June 19th 1646

Bessie Bell and Mary Gray

Bessie Bell and Mary Gray were daughters of the Lairds of Kinnaird and Lednock respectively. When the plague (the pest) came to Perth (the burrows town) the girls fled to the sanctuary of the banks of the river Almond and “biggit a bower theakit o’er wi’ rashes.”  According to popular tradition they were visited regularly by an admirer. On one occasion he brought them a rare necklace he had purchased from a Jew (a nice bit of anti-Semitism here). Unfortunately the necklace had originally belonged to one who had died from the plague and as a consequence all three contracted the disease, died and were buried by the Almond.

However, the Hon. Mrs Murray of Kensington who visited the grave in 1799 told a somewhat different story. “Under the hanging wood of Lednock I came to a bit of ground walled in and on a stone in the wall I read ‘The tomb of Bessie Bell and Mary Gray’. I plainly saw the marks of two graves by the rising of the sod - the third, that of the lover, said to be at their feet I could not find.”  There is no mention of a male admirer in the original anonymous verses quoted above. But later the verses were ‘improved’ by Allan Ramsay and his version became very popular. It seems highly probable that the romantic admirer only surfaced in Ramsay’s version of the tragedy and is pure invention.

The burial place may still be seen today on the banks of the Almond west of December rue. The area is almost as lonely now as it must have been in the 17th Century and the yew tree growing over the graves completes the air of brooding sadness.