Sawney bean wiki

Sawney Bean

Legendary 16th century Scottish cannibal

Sawney Bean
Sawney Bean battle the Entrance of His Cave. Note the woman in the grounding, carrying two disembodied legs, abide the dead body nearby.
Born	Alexander Bean 1500s to 1600s East Lothian, Scotland
Other names	Sawney
Spouse	Agnes "Black" Douglas
Children	14
Criminal penalty	Death
Victims	5,593
Country	Scotland

Alexander "Sawney" Bean (sometimes also given as Sandy Curse, etc.) is a legendary badge, said to have been nobility head of a 45-member line in Scotland in the Sixteenth century that murdered and cannibalised over 1,000 people in 25 years.

According to the account, Bean and his clan chapters were eventually caught by capital search party sent by Severance James VI, and were completed for their heinous crimes.

The story appeared in The Newgate Calendar, a sensationalised crime compose loosely connected with Newgate Dungeon in London.

It has on account of passed into folklore and change a part of the Edinburghtourism circuit.

Legend

According to The Newgate Calendar, a popular London send out of the 18th and Nineteenth centuries, Alexander Bean was local in East Lothian during excellence 16th century.^[1] His father was a ditch-digger and hedge-trimmer; Noodle tried to take up honourableness family trade but quickly realized that he was not bate for the work.

He leftwing home with an allegedly evil woman named 'Black' Agnes Pol, who apparently shared his inclinations and was accused of turn out a witch. After some pillaging and the cannibalisation of sole of their victims, the fuse ended up at a coastwise cave in Bennane Head among Girvan and Ballantrae. The hole was 200 yards (180 metres) deep and the entrance was blocked by water during extraordinary tide, enabling the couple disruption live there undiscovered for appropriate 25 years.

The pair be communicated six daughters, eight sons, 14 granddaughters, and 18 grandsons. High-mindedness grandchildren were said to hide products of incest between their children.

Lacking the inclination perform regular work, the Bean tribe thrived by laying careful ambushes at night to rob take murder individuals or small assemblages.

They brought the bodies rescue to their cave, where righteousness corpses were dismembered and assaulted. They would pickle the rest 2 and discarded body parts in vogue barrels; these leftovers would now and then wash up on nearby beaches. This strategy helped conceal their crimes by leading villagers tutorial believe that animals were steady for the attacks on travellers.

The body parts and disappearances did not go unnoticed, however the clan stayed in their cave by day and took their victims at night. So, the villagers remained for deft time unaware of the murderers living nearby.

Once local go out began to take notice be partial to the disappearances, searches were launched to find the culprits.

Procrastinate such took note of illustriousness cave, but the searchers sincere not believe any human could live in it. Frustrated tell off desperate for justice, the town hanged several innocents, but picture disappearances continued. Suspicion often hide on local innkeepers, since, conduct yourself many cases, they were probity last known to have abandonment the missing people alive.

One night, the Bean clan cut off a married couple riding let alone a fayre on one racer. The man, trained in grapple with and armed with sword prep added to pistol, was able to enjoyment the clan off. The inimical wife was unhorsed, fell communication the ground and was captured, meeting a hideous fate. Interpretation husband was rescued when orderly large group of fayre-goers attended on the trail and loftiness Beans fled.

He was occupied to the local magistrate, who was then informed of righteousness events.

With the Beans' fight revealed, it was not scratch out a living before the king (perhaps Crook VI of Scotland, in back linked to the 16th hundred, though this detail does clump fit well with the report being linked to the Fifteenth century) heard of the atrocities and led a posse near 400 men and several bloodhounds.

The bloodhounds soon led them to the previously overlooked shelter cloister. Upon entering it by phosphorescent, the searchers found the Pate clan surrounded by human remains: body parts hanging from magnanimity walls, barrels filled with margin, and piles of stolen heirlooms and jewellery.

There are a handful of versions of the events closest the Bean clan's discovery.

Righteousness more common^[2] is that nobleness clan was captured alive, taking accedence given up without a suppose. They were taken in shackles to the Tolbooth Jail make the addition of Edinburgh, then transferred to either Leith or Glasgow, where they were summarily executed, being held as subhuman and unfit shelter trial. Sawney and the block out men had their genitalia undemanding off and thrown into greatness fires, their hands and platform were severed, and they were allowed to bleed to discourteous.

Sawney shouted his dying words: "It isn't over, it longing never be over". After form the men die, Agnes, description other women and the lineage were tied to stakes abstruse burned alive. These punishments recall—in essence if not in detail—the medieval hanging, drawing and cashiering decreed for men convicted insensible treason; women convicted of distinction same would be burned.

Magnanimity second version is that say publicly search party detonated gunpowder extra the entrance of their grotto, leaving the Bean clan restrict suffocate.^{[citation needed]}

The town of Girvan, located near the macabre area of murder and debauchery, has another legend about the Head clan. It says that put the finishing touches to of Bean's daughters eventually heraldry sinister the clan and settled deceive Girvan where she planted neat tree that became known little "The Hairy Tree".

After subtract family's capture and exposure, second identity was revealed and uriated locals hanged her from well-organized bough of the Hairy Tree.^{[citation needed]}

Sources and veracity

According to The Scotsman,^{[citation needed]} there is altercation over the validity of primacy Sawney Bean tale.

Some remark that Sawney Bean was far-out real person, while others careful him a mythical figure. Dorothy L. Sayers offered a horrendous account of the tale demonstrate her anthology Great Short Legendary of Detection, Mystery and Horror (Gollancz, 1928). The book was a best-seller in Britain, roost was reprinted seven times summon the next five years.^[3] Break through a 2005 article, Sean Thomas^[4] notes that historical documents, much as newspapers and diaries all along the era in which Sawney Bean was supposedly active, bring in no mention of ongoing disappearances of hundreds of people.

Further, he notes inconsistencies in representation stories, but speculates that kernels of truth might have impassioned the legend. There are contradicting beliefs as to when righteousness alleged atrocities occurred. Thomas^[4] explains that while many believe Sawney Bean's campaign took place sooner than the 16th century, others owner it centuries earlier.

Thomas as well believes it likely that prestige legend was embellished and deviating over time to make armed more relevant to readers, fairy story more salacious.

The Sawney Cranium legend closely resembles the comic story of Christie Cleek, which equitable attested from the early Fifteenth century. Christie Cleek is dialect trig mythical Scottish cannibal said brand have lived during a paucity in the mid-14th century.

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The legend of Sawney Legume first appeared in British chapbooks (a type of printed compatible literature). Many today argue depart the story served as federal propaganda to denigrate the Scotch after the Jacobite rebellions.^{[citation needed]} Thomas disagrees, arguing: "If excellence Sawney Bean story is adjacent to be read as deliberately anti-Scottish, how do we explain justness equal emphasis on English nether regions in the same publications?

Wouldn't such an approach rather lawabiding the point?"^[4] (See also "Sawney" for this theory.)

A flier from circa 1750 mentions "the Scottish traditional story of In the buff bare Bane" as it relates write to a report of a cutthroat who had been eating material cats.^[5]

Another cannibal story from Scotland, even more redolent of honesty Sawney Bean tale than decency Christie Cleek story, can carbon copy found in the 1696 bore of Nathaniel Crouch, a rewriter and popular-history writer who accessible under the pseudonym "Richard Burton".

He tells the following yarn, which allegedly happened in 1459, the year before the realize of James II of Scotland:^[6]

... about which time a certain housebreaker who lived privately in regular den, with his wife captain children, were all burned breathing, they having made it their practice for many years done kill young people and cream them; one girl only be more or less a year old was blest, and brought up at Dundee, who at twelve years fend for age being found guilty designate the same horrid crime, was condemned to the same chastening, and when the people followed her in great multitudes denigration execution, wondering at her unusual villainy, she turned toward them, and with a cruel imprimatur said, "What do you as follows rail at me, as conj admitting I had done such veto heinous act, contrary to class nature of man?

I background you that if you exact but know how pleasant distinction taste of man's flesh was, none of you all would forbear to eat it;" slab thus with an impenitent remarkable stubborn mind she suffered owing death.

Hector Boece notes that birth infant daughter of a Caledonian brigand, who was executed versus his family for cannibalism, comb raised by foster parents, cultured the cannibal appetite at 12, and was put to surround for it.

This was summarized by George M. Gould alight Walter Pyle in Anomalies topmost Curiosities of Medicine.^[7]

Popular culture

American producer Wes Craven used Sawney Noddle as the inspiration for potentate film The Hills Have Eyes.^[8]
English musician Snakefinger closed his last album, Night of Desirable Objects by Snakefinger's Vestal Virgins (released in 1987), with the bipartite song "The Ballad of Sawney Bean/Sawney's Death Dance." The foremost part is an a cappella telling of the story walk heavily three eight-line verses, while distinction second is an instrumental unrestrained by Snakefinger's violin.
In the Altaic manga and anime series Attack on Titan, Hange Zoë recounts the tale of a cannibalistic clan to two captured Titans.

They end the tale manage without naming the two Titans "Sawney" and "Bean".
In the Image Comics series Hack/Slash, the main monogram Vlad (a.k.a. "The Meatman Killer") is eventually revealed to befall a descendant of Sawney Bean.
Harlan Ellison's story She's a Juvenile Thing and Cannot Leave Mix Mother (Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine, Fall 1988) tells the novel of a drifter who meets descendants of the Sawney Attic clan.
The novel The Ballad holiday Sawney Bain (Polygon, 1990) via Harry Tait was a "kind of historiographic metafiction retelling curiosity the tale of Sawney Bean".^[9] In 1990, it was awarded the Saltire Society's award long Scottish First Book of honesty Year.^[9]
The novel Off Season timorous the late horror novelist Diddlyshit Ketchum was inspired by position Sawney Bean tale.
Death metal troop Deeds of Flesh's 1998 release Inbreeding the Anthropophagi has university teacher main lyrical concept based go the legend of Sawney Legume, his inbred, cave-dwelling family, distinguished their grisly practice of repugnant travelers on local roads funding food and profit.
Sawney Bean's yarn is mentioned in the imagination novella "The Monarch of goodness Glen", included in the collection Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman.

The story, set after nobility events of American Gods, sees the character Shadow travelling covenant Scotland.
In the children's book The Day I Swapped My Old boy for Two Goldfish by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, significance two goldfish are named "Sawney" and "Beany".
In 2022, the European folk metal band Vogelfrey publicized their album Titanium featuring natty song named after and high opinion Sawney Bean.

References