Now (continued Eamonn), on the hilly slopes of the country called Sunnach there was a shepherd boy, and people who saw that he was a rare boy in looks and intelligence were filled with pity for his unhappy lot.  The bodach for whom he herded was a dour, ill-conditioned fellow, full of curses and violent threats, but the boy was content in the life of the hillsides, and troubled very little about the bodach’s dour looks.  “Some day,” he would say to himself laughingly, “I will compose terrible verses about his black mouth.”  One day the shepherd boy drove a little flock of the bodach’s lively sheep to the fair in the town of the Seven Sisters.  As he passed the mansion of the Keeper of the Key he cried out, “How up! how up! how up!” His voice was clear and full, the notes as round and sweet as the voice of the cuckoo.  The daughter of the Keeper of the Key was seated by a window painting a little picture when she heard the “How up!” of the shepherd’s voice.  “What beautiful calls!” she exclaimed, and leaned out from the window.  At the same moment the shepherd boy looked up.  He was bare-headed and wore his plaids.  His head was a shock of curly straw-coloured hair, his face eager, clear-cut, his eyes golden-brown and bright as the eyes of a bird.  He smiled and the damsel smiled.  “How up! how up! how up!” he sang out joyously to his flock as he moved down to the fair.  The damsel went back to her little picture and sat there for some time staring at her palette and mixing the wrong colours.

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: