Bessy Bell and Mary Gray Lyrics
Two friends build a little house of rushes in a meadow. One minds the gate and one minds the pantry, and it is easy to guess which of them eats better.
Bessy Bell and Mary Gray
Bessy Bell and Mary Gray,
They were two bonny lasses;
They built their house upon the lea,
And covered it with rushes.
Bessy kept the garden gate,
And Mary kept the pantry;
Bessy always had to wait,
While Mary lived in plenty.
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/bessy-bell-and-mary-gray/
- Type
- Mother Goose
- Tune
- Spoken rhyme
- Best for ages
- 3 to 8 years
What Does Bessy Bell and Mary Gray Mean?
Bonny lasses are pretty girls, in Scottish English. They build their house on the lea, a grassy meadow, and roof it with rushes, tall water plants once used for thatching. In the second verse the jobs are shared out: Bessy guards the garden gate while Mary looks after the pantry, so Mary "lived in plenty" and Bessy had to wait for her share.
History and Origin
The names come from an old Scottish ballad about two friends near Perth who went to live in a small shelter in the countryside in the 1640s. The ballad itself is a sad one, and the nursery rhyme keeps only the cheerful part about building the house. The story was well known enough that two hills near Newtownstewart in Northern Ireland are still called Bessy Bell and Mary Gray. This version is from The Real Mother Goose (1916).
Learning Activities
- Build a den: make a house from blankets and chairs and decide who keeps the gate and who keeps the pantry.
- Fair shares: talk about whether Bessy was treated fairly, and how the two friends could share the food.
- Word pictures: look up pictures of rushes and a thatched roof together.