[3] She was also described by Miss McNeill to have been "a great favourite with everyone who knew her, due to her pleasant manners, sweet temper and obliging disposition.

Her figure was graceful; the cast of her face was singularly delicate and of fair complexion, and her eyes were bluish and lustrous had a remarkably winning expression.

She was buried in the old West Kirk churchyard at Greenock, in a lair owned by her host and relation Peter Macpherson.

Her father was urged to go to a place where two streams meet, select seven smooth stones, boil them in milk, and treat her with the potion.

In his notes on The Highland Lassie O that he wrote in the Robert Riddell song manuscript, now lost, but recorded by Cromek, he stated:This was a composition of mine in very early life, before I was known at all in the world.

After a pretty long tract of the most ardent reciprocal attachment, we met by appointment, on the second Sunday of May, in a sequestered spot by the Banks of Ayr, where we spent the day in taking a farewel, before she should embark for the West-Highlands, to arrange matters among her friends for our projected change of life.

At the close of Autumn following she crossed the sea to meet me at Greenock, where she had scarce landed when she was seized with a malignant fever, which hurried my dear girl to the grave in a few days, before I could even hear of her illness.

Jean Armour recalled that towards evening, the night before, Robert grew sad, and wandered in solitary contemplation along the banks of the River Nith and about the farmyard in extreme agitation.

In the mid 19th century, a broadside ballad with the title "Bonny Mary of Argyle" was published by James Lindsay of 11 King Street, Glasgow.

[25] With the intention of enlarging their Greenock shipyard to take over the site, Harland and Wolff requested that the Old West Kirk and its cemetery be demolished.

On 5 November 1920, 134 years after Mary's death, her grave was opened and the three lairs removed, with the skulls and bones of three adults.

This naturally resulted in speculation, based on Burns's well known extra-marital intimacy, on the real cause of Mary's death, but evidence was subsequently given that the child had died in 1827, and had also been buried in the Macpherson's plot.

In a solemn ceremony on 13 November 1920 Mary's remains were re-interred in Greenock Cemetery under the 1842 monument designed by John Mossman, moved from the old West Kirkyard, which depicts the romantic couple, in memory of Robert Burns' lost love.

The statue looks out over the Firth of Clyde - the somewhat forlorn figure apparently gazing in the direction of the Ayrshire Coast - the birthplace of her beloved Robert Burns.

[27] A Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament protest song about the arrival in the Holy Loch of the U.S. Navy USS Proteus (AS-19) nuclear submarine tender for the Polaris ballistic missile fleet was titled "Ding Dong Dollar", and said that when they arrived, "Bonnie Mary o Argyll; Wis wearin spangled drawers ablow her goun.