Sawney Bean, the Scottish cannibal

Folklore, Annual, 1997 by Sandy Hobbs, John le Carre

Long before The Silence of the Lambs, Ayrshire had their very own Dr Hannibal Lector. Name: Sawney Bean. Legend has it that Sawney Bean and his wife left their home in East Lothian and came to live in this cave on the Ayrshire coast where they developed a penchant for human flesh. What they used to do was kill travellers who were on the road up there, bring them back and cook them. But I have to stress that this is simply folklore and legend. There's no factual evidence to back this up at all. The couple had children, their children had children, and eventually the incestuous breed numbered about thirty, which meant that more and more people went missing from the road along the coast. This came to the attention of the king and he had the whole lot captured and taken to Edinburgh. The men were forced to watch the children and the women burnt at the stake. The men were then hung and then, when still alive, they were quartered and they bled to death. Still all this has given me a bit of an appetite. Let's go and get some food (Gordon Kennedy, "The Ayrshire Coast," The Insiders, BBC Television, 8 November 1991).

The role of tourism in the creation and spread of folklore in modern society has been given only limited consideration by scholars, though Marion Bowman and Sigrid Schmidt have each offered suggestions as to how conversations between local inhabitants and tourists may have helped particular contemporary legends take shape (Schmidt 1989; Bowman 1990).

Sawney Bean is a familiar figure in Scotland today. The name of Sawney Bean, the man-eating cave-dweller, appears regularly in newspapers and popular magazines. (Early texts all have the form "Beane" but this has now been almost entirely superseded by "Bean." We shall employ the latter form, except when making direct quotations.) The long-established Scots Magazine and the newer Scottish Memories both recently carried articles on his story (anon., 1993; Gracie 1994). Indeed, there is an almost enthusiastic acceptance by Scots of this case of cannibalism in their own country, despite the fact that the story appears to be of English origin.

References to Sawney Bean are also common in what might be termed "tourist literature" dealing with southwest Scotland. These range from works with vaguely literary pretensions such as J.J. Bell's The Glory of Scotland, through Martin Horan's Scottish Executions, Assassinations and Murders, to more mundane practical works like the British Motor Corporation's County Road Map and Gazetteer (Cleveley n.d.).(1) Innis Macleod, for example, describing the Ayrshire coast south of Girvan, writes:

Epicureans who want to know more about the Galloway cannibal, Sawney Bean, should be directed to the cave south of Bennane Head ... There is, of course no "real" Sawney Bean cave, so this one will do just as well as another. Sawney Bean barbecues should be held on the shore (Macleod 1986, 243).

Later, discussing an area further south, he alludes to Sawney Bean again:

The coastline here is dotted with caves, so perhaps one should be claimed as the Rhins retreat of that committed troglodyte, Sawney Bean, the shining star in the firmament of mythical Scottish rogues, whom at least one writer, John Wilson of Gatehouse, wanted to place in the southern Rhins (ibid., 262).

The association of Sawney Bean with particular sites gives the impression of a local legend, but some accounts appear to leave open the possibility that the story is historically based. Gordon Donaldson and Robert S. Morpeth's A Dictionary of Scottish History is an example of a text taking an ambiguous position. The entry on Bean reads in full:

Said to have been a native of East Lothian who settled in a cave at Bennane Head, near Ballantrae, in the reign of James I (or perhaps James VI) and lived by robbery, murder and cannibalism (Donaldson and Morpeth 1977).

So what kind of story is it? Is it a local legend? Is it founded on historical events, or simply a fiction for tourist amusement?

We have found no evidence of an historical basis for the story. It appears to be a local legend, but the local connection has a literary origin in the nineteenth century. If there are boundaries between local traditions and tourist tales, Sawney Bean crosses them. The case also casts doubt on whether distinctions between folk culture, popular culture and high culture are as straightforward as some might wish to claim.

"Origins"?

We have been unable to find any evidence of the Sawney Bean story prior to the eighteenth century. It appears in The Lives and Actions of the most Famous Highwaymen by the pseudonymous "Captain Charles Johnson," the earliest editions of which bear the imprints, London 1734 and Birmingham 1742.(2) There are also in existence four undated chapbooks which tell the story. Two previous commentators, William Roughead and Ronald Holmes, have both suggested that at least some of these chapbooks predate Captain Johnson's book and that they, or similar publications now lost, were his source (Roughead 1934; Holmes 1975; 1985). However, in the case of at least three of the four they were almost certainly wrong. The four chapbooks held in the National Library of Scotland are all undated. Let us consider them briefly.(3)