A
Anonymous
Guest
The tall tale and the short of it...
Well, that's interesting - I just happen to be in the middle of writing a suitably gruesome short story about old Bean (or Bain, or Beane)...
Well, I'd have to go for the tale being tall, in the end. There are a number of reasons for this...
First up, the matter of the Jimmies. The King Jimmies, to be exact. Now, the tale has it that it was a Royal Jim who hung the errant Bean - (not a surprise really, given the general lack of imagination in the house of Stewart vis a vis naming the sprogs). Now, various Jims are put forward in the familiar account, but most popularly, Kings Jimmy I or Jimmy VI - quite a discrepancy, coming effectively at the beginning and end of the Stewart era. Now - the confusion can be easy enough accounted for if one considers that to people outside of Scotland, Jim VI (he of the perpetual dribble and penchant for ennobling steaks) is known as Jim I (author of the Bible). Fine, so one can simply say that the original 1400s story is sometimes confused in the retalling...
But, the problem has to be the lack of evidence for Beane. Mel Gibson may tell us that Scotland was a miserable stack of shanty town swimming in suitably celtic mud, but it actually wasn't. In many respects, it was of similar sophistication to the rest of Europe - ahead in some respects, behind in others. Anyway, records were KEPT. And a family that eats c 1,000 people is going to feature. And, if we place Beane in the late 16th century, with Jim VI, then the absence of Bean and his brood is much more troubling, given the greater administrative sophistication in Scotland, and the literate post-reformation culture that would have been sure to document this thoroughly.
Ok, so records can go missing - true, And the details given - for example, Bean being a migrant from Edinburgh's South east to the south west that give an air of historicity, but again, much of this is reliant on one account. There simply aren't the records to substantiate this - and none of the histories of Scotland from this time that I have come across seem to mention him.
And there is a conspicuous absence in the balladry. Scotland's corpus of Scots language ballads is one of the richest in the world - well documented and faithfully transmitted. Its also a pretty grim corpus full of corpses - a typical example of this would be the song The Twa Corbies, in which two ravens casually discuss the life history of the man whose rotting carcass they are eating. What precisely, are the chances of something as phantasmagorical as the Bean clan escaping the attentions of the rhapsodists? For that matter, none of the fifteenth century Makars (Scottish vernacular poets) such as Dunbar, Henryson or Lindsay feature him.
Of course, evidence of absence, is not absence of evidence - of course not. And yes, none of the ballads were written down, but collected by the likes of Scott, Childe and so on. So there could be a ballad that has vanished into the ether. Still, its odd not to have a record...
(There IS a ballad about Sawney Bean, but it was written in the twentieth century, by Lionel McClelland, once the legend was well established)
Galloway is a funny old place - and somewhere I have a lot of affection for, as my father's family originated there. They were Johnstones - cattle rustlers, horse-raiders and general troublemakers. In fact, Galloway was once one of the wildest regions in Scotland - and one of the last areas of the lowlands to speak Gaelic, probaly up until the early nineteenth century. 'The Kern's' of Galloway had a reputation worse even than the Border Reivers of the east (The reiver region interestingly, stretches up towards East Lothian, where Sawney is supposed to have been spawned). Anyway, this alone should tell you that people from that region had a reputation only millimetres above mud. They were seen as bloodthirsty, ravenous, parasitic - preying upon the douce farmer folk of the central belt, and the sturdy yeoman just across the border. The Gaelic speaking element also leant to them the same stigmas attached to the Highlander -violent, theiving, lazy, rapacious, brutal, incestuous...
Ok, so that's no proof either - it only circumstantially proves that Sawney is some sort of composite anti-Scottish/anti-Gallovidian bogeyman. I tend to favour this theory, but am aware that it ultimately, is only that. There just isn't enough evidence around to resolve the matter, once and for all. But, ultimately, and by the by, its a hell of a good tale.
Anyway, sorry to ramble - as you can see, I've had red eyed maneaters and Barbecued milkmaid ribs on the mind for a while now...
Well, that's interesting - I just happen to be in the middle of writing a suitably gruesome short story about old Bean (or Bain, or Beane)...
Well, I'd have to go for the tale being tall, in the end. There are a number of reasons for this...
First up, the matter of the Jimmies. The King Jimmies, to be exact. Now, the tale has it that it was a Royal Jim who hung the errant Bean - (not a surprise really, given the general lack of imagination in the house of Stewart vis a vis naming the sprogs). Now, various Jims are put forward in the familiar account, but most popularly, Kings Jimmy I or Jimmy VI - quite a discrepancy, coming effectively at the beginning and end of the Stewart era. Now - the confusion can be easy enough accounted for if one considers that to people outside of Scotland, Jim VI (he of the perpetual dribble and penchant for ennobling steaks) is known as Jim I (author of the Bible). Fine, so one can simply say that the original 1400s story is sometimes confused in the retalling...
But, the problem has to be the lack of evidence for Beane. Mel Gibson may tell us that Scotland was a miserable stack of shanty town swimming in suitably celtic mud, but it actually wasn't. In many respects, it was of similar sophistication to the rest of Europe - ahead in some respects, behind in others. Anyway, records were KEPT. And a family that eats c 1,000 people is going to feature. And, if we place Beane in the late 16th century, with Jim VI, then the absence of Bean and his brood is much more troubling, given the greater administrative sophistication in Scotland, and the literate post-reformation culture that would have been sure to document this thoroughly.
Ok, so records can go missing - true, And the details given - for example, Bean being a migrant from Edinburgh's South east to the south west that give an air of historicity, but again, much of this is reliant on one account. There simply aren't the records to substantiate this - and none of the histories of Scotland from this time that I have come across seem to mention him.
And there is a conspicuous absence in the balladry. Scotland's corpus of Scots language ballads is one of the richest in the world - well documented and faithfully transmitted. Its also a pretty grim corpus full of corpses - a typical example of this would be the song The Twa Corbies, in which two ravens casually discuss the life history of the man whose rotting carcass they are eating. What precisely, are the chances of something as phantasmagorical as the Bean clan escaping the attentions of the rhapsodists? For that matter, none of the fifteenth century Makars (Scottish vernacular poets) such as Dunbar, Henryson or Lindsay feature him.
Of course, evidence of absence, is not absence of evidence - of course not. And yes, none of the ballads were written down, but collected by the likes of Scott, Childe and so on. So there could be a ballad that has vanished into the ether. Still, its odd not to have a record...
(There IS a ballad about Sawney Bean, but it was written in the twentieth century, by Lionel McClelland, once the legend was well established)
Galloway is a funny old place - and somewhere I have a lot of affection for, as my father's family originated there. They were Johnstones - cattle rustlers, horse-raiders and general troublemakers. In fact, Galloway was once one of the wildest regions in Scotland - and one of the last areas of the lowlands to speak Gaelic, probaly up until the early nineteenth century. 'The Kern's' of Galloway had a reputation worse even than the Border Reivers of the east (The reiver region interestingly, stretches up towards East Lothian, where Sawney is supposed to have been spawned). Anyway, this alone should tell you that people from that region had a reputation only millimetres above mud. They were seen as bloodthirsty, ravenous, parasitic - preying upon the douce farmer folk of the central belt, and the sturdy yeoman just across the border. The Gaelic speaking element also leant to them the same stigmas attached to the Highlander -violent, theiving, lazy, rapacious, brutal, incestuous...
Ok, so that's no proof either - it only circumstantially proves that Sawney is some sort of composite anti-Scottish/anti-Gallovidian bogeyman. I tend to favour this theory, but am aware that it ultimately, is only that. There just isn't enough evidence around to resolve the matter, once and for all. But, ultimately, and by the by, its a hell of a good tale.
Anyway, sorry to ramble - as you can see, I've had red eyed maneaters and Barbecued milkmaid ribs on the mind for a while now...
