The Lost Words Selkie-Boy

On Tuesday 27 April 2021 Spell Songs will perform a unique live streamed concert from the iconic Hintze Hall in London's Natural History Museum, raising funds for their Urban Nature Project.
To find out how you can enjoy the performance and support the Museum's ground-breaking new project go to https://www.nhm.ac.uk/events/spell-songs.html

Order The Lost Words: Spell Songs album HERE: https://thelostwords.lnk.to/spellsongs

We invite you to rinse your ears clean of human chatter and join our Spell Singers as they summon Selkie-boy.

Songs and tales of the seal people are a big part of Hebridean folklore, especially in North Uist, the home island of Julie Fowlis. Julie’s fascination with these stories, of Norse royalty, enchantment, separation and isolation, led The Lost Words author Robert Macfarlane to gift one of his new spells, Grey Seal, to Julie when they met at the Spell Songs residency. Julie was immediately drawn to it and worked closely with fellow spell singer Kris Drever to create something as ethereal and mesmerising as the seal songs of folklore.

“Like a true folksong, it is both heart-breaking and beautiful at the same time” Julie Fowlis

“I think I began the Selkie Song thinking it was a drowning song, but by the time I'd added the final verses realised it needed to be, like the selkies themselves, neither quite one thing or the other, neither drowning nor dreaming, seal or human, land or sea, elegy or eulogy, and how it was taken would depend on how it swam into the mind of the listener.” Robert Macfarlane

Grey Seal also spoke deeply to Jackie Morris, co-author of The Lost Words, who heard her first Selkie story when she was 14 and grew fascinated by the myth of the creature. Moving to her beloved Pembrokshire 28 years ago Jackie has searched the shores for selkies and sought to change the story:

“I didn't want love to be about denying the other person the thing they most needed. I wanted it to be about freedom and respect… It's about belonging.”

Where Robert first saw Grey Seal as a “drowning song”, Jackie immediately took it as a song of “freedom, belonging, finding your skin, your soul, your people”.

To film Selkie-boy Jackie took us in search of seals on the Pembrokeshire coast, and inked the verses of Selkie-boy to gift to the ocean.

“When we went in search of seals for the film it was almost as if they knew. There were many seals in a cave where usually there were only a few. The water was crystal clear, so we could watch them move under water. They seemed almost to welcome us, just sitting beneath the skin of the sea and yes, beckoning us down, to where we belonged. And the colour of the water, the light on it, was a deep green.”

Thank you to Ben Dave and Jackie Morris for creating the beautiful imagery in this video, to Elly Lucas Photography for additional footage, to Rob Macfarlane for gifting this new poem to Spell Songs and to Falcon boats for taking us to the Selkies.

The Lost Words: Spell Songs
Selkie-Boy

Go now selkie-boy, swim from the shore,
Rinse your ears clean of human chatter,
And empty your bones of heather and moor,
And your mind of human matter.

Hear us and hasten
High are our voices
Offering welcome, and keening our joy
High are our voices
Offering welcome
And drawing you down to where you belong.

Selkie, selkie-boy, come join your kin,
Eager your kind are to meet you,
As salt sets its seal on your silky skin
Let green sea rise up to greet you.

Hear us and hasten
High are our voices
Offering welcome, and keening our joy
High are our voices
Offering welcome
And drawing you down to where you . . .

Blue is the water – it beckons you . . .
Blue is the water

Oh selkie-boy, swim from the shore,
Rinse your ears clean of human chatter,
And empty your bones of heather and moor,
And your mind of its human matter.

Hear us and hasten
High are our voices
Offering welcome, and keening our joy
High are our voices
Offering welcome
And drawing you down to where you belong.

Видео The Lost Words Selkie-Boy канала The Lost Words - Spell Songs