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STORIES OF
It was sung to the elegant air of " Fie, gar rub her ower wi' strae."
Of Scottish Songs with entertaining histories in little, there is no end, and in particular those that Ramsay and Burns rescued from oblivion. It is only fair to just glance at one or two in this section. "Bessie Bell and Mary Gray," by Allan Ramsay, was founded on an ancient ballad of the same name, which was well known throughout Great Britain. The music was in-evitably made use of by Gay in the " Beggar's Opera" to words beginning:
" A curse attends that woman's love Who always would be pleasing."
The heroines of this well-known ballad were the daughters of two Perthshire gentlemen. Bessy Bell was the daughter of the Laird of Kinnaird, and Mary Gray of the Laird of Lynedoch. A romantic attachment subsisted between them, and they retired together to a secluded spot called the "Burn Braes," in the neighbourhood of Lynedoch,to avoid th e plague that then raged in Perth, Dundee, and other towns. They caught the infection, however, and both died. Tradition asserts that a young gentleman who was in love with one of them, visited them in their solitude, and that it was
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