"Here's a health to the sailors That sail upon the sea; Let neither my mother nor father ken That I came here to die. 80 "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." O Bessy Bell an' Mary Gray, They were twa bonnie lassies; They biggit a house on yon burn-brae, An' theekit it o'er wi' rashes. They theekit it o'er wi' birk and brume, 5 They theekit it o'er wi' heather, Till the pest cam frae the neib'rin town An' streekit them baith thegither. They were na' buried in Meffen kirk-yard, Amang the rest o' their kin; 10 But they were buried by Dornoch haugh, On the bent before the sun.