Bessy Bell and Mary Gray
Bessy Bell and Mary Gray are "twa bonnie lassies", the subject of one of the Child Ballads.
According to the ballad, Bessy and Mary were daughters of two Perthshire gentlemen, who in 1666 built themselves a bower to avoid catching a devastating plague. The girls were supplied with food by a lad in love with both of them; the lad caught the plague and gave it to them, and all three sickened and died.
Two similar hills near Omagh, County Tyrone were named after Bessy Bell and Mary Gray by Scottish immigrants who went to Ireland to make their passage to America. Sliabh Troim is the original Irish name of Bessy Bell, also recorded as Sliab Toad. There also exist twin hills in Staunton, Virginia which were named after the girls by Scottish immigrants. Two adjacent volcanic cones in the Auckland volcanic field, New Zealand, were referred to by 19th-century European settlers as Bessy Bell and Mary Gray.Recordings
