culbin for the breaking of the Sabbath. He was, according to legend, not content with the work of six days, but must have his people to plough and bow and reap on the Sunday as well. The sand storm was divine retribution on Kinnaird for his failure to keep the Lord’s Day.

A second legend, suggest that the sand storm was the result of a curse made by the Maid of Norway. The Maid, Princess Margaret of Norway, inherited the Scottish Crown through her mother but died in Orkney in September 1290, aged seven. According to the Culbin superstition, she did not die but was stolen by pirates from her father's ship on the high seas, and kept for long years in confinement by the laird of Culbin, who figures as the villain of the story. However, Margaret’s death is well-documented as is her subsequent burial in Bergen.

The story of Kinnaird of Culbin making a pact with the Devil to play cards was well known at years after the sand storm, and the legend grew throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Eliza Gordon-Cumming of the Altyre family, knew of this tale when she penned her poem about the Culbin Sandhills. She verses the story of the pact between Kinnaird of Culbin with the Devil, and how the two are still playing their game of cards in the heart of the largest mound.

Legends

Click here to read Mrs Willoughby's Poem