Question: What are the accurate dates for Sawney Beane?
Reason for asking: I see he is placed in either the early to mid 1400’s or the later 1500’s. I beleive the confusion arises over the fact that he was caught and punished in the Reign of James I. There was of course James I of Scotland and then James VI of Scotland who was also James I of England (successor to Elizabeth I).
For example, the ordinarily apparently accurate Encyclopedia of Serial Killers seems to put the subject killer in James I of Scotland’s (only) time, while the Complete Newgate Calendar says:
“SAWNEY BEANE was born in the county of East Lothian, about eight or nine miles eastward of the city of Edinburgh, some time in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, whilst King James I. governed only in Scotland.”
. . . Ooops, I see you already accessed that. If I were the sort of person who could say “my bad” without wanting to pluck out my own vocal cords, I would do so . . .
It may be impossible to know for sure, barring the discovery of some sort of conclusive record. You would think a story like this would have clear dates, but maybe they wanted to forget it.
I spent six years as a child in Dumfries and Galloway, and Sawney Bean was the local bogey-men. “If you don’t eat your greens, Sawney Bean will come and get you…”, you know the sort of thing. I’d never have thought that he was known outside of that small part of the world.
Probably neither. According to the following site, the writer, Ronald Holmes, has established that the story first appears on broadsheets published in the early eighteenth century. It is thus almost certainly an example of the type of lurid but invented stories published as cheap prints for the amusement of a popular audience. The Newgate Calendar version is thus likely to be one of the earlier accounts. No serious historian would accept such publications as reliable evidence for events said to have taken place at least one hundred years earlier. Indeed, those who wrote the originals were probably not much bothered which King James they were refering to - for them, he was just a stock character from a distant, mythical past. There may be something in the idea that the main influences underlying the story were English prejudices about the primitiveness of Scottish society.
Oh great. First no Santa Claus, now no Sawney Bean. Next you’ll be telling me there is no Cecil Adams!
But if there were no SB at all, wouldn’t the stories have attached themselves to various characters or various versions of some character’s name instead of one name with fairly consistent spelling? Could it be that there is an element of Scots Nationalism in denying the total existence of a cannibal-murderer?
I can see that stories about an awful character get blown out of proportion easily; look at the facts of Ed Gein and how that has mutated into Texas Chainsaw Massacres, inflated “true” body counts, comics and trading cards, etc. But the fact remains that there is a kernel of truth there, however bizzare.
Actually, I would suggest that his name is one of the most suspicious things about the story, as ‘Sawney’ was the name conventionally given to the stereotypical depictions of uncooth Scotsmen in the popular prints of the eighteenth century. In other words, ‘Sawney’ was the Scottish equivalent of ‘Taffy’ or ‘Paddy’. ‘Sawney Bean’ is simply that stereotype taken to grotesque extremes. I would also suggest that the process is likely to have been the opposite of what you assume. Once the character had appeared in print, the tendency would not have been for the same basic story to be repeated using other characters but for variations on the story to attach themselves to the existing character.
Of some relevance is this report by Uncle Cecil (who, of course, undoubtedly exists) which discusses the theory that stories about cannibals are usually invented.
My curiosity got the better of me and decided to do some further checking. I certainly wasn’t comfortable about relying only on someone else’s very brief summary of Holmes’s work. I’ve therefore had a quick browse through his book, The Legend of Sawney Bean (Frederick Muller Limited, London, 1975), to see exactly what he says.
In fact, it would appear that the summary of it given on the Seanachaidh website is a fair one. Holmes’s argument is that the story can only be traced back to three anonymous pamphlets (plus one variant), which are all undated but which he believes to date from about 1700. Its first securely dated appearance is in another book, Charles Johnson’s The Lives and Actions of the most Famous Highwaymen, which was a forerunner of the Newgate Calendar and which was published in 1734. These earliest versions specified that Bean had lived during the reign of James VI and I. No writer associated him with James I of Scotland until Nicholson made that claim in 1843. (For Nicholson’s version, see the Seanachaidh website above.) Holmes’s view was that Bean was almost certainly invented around 1700, but that the story may contain echoes of ancient traditions of cannibalism. The second part of that argument is highly speculative and, IMHO, not very convincing. He also makes the interesting suggestion that James VI and I may have been included in the story because of the popular memory of him as a persecutor of witches, although personally I would like to have seen some evidence that he was remembered in that way by the early eighteenth century.
Holmes’s arguments have however been modified in recent years by two Scottish historians, Sandy Hobbs and David Cornwell. In their article, ‘Sawney Bean, the Scottish Cannibal’, Folklore 108 (1997), 49-54, they show that at least two of Holmes’s three pamphlets postdate and must derive from Johnson’s work of 1734 and that the third probably does so as well. (Incidentally, there is apparently a debate among some literary scholars as to whether the 1734 book is by Defoe writing under a pseudonym, although I can’t quite see how this fits with the fact that Defoe had died in 1731.) It therefore seems likely that the 1734 account is the original. Hobbs and Cornwell consider but reject Holmes’s theories about older traditions, concluding instead that the story was simply invented in its entirety in 1734. They accept the argument that the real subtext is English anti-Scottish prejudices. They acknowledge that there is now a strong oral tradition about Bean in Ayrshire and Galloway, but show that this is probably only of very recent origin, with the locals having recycled the story from the printed sources because it makes a good tale to tell the tourists. This is thus a perfect example of an oral tradition which, in fact, derives ultimately from a fictional account in print.
I’m a believer! Ok, make that a non-believer, then. In legend passed off as fact. This particular one (Beane) does appear in a number of reputable sources as fact.
So Sawney didn’t happen. But I can’t go as far as the one author cited by Cecil (who is real) who says it never occurred hsitorically. Besides “survival” cannibalism, there are AFAIK actual cases of people (individuals, but also sometimes bands of people) who turn to cannbalism out of some weird preference. In the case of individual cannibals, it would seem to be easier to sort the real ones from the fictional; for groups —which would be more rare, I think— it seems more likely that prejudices produce fictions. Or at least that seems to be the concensus I’m getting from APB and the other really good postings here.
I’m a believer! Ok, make that a non-believer, then. In legend passed off as fact. This particular one (Beane) does appear in a number of reputable sources as fact.
So Sawney didn’t happen. But I can’t go as far as the one author cited by Cecil (who is real) who says it never occurred hsitorically. Besides “survival” cannibalism, there are AFAIK actual cases of people (individuals, but also sometimes bands of people) who turn to cannbalism out of some weird preference. In the case of individual cannibals, it would seem to be easier to sort the real ones from the fictional; for groups —which would be more rare, I think— it seems more likely that prejudices produce fictions. Or at least that seems to be the concensus I’m getting from APB and the other really good postings here.