Lady Erskine invites Child Owlet to be her paramour. Child Owlet revolts at the suggestion; he is sister's son to Lord Ronald. The lady cuts herself with a penknife sufficiently to draw blood; Lord Ronald hears her moaning, comes in, and asks what blood this is; his wife gives him to understand that Child Owlet has offered her violence. A council is held upon the case, and the youth is condemned to be torn by four horses. There was not a twig or a rush on the moor that was not dropping with his blood.
The chain of gold in the first stanza and the penknife below the bed in the fourth have a false ring, and the story is of the tritest. The ballad seems at best to be a late one, and is perhaps mere imitation, but, for an imitation, the last two stanzas are unusually successful.
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