"Yestreen the Queen had four Maries,
This night she'll hae but three;
There was Mary Beaton, and Mary Seaton,
And Mary Carmichael and me."
"O hald your tongue, Mary Hamilton,85
Let all those words go free;
This night ere ye be hanged
Ye shall gang hame wi' me."
"O hald your tongue, Queen Mary, my dame,
Let all those words go free;90
Since I have come to Edinburgh town,
It's hanged I shall be;
For it shall ne'er be said that in your court
I was condemned to die."
BESSIE BELL AND MARY GRAY.
From Lyle's Ancient Ballads and Songs, p. 160, where it was printed as collated "from the singing of two aged persons, one of them a native of Perthshire." There are two versions slightly differing from the present;—one in Cunningham's Songs of Scotland, iii. 60, obtained from Sir Walter Scott, and another in Mr. Kirkpatrick Sharpe's Ballad Book, p. 62.
Allan Ramsay wrote a song with the same title, beginning with the first stanza of the ballad, (Tea Table Miscellany, i. 70.)
The story of the unfortunate heroines is thus given by Chambers: "Bessie Bell and Mary Gray were the daughters of two country gentlemen in the neighborhood of Perth; and an intimate friendship subsisted between them. Bessie Bell, daughter of the Laird of Kinnaird, happening to be on a visit to Mary Gray, at her father's house of Lynedoch, when the plague of 1666 broke out, to avoid the infection, the two young ladies built themselves a bower in a very retired and romantic spot, called the Burn-braes, about three quarters of a mile westward from Lynedoch House; where they resided for some time, supplied with food, it is
said, by a young gentleman of Perth, who was in love with them both. The disease was unfortunately communicated to them by their lover, and proved fatal; when, according to custom in cases of the plague, they were not buried in the ordinary parochial place of sepulture, but in a sequestered spot, called the Dronach Haugh, at the foot of a brae of the same name, upon the banks of the River Almond."