There he also found new faces and was given the word that his father had been dead this many a year. In sorrow Shamus turned away, making sad songs to comfort his heart.
Thus he wandered through the world, finding no place where he could rest. His songs were sad and all who heard them wept, but he was not unhappy, for there is a certain pleasure in even a sad song.
Yet always he longed for Elfland and the ways of the Little People, and the sound of the bell on the magic dog, whose chime brings forgetfulness of all sorrow. Try as he would, he could never find the way, and he knew that it was because his songs were sad and he was no longer young at heart.
Older he grew with white hair and feeble step, and one day he was weary and sat himself down in a wood to rest. He sat there, thinking of his lost youth and the sad ways of the world, longing to die.
As he lamented, his fingers plucked his harp and he played again his best songs, those of running water, and the sound of wind in the trees, and of moonlight on a grassy slope.
His heart grew young within him as he played, and when he rose to his feet, the dimness of age fell away from his eyes. Before him stood the Queen of the Little People, as she had stood long before.
"Will you come with me, Shamus?" said she.
"Alas," said he, "I am now too old."
"Your songs are young," said she, "and you are young again in heart. Come with me, where you may be young forever and play glad songs."
Shamus mounted up behind on the beautiful horse, away they flew, and that was the last ever seen of him upon earth.