Bessie Bell and Mary Gray- Hughes (WV) 1915 Cox
[From: Folk-Songs of the South- 1925 by Cox. his notes follow,
R. Matteson 2013]
22. BESSIE BELL AND MARY GRAY (Child, No. 201)
Communicated by Miss Eva Hughes, Spencer, Roane County, December 7, 1915; obtained from her mother, whose maiden name was Elmira Grisell, born near Malaga, Ohio, in 1837. She learned it from her mother, who was Elizabeth Adams, daughter of Ann Hazlett and Jonathan Adams (English) of Massachusetts. Elizabeth's parents died when she was a child, and she was brought up by her aunt, Betsy Adams Home, Darby, Pennsylvania. Printed by Cox, XLIV, 428.
What seems to be a similar fragment is reported from Virginia (Smith, p. 2; Bulletin, No. 5, p. 8; No. 9, p. 7).
The first stanza of the West Virginia text agrees with Child, stanza 1, "Yonburn Bay" being a corruption of "yon burn-brae." Nothing like stanza 2 is found in his text. That stanza resembles "The Gypsy Laddie" (Child, No. 200), G 4, 1 7, J 1-2. It should be noted that stanza 1, in some form, has circulated independently of the ballad as a whole, both in a song of Allan Ramsay's
and in an English nursery rhyme (see Child, iv, 75).
1 Bessie Bell and Mary Gray,
They were two bonnie lassies;
They built their home on Yonburn Bay,
And thatched it o'er with rushes.
2 They wouldn't have their shoes of red,
Nor would they have them yellow;
But they would have a bonny green,
To walk the streets of Yarrow.