The nightmarish Scottish legend has been passed down from generation to generation and has captivated people with it's gruesome and shocking details, today we look into the infamous Sawney Bean and his clan.
His original name was Alexander Bean and he was born in East Lothian, Scotland during the 16th Century. It was said that his father was a ditch digger and hedge trimmer and that his son had tried to follow in his footsteps but he soon realised that he wasn't very good at it so instead he became a tanner. When Bean left the family home he relocated to Ayrshire and married a woman named Agnes "Black" Douglas who had been accused of being a witch.
The newlyweds made their first home at Bennane Cave by Ballantrae, Ayrshire. The cave is a labyrinth of tunnels expanding for more than a mile with plenty of side passages that the Beans extended into during the next 25 years. The entrance to the cave flooded for a good distance, twice a day at high tide so not only did the water give them security it also made sure that outsiders stayed away.
Sawney needed to support his new wife and so he came up with the plan of robbery to do this. His plan had been a simple one that involved ambushing travellers on the lonely narrow roads that ran between the local villages. He then soon realised that his victims would be able to identify him as the culprit so to off set that, he decided to murder them in order to keep them from being able to talk. Agnes was supportive of her husband's violent tendencies.
Bennane Cave
Sawney was then left with the problem of the bodies of those he had robbed and murdered. So he came up with a solution that involved butchering his victims bodies and in order that no evidence remained of his crimes he and his wife would eat the cut up parts of the bodies, it was to become a good cheap method of feeding himself and his wife.
It wasn't long before Sawney and Agnes became parents for the first time and their family soon expanded to 14 children which was made up of eight sons and six daughters. The family grew larger still when their children committed the act of incest with each other. The children's actions resulted in the family expanding further still as it produced eighteen grandsons and fourteen granddaughters. This resulted in tremendous pressure for the family to provide more food for everyone.
The children and their offspring had only known the cannibal and murderous lifestyle and became very proficient at it. The clan ambushed weary travellers at night and left no survivors. People that lived in the surrounding areas then began to regularly come across random, preserved but decayed body parts that had washed up on the local areas beaches. These were the unwanted parts that had been thrown away into the sea by the Bean's.
The local authorities in the area became aware of the ever growing missing persons lists and searched the surrounding areas in an effort to try and find them or any clues as to what had happened to them. No one at this point thought to search the inky depths of Bennane Cave as they thought that no one would live in such a place. The locals thought that the unfortunate victims had likely been killed by wild animals or had perished from the hard and unforgiving area. As time went on the Bean clan expanded even more and as many as half a dozen victims would be ambushed, killed and dragged back to Bennane Cave to be prepared by the women for food.
As even more people went missing, the locals became convinced that someone out there was preying on travellers, this resulted in several innocent men being lynched after being accused of being the culprits. Suspicion even fell on the local innkeeper who had the misfortune to be the last person many of the victims had spoken to.
Sawney Bean outside the cave
The Bean clan's lust for victims would soon prove to be their undoing as one evening the family attacked a man and his wife as they returned home from the fair. One group had pulled the wife from her horse and had her stripped and disembowelled before the other group had managed to pull the husband to the ground. The female cannibals then cut the wife's throat and drank her blood as if it were wine. After the man saw the horrible fate that had befallen his wife he fought the clan desperately with his sword and pistol and dived onto his horse and fled as fast as the horse would go.
It was during this desperate fight between the man and the Bean clan that a group of twenty or more people happened upon the scene. They engaged the murderous clan in a fight that only ended when the clan realised for the first time ever, that they were outnumbered and so they fled back to their cave. Their hasty retreat meant that they had left behind the wife that they had initially killed but more importantly a group of witnesses.
The husband was taken before the Chief Magistrate of Glasgow who after hearing the gruesome tale, remembered the pickled body parts that had been found washed ashore and of the large number of missing persons in the area, he realised that this violent group had to be the same ones responsible. The magistrate immediately went to see King James I and told him everything that had happened in his area, the missing people, the pickled body parts and the last attack on the man and his wife. King James was so appalled about what he had been told that he took his army of 400 men and a pack of tracker dogs to Ayrshire. The King's army was soon joined by a group of local volunteers whose sole aim was to find the Bean clan.
They went over previously searched areas of the surrounding countryside and along the coastline but the murderous group were no where to be found until the dogs picked up on the scent of decaying human flesh that was coming from a waterlogged cave, Bennane Cave.
The hunters entered the cave using torchlight with their swords drawn as they went into the twisting passages of the Bean clan's home. They were horrified when they discovered that the walls of the cave had rows upon rows of human body parts and limbs. Other parts of the cave held bundles of clothing, piles of watches and rings and the discarded bones of those already consumed.
The hunters soon came face to face with the cannibal family and a fight broke out that resulted in all of the 48 members of the Bean clan being arrested and taken to Edinburgh by King James I himself. Their crimes were deemed too horrific to be heard by the regular justice system that was in place at that time, so it was abandoned and the whole family were sentenced to death.
The Bean Clan
The next day the men of the family found themselves in the position of many of their victims, their genitals were cut off and thrown into a fire while their hands and feet were severed and they were then left to bleed slowly to death in front of the women. As he lay dying, Sawney Bean shouted his last words "It isn't over, it will never be over!". The women were then burnt at the stake.
A ballad was written about Sawney Bean and his clan:
They've hung them high in Edinburgh toon
An likewise a their kin
An the wind blows cauld on their banes
An tae hell they have gaen
The legend of Sawney Bean states that the family killed and ate 1000 people (some say the number is 5,593) in their bloody 25 year reign of terror.
Our Conclusion
The Legend of Sawney Bean is one that has been debated as being nothing more than a good urban legend because there has never been any real historical proof of the existence of the cannibal clan. There is also confusion as to which King James was involved with the story, some believe that it was King James VI while others believe that Bean had lived centuries before.
The tale of Sawney Bean closely resembled the real life story of the cannibal Christie-Cleek who lived during a famine in the mid 14th Century. Cleek (real name Andrew Christie) was a butcher who was said to have joined a group of scavengers in the foothills of the Grampians and when one of the party died, Christie used his butchering skills to provide a meal for his companions. The group soon developed a taste for human flesh and so they began to ambush travellers that travelled through the passes of the Grampians. Christie used a hook to haul his victims from their horses and was said to have been responsible for murdering around 30 riders before being defeated by an armed force from Perth. It was said that he managed to escape and slipped back into society under a new name.
Sawney Bean in promotional photos for the Edinburgh Dungeons
The similarities between the two cannibals are prominent and Sawney may have been an embellished retelling of Christie-Creek. The tale of Sawney Bean didn't start circulating until the 18th Century while Cleek's crimes were documented from the 15th Century onwards by Nathaniel Crouch who wrote about crime that had happened in 1459, during the last year of the reign of King James II. Historians do believe there to be a grain of truth in the Sawney Bean legend and think that perhaps the legend was created by the English in a derogatory attempt to paint the Scottish as nothing more than savages.
If nothing else, the tale has proved to be an iconic folk tale that has scared many a child over the centuries. Whether the legend was an embellished and updated version of a real event or one made up to scare children we will likely never know but we agree that without it we wouldn't have some of the horror film classics like The Hills Have Eyes and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.