Alexander "Sawney" Bean(e) was the storied patriarch of a forty-eight member clan in 16th century Scotland brutally executed for the mass murder and cannibalisation of over a thousand people. SAWNEY BEANE An incredible Monster who, with his Wife, lived by Murder and Cannibalism in a Cave.

Mythical 16th-century highwayman and mass-murderer who allegedly killed and cannibalized as many as a thousand people in the Galloway area of southern Scotland. According to unsubstantiated legend, the murderous Bean and his common law wife set up housekeeping in a dank cave on the Galloway coast where they raised a large, incestuous family whose chief sources of income and nutrition came from the purses and flesh of the human victims whom they waylaid and murdered. Bean and his cannibalistic clan--which some accounts number as many as 48--were apparently able to elude detection for 25 years due to the remoteness of the cave, which was inaccessible during periods of high tide. The Bean clan's reign of terror was finally brought to an end, it is said, due to a botched attack on a married couple who happened to be passing through the area on horseback. The woman was killed, but the man was able to escape and direct authorities to the scene of the attack. As the story goes, King James I personally charged into the south of Scotland with an army of 400 men in a kind of scorched-earth blitzkrieg, to put an end once and for all to the heinous depredations of Sawney Bean. Dogs and soldiers swarmed the Galloway coast, and the Bean clan were finally run to ground in a remote, labyrinthine grotto piled with butchered human carcasses, salt-cured and ready for the eating. James apparently was sufficiently horrified by what he found to dispense with due process altogether, and Bean and his clan of inbred troglodyte cannibals were summarily tortured, mutilated, and executed without benefit of a trial. Or so the story goes. The tale of Sawney Bean first appeared in a sensational 1700 broadsheet published in Carlisle, an ancient city in England just north of the Scottish border. The story was subsequently retold and reprinted many times, most prolifically in the city of London. Horrific and memorable though his legend may be, Scotland's unofficial bogeyman was likely the 16th-century equivalent of a modern urban myth, with no more foundation in reality than the Loch Ness Monster. Rare incidences of cannibalism are said to have occurred in ancient Scotland during times of great famine, and there are a handful of caves along the rugged Galloway coast, at least one of which was reportedly inhabited by a hermit as recently as the 1970s. None of this, however, proves the existence of Sawney Bean. The official record, in fact, suggests otherwise. Throughout the ages, great pains have always been taken to record every act, great or small, of the ruling Monarchs. This was no less true during the reign of James I, and those who harbored anti-Scottish sentiment in the English court would undoubtedly have chronicled the king's heroic charge into Galloway--and the subsequent capture and execution of the Bean clan--in florid detail, and with great relish. No such event appears in any of the literature or court documents of the day. Legends do occassionally find their way into officialdom, however. There is narrow cave at Bennane Head, approximately two miles north of Ballantrae, that the Edinburgh Geological Society refers to as "Sawney Bean's Cave," though no attribution is given. Numerous authors and researchers have doggedly attempted to verify the particulars of the case over the years, yet all have come up empty-handed. Truth is, there isn't an atom of verifiable historical evidence that a mass-murdering cannibal named Sawney Bean ever existed. Ultimately, the significance of Scotland's favorite maniac likely has less to do with his injurious effect on the population of 16th century Galloway than his positive impact on the modern tourism industry...

Sawney Beane was a homosexual who lived alone in the wilderness surrounding Old Montshire passin the early 1400's. He thrived primarily on the seamen he collected from local farmboys who were quite plentiful in that region in this time period. As the story goes, Sawney would seduce the young farmboys with voluptuous well groomed sheep that he would leave tied to a tree in a particular area in the wooded area by the well traveled pass. Many times these sheep would service many a lonesome traveller or farmboys with nothing out of the ordinary. However on some occasions sawney would bind the unwary and after repetetive sodomizing would extract his long sought after nutrients. This happened for years before locals and some traumatized villagers fought back and captured Sawney in a wily trap involving many men. fur and oils. He was summarily executed, and the story took on a different form as the townsmen, in fear of exposure, began to embellish the story which ultimately took on the form of the Sawney Beane clan of which we all know today. Which as this writer must agree,,,is a much more palatable form of the story. Or shall I say his-story.

If you ever visit Edinburgh go to the edinburgh Dungeon - they have a bit on Sawney Beane - pretty scary - my 7 year-old was in tears poor wee soul! Begged me never to take him back ......