Thanks Allan for the link to Wyntoun this should give me a winters reading.

Somewhere in my extensive reading I have seen a 17th.C mention of the story of Sawney Bean giving a mid 14th.C. date for the widespread famine which led to the cannibalism. That reference relates how the people of the Calders [Mid]? distrained the Kings men and executed all the gang, which would explain why there is no record of their execution in Edinburgh.

As I have it from oral tradition, the story of Christie Cleik was used, before the time of a standing police force, by Scottish mothers to quieten their fractious bairns with the threat that Christie Cleik would get them if they did not behave. As the story was related it happened 20 years after the death of Bruce and ends years later with a Peter Gordon, a rich merchant in Dumfries, confessing to his wife and 2 daughters on his deathbed that he was Christie Cleik.
If you can get access to the unpublished archives in the SoSS you will find the full story there, it tells better than it writes.