Once upon a time the Irish people did not believe in true love. The goodly
Irish forks worked too blessed hard pullin' potatoes from an unyielding
soil, workin' from dawn to sundown to harvest enough to keep the bairns
from cryin' out in the dark middle of the night from lack of food.
One day in the midst of a cold
hard winter, a lad was born to a lowly cotter woman who etched the barest
livin' from a rocky part of a baron's piece of land. The lad was as bonny
and brawny as a knight's by-blow, quick of mind and faster of feet. He
grew and thrived. His life, like many an Irish lad's, was a great joy to
his mother.
The winter his mother died, the
baron gave our deserving orphan to his shepherd to learn the care and keeping
of sheep. Learn he did. The flock thrived and multiplied under the boy's
care. It was during the spring when rain coloured the land its emerald
green and the skies turned corn-flower blue that he first saw her.
She was the baron's youngest
daughter and she was beautiful. A young girl made of joy, gaiety, and laughter.
She had hair the color of late summer fields, and eyes that were dark with
promises.
A highborn lady she was, and
many, many worlds separate from out young shepherd. He could not presume
to so much as speak to her, nor could or would she condescend to speak
to him. He was as invisible as the air to her. She never noticed him long
enough to learn his name. It did not matter. The piercing sting of true
love had struck our shepherd's heart; he was forever changed. He told himself
it was enough just catching glimpses of his lady as she rode about her
fathers lands, sang from the window of the keep, or strolled the flower-filled
meadows nearby. It was enough that her heard her laughter each night in
his dreams, where she laid in his arms and they whispered the secrets of
lovers. It was enough.
That year, as the nights grew
long and the cold north wind began blowing across the lowlands and it was
time to leave for the high country, our shepherd knew misery, the unbearable
misery of separation from his true love. And yet to not leave meant banishment
and eventually starvation. With a breaking heart and a heavy spirit, he
forced himself to go.
Yet the gods took pity on the
young man's sorrow and sought to breathe the girl's spirit before him.
They sent the young lady out riding that day. They urged her to take the
worn path that leads far up into the high country. Along the way, her fine
spirited mare felt the prick of a thorn. The mare raced as if chased by
demons--and the girl lost control of the reins. Up and up the mare carried
our young lady, charging full speed. She never saw the low-hanging branch
that hit her head and knocked her from her seat.
With a pounding heart, our shepherd
watched the daring ride and his young woman's fateful fall. He raced to
give her aid, finding her unconscious. When finally she woke in his arms,
she had no memory of her life, or of her station in it. She only knew the
kind, blue eyes of the shepherd who saved her. He named her Shalyn.
Shalyn: the name of the high
mountain fairies who watch over the lonely shepherds all the winter long.
His dreams had come true. For one long cold winter she belonged to him.
The next spring, our shepherd
and his love encountered her father at a Maying party. He tried to keep
the sight from her but she was entranced, because her memory returned as
she watched. Then came the moment in which the shepherd lost his soul:
the moment when she turned to see him. In her eyes, there was no love,
no tender feeling, not even sorrow. She looked at him, her true love, with.....
revulsion. Then she turned and ran into the clearing. She never looked
back.
Her family was overjoyed to find
her alive and well after those many months of thinking her dead. And when
the day of her wedding to a neighboring noble arrived, our cowardly shepherd
flung himself to his death.....
Last updated: August 13, 1998. This page has
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