Bessie Bell and Mary Gray

The ballad tells how two young women of Perth, in order to avoid the plague of 1666, retired to a country retreat called Burnbraes, near Lynedock, which was actually the home of Mary Gray.

Now, while Bessie and Mary were reclused at Burnbraes, a young gentleman, who was dearly in love with both of the young ladies, took it upon himself to visit regularly in order to bring them provisions. Unfortunately, the young man, himself, succomed to the deadly Black Death, and brought it into Burnbraes.

Bessie and Mary soon came down with the plague and died. It was against the law to bury plague-deceased bodies in a cemetery, so Bessie and Mary were interred under a large oak tree at the foot of a hillside near the river Almond at Dornock Hough.

In actuality, this rhyme and ballad is historically based on Mary Gray, who was the daughter of one Thomas Graham, Lord of Lynedoch, and Bessie Bell, daughter of the Lord of Kinnaird. This is an important rhyme because the Grahams and Cathcarts are great historic families of Scotland.

Thomas Graham, at the age of twenty-four, became a Whig candidate in order to represent the county of Perth. He was narrowly defeated by the Duke of Athole, who married his wife's sister. In 1774, Thomas married Mary, second daughter of the ninth Earl Cathcart.

In 1787, when Mrs. Graham was visiting her sister, the Duchess of Athole, she had the wonderful opportunity to meet poet Robert Burns,who had come to see the Duke on a matter of importance.

By invitation, Burns later paid a visit to the Grahams at Lynedock to see the graves of Bessie Bell and Mary Gray who were to become revered in Scottish ballads, and folk music around the world. The graves, enclosed behind an iron fence are thought now, as then, to be their resting place.

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