Annotation:Bonnie Bessie Lee

Back to Bonnie Bessie Lee

---

BONNIE BESSIE LEE. Scottish, Strathspey. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AA'B. "Bonnie Bessie Lee" is the title of a poem and song lyric by Robert Nicoll (1814–37), a Perthshire-born writer of some merit who published his volume in 1835. It begins:

Bonnie Bessie Lee had a face fu’ o’ smiles,
And mirth round her ripe lip was aye dancing slee;'
' And light was the footfa’, and winsome the wiles,
O’ the flower o’ the parochin—our ain Bessie Lee.

As a song, it was very popular in Victorian times, and appears in Gavin Greig's Scots Minstrelsie (vol. 5)

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Kerr (Merry Melodies, vol. 3), c. 1880's; No. 69, p. 9.

Recorded sources:

---