According to the legend, Bean and his clan members were eventually caught by a search party sent by King James VI, and were executed for their heinous crimes.

He left home with an allegedly vicious woman named 'Black' Agnes Douglas, who apparently shared his inclinations and was accused of being a witch.

The cave was 200 yards (180 metres) deep and the entrance was blocked by water during high tide, enabling the couple to live there undiscovered for some 25 years.

Lacking the inclination for regular work, the Bean clan thrived by laying careful ambushes at night to rob and murder individuals or small groups.

Upon entering it by torchlight, the searchers found the Bean clan surrounded by human remains: body parts hanging from the walls, barrels filled with limbs, and piles of stolen heirlooms and jewellery.

They were taken in chains to the Tolbooth Jail in Edinburgh, then transferred to either Leith or Glasgow, where they were summarily executed, being regarded as subhuman and unfit for trial.

Sawney and the other men had their genitalia cut off and thrown into the fires, their hands and feet were severed, and they were allowed to bleed to death.

[citation needed] The town of Girvan, located near the macabre scene of murder and debauchery, has another legend about the Bean clan.

Dorothy L. Sayers offered a gruesome account of the tale in her anthology Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror (Gollancz, 1928).

[5] In a 2005 article, Sean Thomas[6] notes that historical documents, such as newspapers and diaries during the era in which Sawney Bean was supposedly active, make no mention of ongoing disappearances of hundreds of people.

[citation needed] Thomas disagrees, arguing: "If the Sawney Bean story is to be read as deliberately anti-Scottish, how do we explain the equal emphasis on English criminals in the same publications?

A broadside from circa 1750 mentions "the Scottish traditional story of Sandy Bane" as it relates to a report of a murderer who had been eating live cats.