Kobus (or Jacobus) van der Schlossen (died 1695) was a late-seventeenth century Dutch thief who features prominently in folktales from the North Brabant region. After serving as a soldier in the many wars which left the Netherlands in turmoil, he joined a gang of ex-soldiers called 'de zwartmakers'. With his robber band 'De Zwarte Bende' he made his home in the vast and impenetrable Slabroek forests near Uden. Eventually he was captured in Uden and imprisoned in Ravenstein Castle (since demolished). He was hanged in 1695 at the gallows of the Lordship of Ravenstein in Velp. Allegedly, 20,000 spectators came to witness the execution.
The Netherlands is a country located mainly in Northwestern Europe. The European portion of the Netherlands consists of twelve separate provinces that border Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, with maritime borders in the North Sea with Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom. Together with three island territories in the Caribbean Sea—Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba— it forms a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The official language is Dutch, but a secondary official language in the province of Friesland is West Frisian.
North Brabant, also unofficially called Brabant, is a province in the south of the Netherlands. It borders the provinces of South Holland and Gelderland to the north, Limburg to the east, Zeeland to the west, and Belgium to the south. The northern border follows the Meuse westward to its mouth in the Hollands Diep strait, part of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta.
Uden is a municipality and a town in the province of Noord-Brabant, Netherlands.
Stories were told about his miraculous escapes from the forces of law. De Brobbelbies, an area of Slabroek which still exists, received its name from one of these stories. One day, so the story goes, Kobus accidentally ran into some law-officers in the woods. When he found he couldn't outrun them he jumped into a pond and hid by morphing into a bulrush (called 'Bies' in Dutch). Because of the magical transformation the water started bubbling ('brobbelen'; hence 'Brobbelbies').
Bulrushes is the vernacular name for several large wetland grass-like plants in the sedge family (Cyperaceae).
Ravenstein
Sources
Reggie Naus, Zwartmakerij in het land van Ravenstein: de Geschiedenis van Jacobus van der Schlossen, 2006.
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