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Sawney BeanGalloway, in Scotland, was a bleak place in 1400. Travellers would disappear with monotonous regularity. No traces of them were ever found, they simply vanished. The king's officers investigated and hanged several likely-looking characters, but travellers still vanished. This continued for many years, with people going missing followed by the hanging of a couple of tramps or local inn-keepers. A husband and his wife were returning from a fair one day, with both of them on the same horse, when a wild looking creature leapt out and grabbed the horse's bridle. The husband took out his pistol and fired at the attacker. Suddenly they were surrounded by a horde of the creatures. The husband unsheathed his sword and started cutting. His wife was pulled from the horse and had her throat instantly cut. The husband was pulled to the ground but managed to keep them at bay with his cutlass. At that moment it happened that a crowd of about 30 people, returning from the same fair, came upon the scene. The woman had, by this time, been disembowelled. The crowd charged and the attackers ran off. His wife was dead but the husband was the first person to survive assault by the gang for almost a quarter of a century. Within four days the king arrived with 400 men. They started searching and soon came to the seashore. This was in an area of high cliffs so they waited until the tide had gone out and then rode along the beach. After a while they noticed a cave in the cliffs. They sent for some torches and, when they arrived, the troops clambered up and entered the cave. After following the passage it suddenly opened out and they found figures dazzled by the torchlight. Hanging from the ceiling of the cave were body parts and there were piles of money and jewellery in the recesses. The creatures were cornered and preferred to fight. Eventually sheer weight of numbers prevailed and 48 of them were rounded-up. They were taken to the Tollbooth in Edinburgh and, from there, to Leith. The leader of the gang was determined to be Sawney Bean who, 25 years earlier, had run away with a woman and lived in the cave since then. She had born him eight sons and six daughters and these, in turn, had produced eighteen grandsons and fourteen daughters. They lived by cannibalism, hence the missing travellers. It was 'thought needless to try such creatures who were professed enemies to mankind' so they were executed without the bother of a trial. The men had their hands and feet chopped off and allowed to bleed to death and the women, who had been made to watch, were thrown alive into three large fires. The following account, though as well attested as any historical fact can be, is almost incredible, for the monstrous and unparalleled barbarities that it relates; there being nothing we ever heard of with the same degree of certainty, that may be compared with it, or that shews how far a brutal temper, untamed by education, and knowledge of the world, may carry a man in such glaring and horrible colours. Sawney Bean was born in the county of East Lothian, about eight or nine miles eastward of the city of Edinburgh, in the reign of James I of Scotland. His father was a hedger and ditcher and brought up his son to the same laborious employment. He got his daily bread in his youth by these means, but being very prone to idleness, and not caring to be confined to any honest employment, he left his father and mother, and ran away into the desert part of the country, taking with him a woman as viciously inclined as himself. These two took up their habitation in a cave, by the sea-side on the shore of the county of Galloway; where they lived upwards of twenty-five years, without going into any city, town or village. In this time they had a great number of children and grand-children, whom they brought up after their own manner, without any notions of humanity or civil society. They never kept any company, but among themselves and supported themselves wholly by robbing: being, moreover, so very cruel, that they never robbed any one, whom they did not murder. By this bloody method, and their being so retired from the world, they continued for a long time undiscovered; there being no person able to guess how the people were lost that went by the place they lived. As soon as they had robbed any man, woman or child, they used to carry off the carcase to the den, where cutting it into quarters, they would pickle the mangled limbs, and afterwards eat it; this being their only sustenance: and notwithstanding they were so numerous, they commonly had superfluity of this abominable food, so that in the night-time they frequently threw legs and arms of the unhappy wretches they had murdered into the sea, at a great distance from their bloody habitation; the limbs were often cast up by the tide in several parts of the country, to the astonishment and terror of all beholders, and others who heard of it. Persons who have gone about their lawful occasion fell so often into their hands, that it caused a general outcry in the country round about; no person knowing what was become of their friends or relations, if they were once seen by these merciless cannibals. All the people in the adjacent parts were at last alarmed at such an uncommon loss of their neighbours and acquaintance, for there was no travelling in safety near the den of these wretches: this occasioned spies to be frequently sent into those parts, many of whom never returned again, and those who did, after strictest search and inquiry, could not find how these melancholy matters happened. Several honest travellers were taken up on suspicion and wrongfully hanged upon bare circumstances: several innocent inn-keepers were executed, for no other reason that persons, who had been thus lost, were known to have lain in their houses which occasioned a suspicion of their being murdered by them, and their bodies privately buried in obscure places to prevent a discovery. Thus an ill-placed justice was executed with the greatest severity imaginable, in order to prevent these frequent, atrocious deeds; so many innkeepers, who lived on the western road of Scotland, left of their business, for fear of being made examples of, and followed other employments. This, on the other hand, occasioned many inconveniences to travellers, who were now in great distress for accommodation when they were disposed to refresh themselves and horses, or take up lodging for the night. In a word, the whole country was almost depopulated. Still the king’s subjects were as much missed as before, so that it became the admiration of the whole kingdom how such villainies could be carried on, and the perpetrators not discovered. A great many had been executed, not one of them all made any confession at the gallows, but maintained to the last, that they were perfectly innocent of the crime for which they suffered. When the magistrates found all was in vain, they left off these rigorous proceedings, and trusted wholly to Providence, for the bringing to light the authors of these unparalleled barbarities when it should seem proper to the divine wisdom. Sawney’s family was at last grown very large, and every branch of it, as soon as able, assisted in perpetrating their wicked deeds, which they still followed with impunity. Sometimes they would attack four, five or six, footmen together, but never more than two, if they were on horseback; they were moreover, so careful, that not one whom they had set upon should escape, than an ambuscade was set on every side to secure them, let them fly which way they would, provided it should ever so happen that one or more got away from the assailants. How was it possible they should be detected, when not one that saw them ever saw any body else afterwards. The place which they inhabited was quite solitary and lonesome, and, when the tide came up, the water went near two hundred yards into their subterraneous habitation, which reached almost a mile underground; so that when people who have been sent armed to search all the places about, have passed by the mouth of the cave, they have never taken any notice of it, never supposing any human being would reside in such a place of perpetual horror and darkness. The number of people these savages destroyed was never exactly known; but it was generally computed that in the twenty-five years they continued their butcheries, they had washed their hands in the blood of at least a thousand men, women and children. The manner they were at last discover was as follows: A man and his wife behind him on the same horse, coming one evening from a fair and falling into the ambuscade of these merciless wretches, they fell upon them in a furious manner. The man, to save himself as well as he could, fought very bravely against them with sword and pistol, riding some of them down by main force of his horse. In the conflict the poor woman fell from behind him, and was instantly butchered before her husband’s face, for the female cannibals cut her throat, and fell to sucking her blood with as great a gust, as if it had been wine; this done they ript up her belly, and pulled out all her entrails. Such a dreadful spectacle made the man make more obstinate resistance, as he expected the same fate, if he fell into their hands. It pleased Providence while he was engaged that twenty or thirty who had been at the same fair, came together in a body; upon which Sawney Bean and his blood-thirsty clan withdrew and made the best of their way through a thick wood to their den. This man, who was the first who had ever fell in their way and came off alive, told the whole company what had happened, and shewed them the horrid spectacle of his wife, whom the murderers had dragged to some distance, but had not time to carry her entirely off. They were all struck with stupefaction and amazement at what he related; they took him with them to Glasgow, and told the affair to the magistrates of that city, who immediately sent to the king concerning it. In about three or four days after, His Majesty in person, with a body of about four hundred men, set out for the place where this dismal tragedy was acted, in order to search all the rocks and thickets, that if possible, they might apprehend this hellish crew, which had been so long pernicious to all the western parts of the kingdom. The man who was attacked was the guide, and care was taken to have a large number of blood-hounds with them, that no human means might be wanting towards their putting an entire end to these cruelties. No sign of any habitation was to be found for a long time; and even when they came to the wretches’ cave, they took no notice of it, but were going to pursue their search along the sea-shore, the tide being out, but some of the blood-hounds luckily entered the Cimmerian den, and instantly set up a most hideous barking, howling and yelping; so that the King, with his attendants, came back, and looked into it: they could not tell how to conceive that any thing human could be concealed in a place where they saw nothing but darkness; nevertheless, as the blood-hounds increased their noise they went farther in, and refused to come back again; they then began to imagine something or other must inhabit there. Torches were immediately sent for, and a great many men ventured in, through the most intricate turnings and windings, till at last they arrived at that private recess from all the world, which was the habitation of these monsters. Now the whole body, or as many of them as could, went in, and were all so shocked at what they beheld, that they were almost ready to sink into the earth. Legs. arms, thighs, hands, and feet of men, women, and children, were hung up in rows, like dried beef; a great many limbs laid in pickle, and a great mass of money, both gold and silver, with watches, rings, swords, pistols and a large quantity of cloaths, both linen and woolen, and an infinite number of other things which they had taken from those they had murdered, were thrown together in heaps or hung up against the sides of the den. Sawney’s family, at this time, besides himself, consisted of his wife, eight sons, six daughters, eighteen grand-sons, and fourteen grand-daughters, who were all begotten by incest. These were all seized and pinioned by His Majesty’s order on the first place; then they took what human flesh they could find, and buried it in the sands; afterwards loading themselves with the spoils which they found, they returned to Edinburgh with their prisoners; all the country, as they passed along, flocked to see this cursed tribe. When they came to their journey’s end, the wretches were committed to the Tolbooth, for, whence they were the next day conducted, under a strong guard, to Leith, where they were executed without any process, it being thought needless to try creatures who were even professed enemies to mankind. The men were dismembered, their hands and legs were severed from their bodies, by which amputation they bled to death in a few hours. The wife, daughters, and grand-children, having been made spectators of this punishment inflicted on the men, were afterwards burned to death in three several fires. they all in general died without the least signs of repentance, but continued cursing and vending the most dreadful imprecation to the very last gasp of life. The Sawney Bean case in the early seventeenth century concerned a family that lived in a cave and chose murder, cannibalism, and incest as its way of life. For twenty-five years this family, rejecting all accepted standards of human behaviour and morality, carried on a viscious guerilla war against humanity. Because over the years a large family was ultimately involved, most of whom had been born and raised in fantastic conditions under which they accepted such an existence as normal, taking their standards from the criminal behaviour of their parents. Retribution when it finally came was quick and merciless, but for many of the forty-eight Beans who were duly put to death it may have been unjust. Home turned out to be Bennane Cave, by Ballantrae in Ayrshire. It was a gigantic cave, penetrating more than a mile into the solid rock of the rather wild hinterland, with many tortuous windings and side passages. A short way from the entrance of the cave all was complete darkness. Twice a day at high tide several hundred yards of the cave's entrance passage were flooded, which formed a deterrent to intruders. In this dark damp hole they decided to make their home. It seemed unlikely that they would ever be discovered. In practice, the cave proved to be a lair rather than a home, and from this lair Sawney Bean launched a reign of terror which was to last for a quarter of a century. It was Sawney's plan to live on the proceeds of robbery, and it proved to be a simple enough matter to ambush travellers on the lonely narrow roads connecting nearby villages. In order to ensure that he could never be indentified and tracked down, Sawney made a point of murdering and devouring his victims. This he and his wife proceeded to do. The bodies were 'butchered' and hung on hooks around the walls of the cave to start a larder of human meat on which they were to survive, indeed thrive, for more than two decades. The bones were stacked in another part of the cave system. Naturally, these abductions created intense fear in the area. The disappearance of people travelling alone along the country roads caused great alarm. Although determined efforts were made to find the bodies of the victims and their killer, Sawney was never discovered. The cave was too deep and complex for facile exploration. Nobody suspected that the unseen marauder of Galloway could possibly live in a cave which twice a day was flooded with water. And nobody imagined for a moment that the missing people were, in fact, being eaten. The Sawney way of life settled down into a pattern. His wife began to produce children, who were brought up in the cave. The killings and cannibalism became habit. Under these incredible conditions Sawney and his wife produced a family of fourteen children, and as they grew up the children in turn, by incest, produced a second generation of eight grandsons and fourteen granddaughters. It is astonishing that with so many children and, eventually, adolescents milling around in and close to the cave somebody did not observe this strange phenomenon and investigate. The chances are that they did, from time to time - that they investigated too closely and were murdered and eaten. The Sawney children were no doubt brought up to regard other humans as food. The young Sawneys received no education, except in the arts of primitive speech, murder and cannibal cuisine. They developed as a self-contained expanding colony of beasts of prey, with their communal appetite growing ever bigger and more insatiable. As the children became adults they were encouraged to join in the kidnappings and killings. The Sawney gang swelled its ranks to a formidable size. Murder and abduction became refined by years of skill and experience to a science, if not an art. Despite the alarming increase in the number of Sawney mouths which had to be fed, the family were seldom short of human flesh in the larder. Sometimes, having too much food in store, they were obliged to discard portions of it as putrefaction set in despite the salting and pickling. Thus it happened that from time to time at remote distances from the cave, in open country or washed up on the beach, curiously preserved but decaying human remains would be discovered. Since these grisly objects consisted of severed limbs and lumps of dried flesh, they were never identified, nor was it possible to estimate when death had taken place, but it soon became obvious to authority that they were connected with the long list of missing people. And authority, at first disbelieving, began to realize with gathering the nature of what was happening. Murder and dismemberment were one thing, but the salting and pickling of human flesh implied something far more sinister. The efforts made to trace the missing persons and hunt down their killers resulted in some unfortunate arrests and executions of innocent people whose only crime was that they had been the last to see the victim before his, or her, disappearance. The Sawney family, securing in their cave, remained unsuspected and undiscovered. Years went by. The family grew older and bigger and more hungry. The programme of abduction and murder was organized on a more ambitious scale. Sometimes as many as six men and women would be ambushed and killed at at time by a dozen or more Sawney's. Their bodies were always dragged back to the cave to be prepared by the women for the larder. It seems strange that nobody ever escaped to provide the slightest clue to identify the attackers, but the Sawney's conducted their ambushes like military operations, with "guards" concealed by the road at either side of the main centre of attack to cut down any quarry that had the temerity to run for it. This "three-pronged" operation proved effective; there were no survivors. And although mass-searches were carried out to locate the perpetrators of these massacres, nobody ever thought of searching the deep cave. It was passed by on many occasions. Such a situation could not continue indefinitely, however. Inevitably there had to be a mistake - just one clumsy mistake that would deliver the Sawney Bean family to the wrath of an outraged society. The mistake, when it happened, was simple enough - the surprising thing was that it had not happened earlier. For the first time in 25 years the Sawney's, through bad judgement and bad timing, allowed themselves to be outnumbered, though even that was not the end of the matter. Retribution when it finally came was in the grand manner, with the King himself talking part in the end game - the pursuit and annihilation of the Sawney Bean tribe. It happened this way. One night a pack of the Sawney Beans attacked a man and his wife who were returning on horse-back from a nearby fair. They seized the woman first, and while they were still struggling to dismount the man had her stripped and disemboweled, ready to be dragged off to the cave. The husband, driven berserk by the swift atrocity and realizing that he was hopelessly outnumbered by utterly ruthless fiends, fought desperately to escape. In the vicious engagement some of the Sawney's were trampled underfoot. But he, too, would have been taken and murdered had not a group of other riders, some twenty or more, also returning from the fair, arrived unexpected on the scene. For the first time the Sawney Beans found themselves at a disadvantage, and discovered that courage was not their most prominent virtue. After a brief violent skirmish they abandoned the fight and scurried like rats back to their cave, leaving the mutilated body of the woman behind, and a score of witnesses. The incident was to be the Sawney's first and last serious error of tactics and policy. The man, the only one on record known to have escaped from a Sawney ambush, was taken to the Chief Magistrate of Glasgow to describe his harrowing experience. This evidence was the break through for which the magistrate had been waiting for a long time. The long catalogue of missing people and pickled human remains seemed to be reaching its final page and denouement; a gang of men an youths were involved, and had been involved for years, and they had to be tracked down. They obviously lived locally, in the Ayrshire area, and past discoveries suggested that they were cannibals. The matter was so serious that the Chief Magistrate communicated directly with King James VI and the King apparently took an equally serious view, for when he went in person to Ayrshire with a small army of four hundred armed men and a host of tracker dogs. The King, with his officers and retinue, and the assistance of local volunteers, set out systematically on one of the biggest manhunts in history. They explored the entire Ayrshire countryside and coastline - and discovered nothing. When patrolling the shore they would have walked past the partly waterlogged cave itself had not the dogs, scenting the faint odour of death and decay, started baying and howling and trying to splash their way into the dark interior. This seemed to be it. The pursuers took no chances. They knew they were dealing with vicious, ruthless men who had been in the murder business for a long time. With flaming torches to provide a flickering light, and swords at the ready, they advanced cautiously but methodically along the narrow twisting passages of the cave. In due course they reached the charnel house at the end of the the mile-deep cave that was the home and operational base of the Sawney Bean cannibals. A dreadful sight greeted their eyes. Along the damp walls of the cave human limbs and cuts of bodies, male and female, were hung in rows like carcasses of meat in a butchers cold room. Elsewhere they found bundles of clothing and piles of valuables, including watches, rings and jewellery. In an adjoining cavern there was a heap of bones collected over some twenty five years. The entire Sawney Beane family, all forty-eight of them, were in residence; they were lying low, knowing that an army four hundred strong was on their tail. There was a fight, but for the Sawney's there was literally no escape. They were trapped and duly arrested. With the King himself still in attendance they were marched to Edinburgh - but not for trial. The prisoners numbered twenty seven men and twenty one women of which all but two, the original parents, had been convceived and brought up as cave-dwellers, raised from childhood on human flesh, and taught that robbery and murder were the normal way of life. For this wretched incestuous horde of Scottish cannibals there was to be no mercy, and no pretence of justice if every any one of them merited justice. The Sawney Beans of both sexes were condemned to death in an arbitrary fashion because their crimes over a generation of years were adjudged to be so infamous and offensive as to preclude the normal process of law, evidence and jurisdiction. They were outcasts of society and had no rights, even the youngest and most innocent of them. All were executed the following day, in accordance with the conventions and procedures of the age. The men were dismembered, just as they had dismembered their victims. Their arms and legs were cut off while they were still alive and conscious, and they were left to bleed to death, watched by their women. And then the women were burned like witches in great fires. The ballad of Sawney BeanGo ye not by Gallowa There's nae body kens that he bides there For Sawney he has taen a wife And Sawney has been well endowed An Sawney's sons are young an strong So if you ride frae there tae here They'll hing ye ap an cut yer throat But fear ye not, oor Captain rides They've hung them high in Edinburgh toon
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