The Ballad of Sawney Beanian

The rain stung my face as I left the final inn on the Ayr coast before the wildlands where few men dare venture. Being a crusading anti-sectarian journalist though, the wildlands held no fear for me – if you can lay into Rangers with impunity then dark and mysterious coastlines pose you no concern. I covered my face with my cape and held up a lantern to light the way and set off to look for the legendary Sawney Beanian who had been tweeting me suggesting we meet to discuss a forthcoming campaign to get Rangers into bother with UEFA again. I couldn’t resist.

I hadn’t left Dunure less than an hour when I could hear strange shrieks coming from the shore. I dismissed them as being gulls calling in the night by the cliffs but the closer I got to a particular point, the louder the shrieks became until eventually I recognised them as cries of pain, human pain. I’d heard enough similar cries in Lawwell’s dungeons at Parkhead to recognise a man in distress when I hear it so I dimmed my lamp and approached the path leading to the shore with caution. I thought I heard a match strike to my left and turned, gazing into the wind and swore I could see the faint glow of a cigarette but couldn’t be sure and who else would be abroad on such a God forsaken moor as this in a storm at midnight? I had only just dismissed my brief panic as the paranoid jumping at shadows of a man who had been in company with Chris McLaughlin for too long when a hand grabbed at my ankle and I felt myself sliding down a mud embankment and tumbling over rocks until I fetched up winded on the grassy sands with the spray of the sea whispering against my face. Then Phil McGillivan appeared before me and knocked me unconscious with a piece of driftwood.
When I awoke I was trussed against a dank wall in a cave filled with the curious smell of roast beef; a fire flickered in the corner casting ghastly shadows against the rocks until I at once was hit with a clarity so shocking that I almost soiled my corduroys – there were dismembered bodies chained to the walls all around me and over the fire roasted a human leg. I stifled a shriek and looked down in panic, breathing a sigh of relief as I realised I still had both of mine and as my mind raced to take in my parlous position, McGillivan appeared out of the gloom and cocked his head at me, looking puzzled as if he didn’t know me – how could anyone not know who I was, Graham Spiers, scourge of Rangers and serial ratter?  Or was McGillivan perturbed that he had at last encountered a man with a more searing hatred of Rangers than himself?  I didn't know at that moment but thought my supposition true so the story he told me that night chilled me to the marrow and now I don't know if I'll ever believe anything again that happens in Scottish football.