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.[53] “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 1666; 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 Brauchie-burn. 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.[54] “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 dilapidated 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.[55]