Title page
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Bessey Bell
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In the preface, the publisher writes that he had "by accident" come upon the first 192 pages of the volume; "these were printed off under the inspection of the editor of the Musical Miscellany [Perth, 1786]." The present book, on a grander plan than that of the Musical Miscellany, offered the public as many fashionable English, Irish, and Scotch songs as could be found by the publisher.

One was "Bessey Bell and Mary Gray", a ballad found in Bertrand B. Bronson's Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads (1969). The tune as shown in the Calliope is not to be found in Bronson. The nearest variant that Bronson prints comes from James Johnson's 1788 collection entitle The Scots Musical Museum (II) and W. Thomson's Orpheus Caledonius (I, 1733)