Alexander "Sawney" Bean: Encyclopedia - Alexander "Sawney" Bean

Alexander "Sawney" Bean

Alexander "Sawney" Bean (or Beane), Sawny is Scots for Sandy - was the legendary patron head of a cannibalistic family in Scotland in the 15th century. It is claimed that he, his wife, and their 46 children and grandchildren killed and fed on over a thousand people before they were captured and brutally executed.

The story appears in the Newgate Calendars, a catalogue of crimes and criminals who passed through the notorious Newgate Prison in London. Although some historians believe that Sawney Bean never existed, his story has passed into legend and has become a part of the Edinburgh tourism industry.

Alexander "Sawney" Bean - Beginnings

According to lore and legend, Alexander Bean was born in East Lothian during the reign of King James I of Scotland (the early 15th century); however, some sources date the tale to earlier eras. His father was a ditch digger and a hedge trimmer, and Bean tried to take up the family profession, but quickly realised that he had little taste for honest work.

Bean left home with a woman (according to one version, she was a witch called Black Agnes Douglas, and they were run out of town) who shared his views on honest labour. They eventually made their way to a cave in Bannane Head, near Galloway County (now South Ayrshire), where they decided to make home. The cave reached 200 yards into the rock and during the high tide the entrance was blocked by water. It is supposed to be the cave now called Bennane Cave, in Ballantrae in Ayrshire. There they are said to have lived undiscovered for twenty-five years.

Alexander "Sawney" Bean - Family life and cannibalism

At first, Beane and his wife supported themselves as brigands by waylaying and murdering travellers, stealing their money and hoarding their valuables. They used only the money they took from their victims because valuables could be more easily recognised.

Alexander Bean and his wife soon produced a large family of children, and later grandchildren who were all the product of incest. Before they met their grisly end, the family consisted of eight sons, six daughters, eighteen grandsons, and fourteen granddaughters. There were 46 children in all.

Needing food, and without any skills or a desire to perform honest labour, Bean and his family quickly took up the only option available to them, crime. Their methods were very simple and consistent: they would lay a careful ambush to surprise and kill single people or small groups at night. They were able to cut off all possible escape routes with the members of their massive family.

But the meager proceeds from highway robbery were not enough to sustain the growing clan. Rather than waste the bodies of his victims, Beane fed himself and his family on them. Their victims were robbed of all of their possessions, murdered, and brought back to their cave where they were dismembered and cannibalised. The Beans would pickle any leftovers.

Eventually their methods grew to be so successful that they were discarding unnecessary body parts into the ocean, where they would wash up on nearby beaches.

The missing people and body parts did not go unnoticed by the local villagers, but none of them knew who were committing these crimes. The Bean family lived in the caves during the day, and killed anyone they saw during the night to prevent any witnesses to their existence. They were so secretive that the local residents simply never knew that they had a family of 48 murderers living nearby.

In the towns' quest for justice, they reputedly lynched various innocent strangers, but the disappearances continued. Suspicion especially fell on local innkeepers, since they were often the last to see many of the missing men and women alive.

Alexander "Sawney" Bean - Capture & execution

After 25 years of undiscovered terror, the outlaw life led by Sawney and his family came to an abrupt end.

One night they laid a trap for a man and his wife who were returning from a local fair by riding through the woods. The Beans ambushed the couple, just as they had always done, but this time the husband proved to be a surprisingly tough opponent, and managed to hold off the entire family for quite some time with nothing but his sword and deft control of his horse.

Eventually the Bean family knocked the intended victim's wife from her horse, and killed her the instant she hit the ground. However, before they could also take the husband, who started fighting harder than ever, a large group of people started to come down the trail from the fair, and the Bean family had to run.

With their existence finally revealed to the world, it was not long before a massive hunt was underway. King James I had heard about the atrocities and decided to head the hunt himself. He led 400 men and many bloodhounds on a search of the countryside, and soon found the cave in Bannane Head where Alexander Bean and his wife had so long ago taken up as home. The cave itself was a grisly sight, having been witness to over a thousand murders and cannibalistic acts. Bones and human remains were littered everywhere.

The Bean family was captured alive and taken in chains to the Tolbooth Jail in Edinburgh. The Bean children were so accustomed to a life of cannibalism and murder that they could not imagine life being any other way. They were soon transferred to Leith or Glasgow where they were promptly executed without a trial. The men had their hands and feet cut off and were allowed to bleed to death, and the women and children, after watching the men die, were burned alive.

Alexander "Sawney" Bean - Sources & veracity

Whatever the truth, the grim legend has entered the folklore of the British Isles. Alexander "Sawney" Bean and his cannibalistic family are largely considered just a myth, mostly because of a notable lack of written sources. It is thought that a crime this major and long lasting which ended with King James I himself hunting down the perpetrator would have generated some historical records, but so far none have appeared. There is also some uncertainty over which king was involved in the search; some accounts say James IV or even earlier eras.

The implausibility of four dozen people – said to be the number of the entire inbred Beane clan at the time of their eventual capture – evading capture for a quarter century has sown the seed of scepticism amongst many historians. At some point, the disappearances along the particular stretch of land near the Beanes' cave, which must have numbered in the thousands, would have had to lead to some intense investigation of the area. According to the story, mass searches for missing victims were conducted, but for some reason, no one ever thought to look in the cave along the coast.

A recent article by Sean Thomas argues there is significant doubt as to the actuality of the Sawney Beane tale, at least in the best-known, most detailed version,

This dating could place the murders as far back as the days of Bruce, or even Macbeth. Thomas continues,

Thomas also notes that newspapers and diaries during the era when Sawney Beane was supposedly active make no mention of ongoing disappearances of hundreds of persons.

The legend of Sawney Bean first appeared in the British chapbooks (rumour magazines of the day), which today leads many to argue that the story was a political propaganda tool to denigrate the Scots after the Jacobite uprising. Thomas argues against this, noting that "If the Sawney Bean story is to be read as deliberately anti-Scottish, how do we explain the equal emphasis on English criminals in the same publications? Wouldn't such an approach rather blunt the point?"

However, the Ayrshire area is known for some dark folklore, and it is known that during the famine of the late 15th century there were some instances of cannibalism in Scotland, so it is also possible that the legend has simply grown from there. There is also a similar legend of cannibalism, Christie-Cleek.

Alexander "Sawney" Bean - Sawney Bean in popular media

The legend of Alexander "Sawney" Bean has been chronicled on print and film. Print sources include:

• Historical and Traditional Tales Connected with the South of Scotland by John Nicholson, 1843
• The Legend of Sawney Bean, by Ronald Holmes, London, 1975
• The Galloway Gazette November 28, 1994

The punk rock band The Real McKenzies recorded a song entitled "Sawney Beane Clan".

British neofolk outfit Sol Invictus recorded a song entitled "Sawney Bean."

Musician Snakefinger recorded a song named "Sawney Bean/Sawney's Death Dance" on his "Night of Desirable Objects" album, which tells the tale of the Beane family and their eventual grisly comeuppance.

There is a Sawney Beane display in the London Dungeon wax museum.

Several low-budget movies have adapted the Sawney Beane story. Wes Craven directed the 1977 movie The Hills Have Eyes, which used the Sawney family in a modern-day American setting. Gary Sherman's Raw Meat, a.k.a. Deathline, has the Sawney character a derelict living in the London Underground subway tunnels. In 2005 Christian Viel directed Samhain, which was a soft-core version of the Sawney legend set in modern Ireland.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Alexander "Sawney" Bean", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki