13 ‘No, I can neither card nor spin, Nor cows I canno milk, But sit into a lady’s bower And sew the seams o silk.’ 14 ‘What is your name, ye comely dame? Pray tell this unto me:’ ‘O Blancheflour, that is my name, Born in a strange countrie.’ 15 ‘O keep ye well frae Jellyflorice-- My ain dear son is he-- When other ladies get a gift, O that ye shall get three.’ 16 It wasna tald into the bower Till it went thro the ha, That Jellyflorice and Blancheflour Were grown ower great witha. 17 When the queen’s maids their visits paid, Upo the gude Yule-day, When other ladies got horse to ride, She boud take foot and gae. 18 The queen she calld her stable-groom, To come to her right seen; Says, Ye’ll take out yon wild waith steed And bring him to the green. 19 ‘Ye’ll take the bridle frae his head, The lighters frae his een; Ere she ride three times roun the cross, Her weel-days will be dune.’ 20 Jellyflorice his true-love spy’d As she rade roun the cross, And thrice he kissd her lovely lips, And took her frae her horse. 21 ‘Gang to your bower, my lily-flower, For a’ my mother’s spite; There’s nae other amang her maids, In whom I take delight. 22 ‘Ye are my jewel, and only ane, Nane’s do you injury; For ere this-day-month come and gang My wedded wife ye’se be.’ 301 THE QUEEN OF SCOTLAND ‘The Queen of Scotland,’ Buchan’s Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 46; Motherwell’s MS., p. 577. A queen in the king’s absence invites young Troy Muir to her bower and bed; he declines, and the queen resolves to do him an ill turn. She tells him that if he will lift a stone in the garden he will find in a pit under the stone gold enough to buy him a dukedom. The next morning Troy Muir lifts the stone, and a long-starved serpent winds itself round his middle. A maid comes by and allays the serpent’s rage by cutting off her pap for him. Troy Muir is immediately released and the wound in the maid’s breast heals in an hour. Troy Muir marries the maid the same day; she bears him a son, and by heaven’s grace recovers her pap thereupon. The insipid ballad may have been rhymed from some insipid tale. Motherwell conjectured that Troy Muir stands for Triamour, but the story here has no sort of resemblance to the romance. 1 ‘O Troy Muir, my lily-flower, An asking I’ll ask thee; Will ye come to my bigley bower And drink the wine wi me?’ 2 ‘My dame, this is too much honour You have conferrd on me; I’m sure it’s mair than I’ve deservd Frae sic a one as thee.’ 3 ‘In Reekie’s towers I hae a bower, And pictures round it set; There is a bed that is well made, Where you and I shall sleep.’