Bessy Bell and Mary Gray

The common tradition respecting these celebrated beauties is as follows:—"In the year 1666, when the plague raged at Perth, these ladies retired into solitude, to avoid infection; built on a small streamlet, tributary to the Almond, in a sequestered corner called Burn-brae, a bower, and lived in it together, till a young man, whom they both tenderly loved, in his visits communicated to them the fatal contagion, of which they soon after died."