+The Text+ is from Sharpe's _Ballad Book_. A parody of this ballad,
concerning an episode of the end of the seventeenth century, shows it to
have been popular not long after its making. In England it has become a
nursery rhyme (see Halliwell's _Nursery Rhymes_, p. 246).
+The Story.+--In 1781 a Major Barry, then owner of Lednock, recorded the
following tradition. Mary Gray was the daughter of the Laird of Lednock,
near Perth, and Bessy Bell was the daughter of the Laird of Kinvaid,
a neighbouring place. Both were handsome, and the two were intimate
friends. Bessy Bell being come on a visit to Mary Gray, they retired, in
order to avoid an outbreak of the plague, to a bower built by themselves
in a romantic spot called Burnbraes, on the side of Branchie-burn,
three-quarters of a mile from Lednock House. The ballad does not say
_how_ the 'pest cam,' but tradition finds a cause for their deaths by
inventing a young man, in love with both, who visited them and brought
the infection. They died in the bower, and were buried in the
Dranoch-haugh ('Stronach haugh,' 3.3), near the bank of the river
Almond. The grave is still visited by pious pilgrims.
Major Barry mentions 1666 as the year, but the plague did not reach
Scotland in that year. Probably the year in question was 1645, when the
district was ravaged with the pestilence.