Note 54 — 201 BESSY BELL AND MARY GRAY

The most of this account, and in nearly the same words, was given in an earlier letter from Major Barry to James Cant, who printed (Perth, 1774) an edition of ‘The Muses Threnodie, by Mr H. Adamson, 1638’ (p. 19). The principal items of the story are repeated from Cant by Pennant, Tour in Scotland, 1772, Part II, London, 1776, p. 112. Pennant cites Cant’s book as the Gabions of Perth. “It seems,” says Mr Macmath, who has extracted for me the passage in Cant, “that Adamson’s work was sometimes known as Gall’s Gabions, the latter being a coined word.”