That evening the Keeper of the Key, as was his custom, escorted his
daughter on his arm, servants before and behind them, through the town
of the Seven Sisters, viewing such sights of the fair as were agreeable
and doing a little shopping. The people, seeing the great man coming,
made way for him on the paths, and bowed and smiled to him as he passed.
He walked with great dignity, and his daughter's beauty made the
bystanders say, "Happy will it be for the lucky man!" Among those they
encountered was the shepherd boy, and he gazed upon the damsel with
rapture in his young eyes. He followed them about the town at a
respectful distance, and back to their mansion. The shepherd boy did not
return to the hilly country called Sunnach that night, nor the next
night, nor for many a long day and night. He remained in the town of the
Seven Sisters, running on errants, driving carts, doing such odd jobs as
came his way, and all because he wanted to gaze upon the daughter of the
Keeper of the Key. In the evening he would go by the mansion singing
out, "How up! how up! how up!" as if he were driving flocks past. And in
the window he would see the wave of a white hand. He would go home,
then, to his little back room in the lodging-house, and there stay up
very late at night, writing, in the candle-light, verses to the damsel.
One Song of the Shepherd Boy to his Lady has survived:
_Farewell to the sweet reed I tuned on the hill,
My grief for the rough slopes of Sunnach so still,
The wind in the fir tree and bleat of the ewe
Are lost in the wild cry my heart makes for you.
The brown floors I danced on, the sheds where I lay,
Are gone from my mind like a wing in the bay:
Dear lady, I'd herd the wild swans in the skies
If they knew of lake water as blue as your eyes!_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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