Page "Christie-Cleek" Paragraph 1

The parallels between Christie and Sawney Bean are obvious and insistent.

One story may well have given rise to the other, or both may have been derived from a common source.

While Bean far exceeds his counterpart in terms of notoriety, the Christie legend does appear to be the older of the two.

Whereas tales of the Bean family do not appear before the eighteenth century, Christie's exploits are documented from the fifteenth century onwards.

For instance, Andrew of Wyntoun's Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland ( c. 1420 ) refers to a figure called ' Chwsten Cleek ' who, during a time of ' sae great default ... that mony were in hunger dead ', set up traps with the intent ' children and women for to slay ,/ And swains that he might over-ta ;/ And ate them all that he get might '.

A little later, in an entry for 1341, Holinshed's Chronicles ( c. 1577 ) reports that: