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.
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