A knight and a squire, sworn brothers, have a talk about fair women. ’There’s nae gude women but nine,’ says the squire. ‘My luck is the better,’ replies the knight, ‘that one of them is mine.’ The squire undertakes to win the knight’s wife within six months, if the husband will go over seas for that time; the knight is willing to give him nine months. The knight’s lands are wagered (21) against the squire’s life (23). As soon as the knight is at sea, the squire comes to the lady with an offer of money. If you were not my lord’s brother, says the lady, I would hang you on a pin before my door. The squire betakes himself to his foster-mother, sets forth his case, and offers her a heavy bribe for her aid. The false carline goes to the lady and opens her business; the lady will never wrong her lord. The carline (who is the wife’s foster-mother as well) now pretends concern about the lady’s health, which is in danger for want of sleep. She turns all the people out of the castle, lulls the dame to sleep, and introduces the squire. He wakes the lady, and tells her that she is in his power. The lady has presence of mind; it would, she says, be a sin to defile her husband’s bed, but she will come to the squire’s bed at night. She then offers her niece five hundred pounds to go to the squire in her place. The young woman was never so much disposed to say nay, but goes, notwithstanding. When the squire has had his will, he cuts off ‘her ring but and her ring-finger.’ The maids come from the hay, the young men from the corn, and the lady tells them all that has passed. She will tie her finger in the dark, and hopes to loose it in the light. The knight returns, and is greeted by the squire as a landless lord. The ring and ring-finger are exhibited in proof. Thereupon the knight gives a dinner, to which he asks the squire and his wife’s parents. He throws his charters across the table and bids his wife farewell forever. It is now time for the lady to loose in the light the finger which she had tied in the dark. Come here, my lord, she says. No smith can join a finger. My niece ‘beguiled the squire for me.’ They lay before the niece a sword and a ring, and she is to have her choice, to stick the squire with the sword, or to wed him with the ring. Thrice she puts out her hand as if to take the sword, but she ends with taking up the ring. This ballad can have had no currency in Scotland, and perhaps was known only through print. A similar one is strictly traditional in Greece, and widely dispersed, both on the mainland and among the islands.