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Sawney Bean / Beane: Tall Tale Or Truth?

maximus otter said:
Having spent some time in Ayrshire, l’m surprised that Sawney, his antics notwithstanding, is regarded as enough of an outlier to warrant being treated as a tourist attraction.

maximus otter
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Apart from the brown tourist sign, it isn't really. It's all about Burns and golf round my neck of the woods.
 
So has anyone travelled the road between Girvan and Ballantrae? Sawney Beane's alleged territory?
 
AlchoPwn said:
So has anyone travelled the road between Girvan and Ballantrae? Sawney Beane's alleged territory?
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I have travelled it umpteen times. Usually in car or a football supporters'bus. Not always straight and hilly at times, but nothing too foreboding. But I've never broken down.....
 
Spookdaddy said:
...According to Ronald Holmes, in his book The Legend of Sawney Bean (bought from a book fair many years back) the original published story appeared in broadsheet form around 1700. However, Holmes' book was published in 1974 - so his research may have been superseded by now.
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I added this to my lockdown re-read list at the weekend.

Already half way through, and I'd forgotten how satisfying it is to read a thorough, almost forensic, dissection of a legend like this - in terms of historical provenance and cultural reworking, geography, even geology (goes a little bit into the technicalities of cave formation).

As I said earlier, it's not that recent a publication, so some of the research may have been superseded, but it's thorough and lacks the po-faced, dry as dust attitude of many such investigations, and is very readable. I'm no folklorist, so some of Mr Holmes thoughts in that department, although interesting to me as a non-aficionado, may well seem out of date to the expert, but I don't think it would spoil the read.

Available second hand - some at ridiculous prices, but still gettable at more reasonable rates.
 
All good, apart from stating that Bennane Head was in Galloway. As far as I know it was in the Carrick district of Ayrshire at the time (and is in South Ayrshire these days). Galloway had quite a bad reputation back in the day, so perhaps the creators of the myth thought it would make the tale more convincing, knowing that not many would notice the error.
 
Has anyone got any proven references for this myth even being ancient? I've been highly interested in mysteries and such since the mid 60's and I had never heard of Sawney Beane anywhere until the mid 70's. Has it been backdated? Has anyone seen any original sources that can be proved to go back centuries? Or is it conceivable it's just a particularly good hoax?
 
Cochise said:
Has anyone got any proven references for this myth even being ancient?
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Go back a page on this thread and we delve into the earliest sources.

The earliest account is from the 1700s, it seems, but the events are placed vaguely in the reign of one of the Jameses.

It looks like a legend, though it is interesting to speculate on the reasons why such a story was invented or greatly embellished.

I should go back and study the subject again. I fear it will never have quite the same joyous impact as it did in my youth! :)
 
Cochise said:
Has anyone got any proven references for this myth even being ancient? I've been highly interested in mysteries and such since the mid 60's and I had never heard of Sawney Beane anywhere until the mid 70's. Has it been backdated? Has anyone seen any original sources that can be proved to go back centuries? Or is it conceivable it's just a particularly good hoax?
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The tale definitely dates back as far as a broadsheet (The Newgate Calendar) printed circa 1700. Prior to that it's anyone's guess whether the Sawney Bean story is an original tale or an adaptation of some earlier legend. Folks have suggested it is an adaptation of various tales, some of which may trace back to ancient times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawney_Bean

In Search of Sawney Bean
Fortean Times, April 2005
https://web.archive.org/web/2008051...es/articles/129/in_search_of_sawney_bean.html
 
I have made a far-from-rigorous search of the fabulous archive of maps at the National Library of Scotland. Contemporary maps of Ayrshire (ca. 1575-1625, the years when James the First and Sixth could have sent a party to hunt Bean) seem to show nothing relevant.

Even far later and more scientific maps add nothing to the mystery:

Roy-military-survey-1752-1755-Fortean-Sawney.jpg


The Roy Military Survey of 1752-1755

Alexander-Baillie-Ayr-shire-1774-Fortean.jpg


Alexander Baillie's Map of Ayr-shire, 1774

The OS Second Series of 1895 bucks its ideas up and at least inserts a "Bennane Cave":

OS-Second-Series-1895-Sawney-Fortean.jpg


... but it seems to be in the wrong place for Sawney and his chums.

Finally, the modern OS map, (perhaps in cahoots with the Ayrshire Tourist Board :rolleyes: ) hits us between the eyes:

Sawney-Bean-s-cave-Fortean.jpg


maximus otter
 
Are other caves and sites of interest marked?
 
One of the maps has a different cave marked, the one you point out above, so I see the absence of the SB cave as interesting.

The others don't. So there may be a blanket reason why there are no caves, rather than anything to do with the SB cave in particular.
 
Frideswide said:
One of the maps has a different cave marked, the one you point out above, so I see the absence of the SB cave as interesting.

The others don't. So there may be a blanket reason why there are no caves, rather than anything to do with the SB cave in particular.
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Possibly a legend which had been almost forgotten and resurrected more recently, although I'm sure it was never really forgotten in parts of Ayrshire or Wigtownshire. There is more than one cave in the area, there is one which was inhabited from the 1960s-1980s. That may be the one marked as Bennane Cave on the 1895 map as Snib Torbet's cave is slightly inland, whereas Sawney Bean's is right on the coast.

https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5761887
 
Sorry if it's been posted before but a Wiki entry on the name Sawney. I've also realized for close to 50 years I've been calling him"Swaney" pronounced "Sa-worn-ee".

I love dyslexia.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawney#:~:text=The name is a Lowland,two syllables into "Alec".



Sawney (sometimes Sandie/y, or Sanders, or Sannock) was an English nickname for a Scotsman, now obsolete, and playing much the same linguistic role that "Jock" does now. The name is a Lowland Scots diminutive of the favourite Scottish first name Alexander (also Alasdair in Scottish Gaelic form, anglicised into Alistair) from the last two syllables. The English commonly abbreviate the first two syllables into "Alec".

From the days after the accession of James VI to the English throne under the title of James I, to the time of George III and the Bute administration, when Scotsmen were exceedingly unpopular and Dr. Samuel Johnson - the great Scotophobe,[1] and son of a Scottish bookseller at Lichfield - thought it prudent to disguise his origin, and overdid his prudence by maligning his father's countrymen, it was customary to designate a Scotsman a "Sawney". This vulgar epithet, however, was dying out fast by the 1880s, and was obsolete by the 20th century.

Sawney was a common figure of fun in English cartoons. A particularly racist example, Sawney in the Bog House, shows a stereotypical Scots Highlander using a communal bench toilet by sticking one of his legs down each of the holes. This was originally published in London in June 1745,[2] just over a month before "Bonnie Prince Charlie" landed in Scotland to begin the Jacobite rising of 1745. In this version Sawney's excreta emerge from below his kilt and flow across the bench. The idea was revived in a different and slightly more decorous version of 1779, which is attributed to the young James Gillray. An inscription reads:

'Tis a bra' bonny seat, o' my saul, Sawney cries,I never beheld sic before with me Eyes,Such a place in aw' Scotland I never could meet,For the High and the Low ease themselves in the Street.[3]
It has also been suggested that the Galloway cannibal Sawney Bean may have been a fabrication to emphasize the alleged savagery of the Scots."
 
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