Nuberu

Two girls and a boy are watching sheep on high ground above Llamosu, and the boy is happy because the girls are throwing his cap in the air, and then it starts to thunder. One of the girls turns and runs down the mountain crying, and what she shouts as she goes is that the Nubeiru with the big hat has just got in underneath that oak.

The boy grew up and married the other one, and in July 1921 he told the story to a folklorist with a notebook, giving his name, his age and his village, which is why it is possible to say that this happened rather than that people used to say it happened.

The Nuberu is the lord of the clouds in Asturias, and he is unusually well documented for a figure of his kind, because the man who collected him was a sceptic. Aurelio de Llano spent three years walking the region asking country people what they actually believed, and he threw out a good deal of what other writers had put into print, including the celebrated horned forest god who turned out to be a Basque import in fancy dress. The Nuberu survived the cull. He stands first on Llano’s list of the genuine mythology of Asturias, and the pages behind that list are full of names, ages, dates and parishes.

The description they gave him is consistent and not flattering. He is a malign being, tall, colossally strong and extremely ugly, so much so that the standing Asturian comparison for an unattractive person is that they are uglier than the Nuberu. He has a beard, which several people were specific about, including a parish priest and a young woman at Bao who told Llano the Nuberu had once come down there and had a very large one. He dresses in skins, wears a hat with a wide brim, and travels sitting on a cloud.

He is also, in the legends, a family man with a fixed address. He is called Xuan Cabritu, and he lives with his wife and children in a city built on the summit of a mountain in Egypt, and the mountain is wrapped in fog. From there he comes out to make thunder and to tip the clouds wherever he chooses.

Llano made a good deal of the Egypt detail and built a theory on it about ancient eastern traders coming to the Iberian coast for tin, which is diffusionism of the kind his generation liked and is best left where he put it. What matters is the thing underneath it, which is that Asturian storms were understood as arriving from somewhere far away under the direction of someone who had made a decision, and that the decision could be argued with.

That is the whole of the practice. When the Nuberu appears over a village they ring the bells at him and the priest goes out to conjure him, formally, out loud, asking him to discharge the cloud somewhere it will not damage anybody’s crops. He resists. Everyone agrees he resists. In the western councils it was said that during the ceremony the priest sometimes had to be held up by two men on either side to stop the Nubeiru carrying him off into the air, and an old man at San Martín de Luiña told Llano so in March 1921.

Some priests were better at it than others and their reputations survived them. The old priest of Aguinos in Somiedo had a great hand for conjuring the Renubeiru, and the result, according to an eighty-five-year-old man at Pola de Somiedo, was that hail never once fell on Aguinos; the storm was obliged to go and empty itself on an uninhabited place called Riufornu. Another priest, at Villanueva de Teverga, used to surround himself with schoolchildren, on the grounds that their innocence strengthened the conjuro. One day at the church door the Nubeiru simply ignored him, so he threw a shoe at it. The shoe vanished into the air and the cloud went off and dumped itself on the mountain behind the peak called Tromeu. A woman at Lastres told the same story about the priest of Libardón, who threw his shoe from the rectory corridor, and about the priest of Lúe, who threw his biretta.

The countryside had its own methods too, for households without a priest to hand. At Brañaseca they lit a blessed candle, put the long wooden oven-peel out on the roof, and laid an axe beside it with the blade turned upward.

And then, cutting across all of it, is the other half of his character, which nobody who calls him malign seems to find contradictory. He protects the people who behave decently toward him. He has been known to meet someone out in the fields and tell them to get home before the weather breaks. He accepts the hospitality of farmhouses. And people have seen him off duty, jumping about in the mist, sitting on the crags, sheltering under the trees when it rains on him too.

His power is the weather, exercised as a choice. He does not embody the storm; he drives it, and the whole apparatus of bells and conjuros and axes on roofs exists because a driver can be talked to and a climate cannot. Llano’s informants told him where the Nuberu had come down, and the list reads like a parish register: Naranco, Faro, the Monte de la Magdalena, San Salvador, Taja, El Fresno, San Juan de la Pinera, San Martín de Luiña, Celón, Saliencia, a shepherds’ hut in Cabrales.

His limits are the ones that come from being negotiated with. He can be forced off a village and onto empty ground by a priest who knows the words. He can be driven back by bell metal, a blessed candle and an upturned axe. He falls out of the sky often enough for it to be worth listing the places. And in the western parishes where he was strongest, Llano noted, the practical consequence was not fear of the god but pressure on the clergy: when the Nuberu arrived, the priest had to go out and conjure him, or the parish would not forgive it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the Nuberu?

The Nuberu is the lord of the clouds and storms in Asturian folklore, described as tall, ugly, bearded and colossally strong, dressed in skins, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and riding on a cloud. His personal name is Xuan Cabritu, and he is said to live with his wife and children in a city on a fog-covered mountain in Egypt.

How did Asturian villages deal with the Nuberu?

By ringing the church bells at him and having the priest go out and conjure him formally, asking him to discharge the cloud somewhere harmless. He was said to resist strongly, and in the western councils it was reported that the priest sometimes had to be held up by two men so the Nuberu could not carry him off.

Is the Nuberu evil?

He is usually called malign, and Asturian speech uses him as the standard comparison for ugliness, but the same accounts say he protects people who treat him well, warns those he meets in the fields that a storm is coming, and accepts hospitality from farmhouses.

What other names does the Nuberu have?

He is Nubeiru in Quirós, Teverga and the parishes near Galicia, Renubeiru in Somiedo, Cangas and Ibias, and El Escolar around San Martín de Luiña, Pola de Allande and Grandas de Salime. A few people in those last councils described El Escolar as a small figure rather than a giant one.

Is the Nuberu genuine Asturian tradition?

Yes, and it is unusually well evidenced. The folklorist Aurelio de Llano, who spent three years collecting in rural Asturias and rejected several widely printed figures as modern literary imports, placed the Nuberu first on his list of the real mythology of the region and recorded accounts from named informants with their ages, villages and the dates on which they spoke to him.

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