This illustrates scene from Allan Ramsay's eighteenth-century pastoral poem, ‘The Gentle Shepherd’. It was a favourite of Wilkie’s. Roger is playing on an ancient Scottish instrument, the stock and horn, listened to by Peggie and Jennie. He is in love with Jennie and the song he plays, 'O'er Bogie', is one she is fond of, but she jeers at him, and pretends not to recognise the tune. David Allan's etched and aquatinted illustrations to ‘The Gentle Shepherd’ were amongst the first works of art that Wilkie knew as a young boy, and in illustrating the poem he was making a deliberate return to his Scottish cultural roots. There are at least three versions of this design together with smaller studies painted by Wilkie.