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His brown face and his gentian-blue eyes were high and noble. And Sheen felt a joy like the sharpness of a sword when he sang to her about the brightness of her hair and the blue of her eyes. "O Maid," said he, "is there anything that binds you to this place?" Sheen showed him the bog-down in the basket and the woven thread that was round her neck.
The thread she had spun became bog-down and was blown away. For days she wept and wept. Then the Spae-Woman said to her, "Commit the child you have lost to Diachbha that is, to Destiny and Diachbha may bring it about that he shall be the one that will restore your seven brothers their human forms.
But she knew she would have to gather the bog-down, spin the threads and weave them all over again, as her tears and cries had broken her task. She told her story to the Spae-Woman. Then she went into silence again, gathering the bog-down and spinning the thread. But when the first thread was spun the memory of her child blew against her heart and she cried tears down.
"Go back to the people you came from," said he, "for I cannot bear that you should be here, and not speak to me of what has happened." Sheen knew she was being sent from the house he had brought her to. A bitter cry came from her. Then the stitched cloth that was in her hand became bog-down and was blown away on the breeze.
But they were jealous and they made everything in the Castle unfriendly to her. And often they talked before her brother saying that Sheen was not noble at all, and that the reason she did not speak was because her language was a base one. They watched her when she went out to gather bog-down in the daytime, and they watched her when she spun by herself at night.
Well, the poor prince had nothing for it but to walk back to the castle; and through it and round it he walked, and the finest of eating and drinking he got, and a bed of bog-down to sleep on, and long walks he took through gardens and lawns, but not a sight could he get, high or low, of Seven Inches.
On the fourth day after she rose from her bed and searched the Castle for the piece of cloth she had spun and woven out of the bog-down. She found it and began to sew it for the seventh shirt. The King's sisters came to him and said, "The woman you brought here is of another race from ours. She has forgotten that a child was born to her, and that she killed it and flung its body to the gray wolf.
She gathered the bog-down between noon and sunset and spun the thread at night. When she had lengths of thread spun she began to weave them on the loom. At the end of a year she had the first shirt made. In another year she made the second, then the third, then the fourth, the fifth and the sixth. And all the time she said no word, laughed no laugh and cried no tear.
She would sing and laugh and talk when the last thread was spun and woven, when the last stitch was sewn, and when the shirts of bog-down she had made in silence would have brought back her brothers to their own human forms. She gathered the scarce heads of the cannavan or bog-down with one hand, while she held the other hand to her lips. Something dropped down at her feet.
She was gathering the bog-down for the seventh and last shirt. Once she went abroad on a day when the snow was melted and she felt her footsteps light. Hundreds of birds were on the ground eating plentifully and calling to one another. Sheen could hardly keep from her mouth the song that was in her mind.
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