Waysiders, Stories of Connacht

by Seumas O'Kelly

"And what reward shall I have?" asked the shepherd boy.

"You shall have the hand of the daughter of the Keeper of the Key, the Lady of your Songs," they said. "Take her back to the hills where you were so happy. We shall spare you when we are abroad."

"Then," said the shepherd boy, "I swear to release you."

"The Keeper of the Key," said the spirits of the Seven Sisters, "has a devil lurking behind the fine manners of his body. In secret he laughs at the people. He has the blood of the five goldsmiths on his hands. It was by his connivance the curragh sprang a leak, and that they were drowned. They were true artists, of the spirit of the Gael. But they alone knew his secret, and he made away with them before they could speak. His great controversy on the water nymphs was like a spell cast over the minds of the people to cover his crime."

"What a demon!" cried the shepherd boy.

"The key of the well," said the spirits of the Seven Sisters, "is concealed in the great golden knob of the oaken door, and upon that has concentrated the greatest public scrutiny which has ever beaten upon a door-knob in the story of the whole world. Such has been the craft of the Keeper of the Key! When he comes out in the morning and evening, and while drawing the door after him, he puts a finger on the third toe of the fourth water nymph. This he presses three times, quick as a pulse-beat, and, lo, a hidden spring is released and shoots the key into the loose sleeve of his coat. On returning he puts his hand on the golden knob, presses the second toe of the third water nymph, and the key slides back into its hidden cavity. This secret was alone known to the goldsmiths. They went to the bottom of the sea with it. In this way has the Keeper of the Key held his power and defied his enemies. When the scholars were making epigrams and the bards warming into great cadences on the art of the ankle of the water nymph, this Keeper of the Key would retire to his watch-tower and roll about in secret merriment."

"What a fiend!" cried the shepherd boy.

"He had caused to be painted in his room a scroll surrounded by illuminated keys and nymphs and tumbling cascades, and bearing the words, 'Let us praise the art which conceals art; but let us love the art which conceals power.'"

"What a monster!" cried the shepherd boy.

"In this way," said the spirits of the Seven Sisters, "has he lived. In this way has he been able to keep us from our freedom, our lover. O shepherd boy—"