THE LEGEND of SAWNEY BEAN

  Alexander " Sawney" Bean was born near Edinburgh sometime during the reign of James VI of Scotland. ( James I of England).  He was the son of a "hedger and ditcher".  He initially followed in his father`s footsteps, but soon found that hard work and honest toil didn`t suit him particularly well.  So along with a woman of similar values, he fled to County Galloway, where he and his `wife` took up residence in a cave along the shore.    In the years following, they had many children, who went on to produce even more grandchilden, all of them inbred.

Living in a cave and having an aversion to honest work, Alexander and his family needed some way to support themselves.  So they settled on what, for them, was the perfect occupation:  robbing passers-by. Whils they were by no means intelligent they did possess a level of ruthless cunning, demonstrated by their solutions to various problems.  Of course, they didn`t want to get caught, so they made certain that their victims were in no position to tell the tale.  So they all ended up dead.  To prevent any of them getting away, the Beans set up their ambushes so that all means of escape was blocked.  But is was the solution to the last problem which was the most ruthless and gruesome.

With such a quickly growing family, Alexander needed some way of feeding them all.  Conveniently enough, their nightly activities provided them with a large source of food.  They did not only rob and kill their victims but they took their bodies back to the cave where they ate them too.  Anything that was left would be pickled for another time.  In fact , they were so proficient in their work and there was often a surplus that was thrown away into the sea.  There are numerous accounts of people who had made the macabre discovery of limbs and other body parts washed up on the shore.

It is not known how long the Beans continued their murderous spree, but it was estimated that during that time they killed close to a thousand people.  Obviously, this didn`t go unnoticed by the residents nearby, but the perpetrators remained unknown because the Beans` existence wasn`t known.  They kept to their caves and their own company during the day, and no they met during the night lived to tell the tale.  Several local innkeepers were wrongly accused and executed for the crimes.

Their reign of terror came to an end due to bad luck on this grotesque family`s part.  One night during the 17th century, they attacked a man and wife who were returning on horseback from a fair.  When the Beans set upon them, the husband was able to hold them off for some time, possessing the advantage of being on horseback and having a sword, but they were able to knock his wife off her horse and killed her instantly.  The same fate would certainly has befallen the husband, but the Beans were forced to retreat when a large party of people coming from the fair arrived at the scene.

With the Beans` existence now revealed, a large party was gathered to search the surrounding area.  Led by the King himself, and made up of about four hundred men, along with several bloodhounds, they soon found the cave.

   .  Filled with the combined legacy of years of robbery, mounds of possessions and human remains, the living quarters of the cave must have been an horrific site.  The Beans were captured and they were transferred to Glasgow, where they were promptly executed without the benefit of a trial.

At the final count, Alexander "Sawney" Bean`s family consisted of himself, his wife, eight sons, six daughters, eighteen grand-sons, and fourteen grand-daughters.  Sawney and the rest of the adult mals in his family were dismembered and allowed to bleed to death, while the women and children were burned at the stake.

There is much argument as to whether this is all fact or fiction.  Who knows, but II`m just glad I wasn`t there at the time to find out!