201. Bessy Bell and Mary Gray

No. 201: Bessy Bell and Mary Gray

[A number of versions have been collected in North America but they are even more fragmentary; most having only the opening stanza or the two stanzas from the nursery rhyme published by Halliwell (see below) and reprinted in the US in 1869.

R. Matteson 2016]

CONTENTS:

1. Child's Narrative
2. Footnotes  (Found at the end of Child's Narrative)
3. Brief (Kittredge)
4. Child's Ballad Texts A ( Changes for A:  A b, A c  given in End-notes.)
5. End-notes
6. "Additions and Corrections"

ATTACHED PAGES (see left hand column):

1. Recordings & Info: 201. Bessy Bell and Mary Gray 
    A.  Roud No. 237: Bessy Bell and Mary Gray (64 Listings)
    B.  The "Vicar of Bray"- Kidson 1892
    C. Two Ballads from Allan Cunningham- Brooks 1955 
       
2. Sheet Music: 201. Bessy Bell and Mary Gray (Bronson's music examples and texts)

3. US & Canadian Versions

4. English and Other Versions (Including Child versions A a-c with additional notes)]
 

Child's Narrative: 201. Bessy Bell and Mary Gray

A. a. Sharpe's Ballad Book, 1823, p. 62.
    b. Lyle's Ancient Ballads and Songs, 1827, p. 160, "collated from the singing of two aged persons, one of them a native of Perthshire."
    c. Scott's Minstrelsy, 1830, XI, 39; 1833, I, 45, two stanzas.

A squib on the birth of the Chevalier St. George, beginning

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.[1] 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:[2]

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.[3]

"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 friend ship subsisted between them; that while Miss Bell was on a visit to Miss Gray, the plague broke out, in the year 1645; 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 Brauchieburn. Here they lived for some time; but the plague raging with great fury, they caught the infection, it is said, from a young gentle man 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.[4]

"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 dilapi dated 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.[5]

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 in fection.[6] 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.[7]

Footnotes:

1. I have seen this piece only in Elizabeth Cochrane's Song-Book, Manuscript, p. 38, and in Buchan's Manuscripts, I, 220. Its contents agree with what is alleged in W. Fuller's "Brief Discovery of the True Mother of the pretended Prince of Wales, known by the name of Mary Grey," London, 1 696, pp. 5 f, 11, 17 f, and it was probably composed not long after.

2. Afterwards inserted in the first volume of The Tea-Table Miscellany (p. 66 of A New Miscellany of Scots Sangs, London, 1727, p. 68 of T. T. M., Dublin, 1729), from which source it may have been adopted by Sharpe.

3. Here from the original, Communications to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. I, from a copy furnished by Mr. Macmath.

4. The most of this account, and in nearly the same words, was given in an earlier letter from Major Barry to James Cant, who printed (Perth, 1774) an edition of 'The Muses Threnodie, by Mr. H. Adamson, 1638' (p. 19). The principal items of the story are repeated from Cant by Pennant, Tour in Scotland, 1772, Part II, London, 1776, p. 112. Pennant cites Cant's book as the Gabions of Perth. "It seems," says Mr. Macmath, who has extracted for me the passage in Cant, "that Adamson's work was sometimes known as Gall's Gabions, the latter being a coined word."

5. An "old manuscript volume" cited in The New Statistical Account of Scotland, X, 37; Chambers, Domestic Annals of Scotland, 1858, II, 167.

6. The remark is made in The Scotsman, September 11, 1886.

7. In the manuscript cited in The New Statistical Account of Scotland, p. 37, we are told that, to prevent the spread of infection, "it was thought proper to put those out of the town at some distance who were sick. Accordingly, they went out and builded huts for themselves in different places around the town, particularly in the South Inch [etc.] and the grounds near the river Almond, at the mouth thereof, in all which places there are as yet the remains of their huts which they lodged in." So, when this same pestilence was raging in the parish of Monivaird, the gentlemen "caused many huts to be built, and ordered all who perceived that they were infected immediately to repair into them:" Forteous, History of the Parishes of Monivaird and Strowan, Manuscript, Communications to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. I, printed in the Transactions, II, 72, 1822.
 

Brief Description by George Lyman Kittredge

This little ballad, or song, was very well known in the last years of the seventeenth century. The first stanza was made by Ramsay the beginning of a song of his own (Poems, Edinburgh, 1721, p. 80). The most important document relating to Bessy Bell and Mary Gray is a letter written June, 1781, by Major Barry, then proprietor of Lednock, and printed in the Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, II, 108, 1822. "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 1660; 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 Beauchieburn. 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."

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 1665-66.

Bessy Bell was made into a nursery-rhyme in England (see Halliwell's Nursery Rhymes, 1874, No, 484).

Child's Text

'Bessy Bell and Mary Gray'- Version A a; Child 201 Bessy Bell and Mary Gray
a. Sharpe's Ballad Book, 1823, p. 62.
b. Lyle's Ancient Ballads and Songs, 1827, p. 160, "collated from the singing of two aged persons, one of them a native of Perthshire."
c. Scott's Minstrelsy, 1833, I, 45, two stanzas.

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. 
 

End-Notes

a.  In eight-line stanzas.

b.  13, house for bower.
21. wi birk and brume.
23. Till the: frae the neibrin.
24. An streekit.
31. They were na buried in.
32. Amang the rest o their kin.
33. they were buried by Dornoch-haugh.
34. On the bent before.
41. Sing for And.
43. Wha for They.
44. wi thrashes.

c.  11. O wanting.
2. wanting.
31. They wadna rest in Methvin kirk.
32. gentle kin.
33. But they wad lie in Lednoch braes.
34. beek against.
4. wanting. 

Additions and Corrections

To be Corrected in the Print.

75 a, ninth line of preface. Read in his Poems.

76 a, fifth line. Read Beauchie.

P. 75 b., first line. Say: c. Scott's Minstrelsy, 1830, XI, 39, 1833, etc.

P. 76 a, 4th paragraph, 1st line. The date 1666 is corrected to 1645 by Cant in his Errata.

77. In the small Manuscript volume, "Songs," entirely in C. K. Sharpe's handwriting, p. 26, a 3 is given "from the Catalogue of the Edinburgh Exhibition of Pictures, 1810" as here, excepting that in the second line the reading is (absurdly) "royal kin."