Bessy Bell and Mary Grey,
Those famous bonny lasses,
shows that this little ballad, or song, was very well known in the last
years of the seventeenth century.[51] The first stanza was made by
Ramsay the beginning of a song of his own, and stands thus in Ramsay’s
Poems, Edinburgh, 1721, p. 80:[52]
O Bessy Bell and Mary Gray,
They are twa bonny lasses;
They biggd a bower on yon Burn-brae,
And theekd it oer wi rashes.
Cunningham, Songs of Scotland, III, 60, gives, as recited to him by Sir
Walter Scott, four stanzas which are simply #a# with ‘Lyndoch brae’
substituted in the third for Sharpe’s ‘Stronach haugh.’ ‘Dranoch haugh,’
nearly as in #b#, is, as will presently appear, the right reading.
Sharpe’s third stanza, with the absurd variation of _royal_ kin, occurs
in a letter of his of the date November 25, 1811 (Letters, ed.
Allardyce, I, 504), and is printed in the Musical Museum, IV, *203, ed.
1853.
In the course of a series of letters concerning the ballad in The
Scotsman (newspaper), August 30 to September 8, 1886, several verses are
cited with trivial variations from the texts here given.
‘Bessy Bell’ was made into this nursery-song in England (Halliwell’s
Nursery Rhymes of England, 1874, p. 246, No 484):
Bessy Bell and Mary Gray,
They were two bonny lasses;
They built their house upon the lea,
And covered it with rashes.
Bessy kept the garden-gate,
And Mary kept the pantry;
Bessy always had to wait,
While Mary lived in plenty.
The most important document relating to Bessy Bell and Mary Gray is a
letter written June 21, 1781, by Major Barry, then proprietor of
Lednock, and printed in the Transactions of the Society of the
Antiquaries of Scotland, II, 108, 1822.[53]
“When I came first to Lednock,” says Major Barry, “I was shewn in a part
of my ground (called the Dranoch-haugh) an heap of stones almost covered
with briers, thorns and fern, which they assured me was the burial place
of Bessie Bell and Mary Gray.
“The tradition of the country relating to these ladys is, that Mary
Gray’s father was laird of Lednock and Bessie Bell’s of Kinvaid, a place
in this neighbourhood; that they were both very handsome, and an
intimate friendship subsisted between them; that while Miss Bell was on
a visit to Miss Gray, the plague broke out, in the year 1666; in order
to avoid which they built themselves a bower about three quarters of a
mile west from Lednock House, in a very retired and romantic place
called Burn-braes, on the side of Brauchie-burn. Here they lived for
some time; but the plague raging with great fury, they caught the
infection, it is said, from a young gentleman who was in love with them
both. He used to bring them their provision. They died in this bower,
and were buried in the Dranoch-haugh, at the foot of a brae of the same
name, and near to the bank of the river Almond. The burial-place lies
about half a mile west from the present house of Lednock.[54]
“I have removed all the rubbish from this little spot of classic ground,
inclosed it with a wall, planted it round with flowering shrubs, made up
the grave double, and fixed a stone in the wall, on which is engraved
the names of Bessie Bell and Mary [Gray].”
The estate passed by purchase to Thomas Graham, afterwards Lord
Lynedoch, who replaced the wall, which had become dilapidated in the
course of half a century, with a stone parapet and iron railing, and
covered the grave with a slab inscribed, “They lived, they loved, they
died.” This slab is now hidden under a cairn of stones raised by
successive pilgrims.
Major Barry’s date of 1666 should be put back twenty years. Perth and
the neighborhood (Lednock is seven miles distant) were fearfully ravaged
by the plague in 1645 and a year or two following. Three thousand people
are said to have perished. Scotland escaped the pestilence of
1665–6.[55]
The young gentleman who is said to have brought food to Bessy and Mary
is sometimes described as the lover of both, sometimes as the lover of
one of the pair. Pennant says that the ballad was “composed by a lover
deeply stricken with the charms of both.” In the course of tradition,
the lover is said to have perished with the young women, which we might
expect to happen if he brought the contagion to the bower. But this
lover, who ought to have had his place in the song, appears only in
tradition, and his reality may be called in question. It is not rational
that the young women should seclude themselves to avoid the pest and
then take the risk of the visits of a person from the seat of the
infection.[56] To be sure it may be doubted, notwithstanding the tenor
of the ballad, whether the retirement of these young ladies was
voluntary, or at least whether they had not taken the plague before they
removed to their bower. In that case the risk would have been for the
lover, and would have been no more than he might naturally assume.[57]
* * * * *
1
O Bessie Bell and Mary Gray,
They war twa bonnie lasses;
They bigget a bower on yon burn-brae,
And theekit it oer wi rashes.
2
They theekit it oer wi rashes green,
They theekit it oer wi heather;
But the pest cam frae the burrows-town,
And slew them baith thegither.
3
They thought to lye in Methven kirk-yard,
Amang their noble kin;
But they maun lye in Stronach haugh,
To biek forenent the sin.
4
And Bessy Bell and Mary Gray,
They war twa bonnie lasses;
They biggit a bower on yon burn-brae,
And theekit it oer wi rashes.
* * * * *
#a.#
_In eight-line stanzas._
#b.#
1^3. house _for_ bower.
2^1. wi birk and brume.
2^3. Till the: frae the neibrin.
2^4. An streekit.
3^1. They were na buried in.
3^2. Amang the rest o their kin.
3^3. they were buried by Dornoch-haugh.
3^4. On the bent before.
4^1. Sing _for_ And.
4^3. Wha _for_ They.
4^4. wi thrashes.
#c.#