Sunday Sessions: Two Songs of the Sea
Julie Fowlis sings a song of longing, community, change, loss connection, and hope, framed in a legend from Scotland. The song is called Selkie Boy.
Words of the song come from writer Robert Macfarlane, the images you see in the video are by artist Jackie Morris. Julie Fowlis and Kris Drever, both from Scotland, wrote the song. Julie sings lead. The members of the Spell Songs project (more about that below) join in with instrument and backing voices.
Scotland is a country linked with the sea, through its islands, its long coastlines, its history and stories shaped by the waters.
It makes sense then that many stories, the myth and the legend sort as well as the tales of real happenings and the stories that blend both those things,arise from and include the sea.
There are many stories to do with selkies.
Sekies are of the seal people. Legends tell us that selkies are shape shifters, with many stories of how and why a selkie might change to become a man or a woman -- and how that man or woman might make a good life on land, but still have a strong and mystical connection to the sea -- and a longing to return to it.
Unexpected and sometimes mystical aspects of nature are present in The Lost Words/Spell Songs Project, as are stories of places where human and natural world meet.
Selkie Boy was created as part of Spell Songs.
Long story short (you will fund the long story through several of the links below) The Lost Words/Spell Songs idea began when artist Jackie Morris decided to create a book of illustrations to honor and call attention to words that were to be dropped from a popular children’s dictionary where she lives in the UK. The words all had to do with nature.
Morris contacted nature writer Robert Macfarlane to see if he’d write a forward for the book. He came back with a different idea: what if he wrote a series of poems -- spells -- to call the words and the things they represented back from being forgotten?
Two books have resulted thus far, along with posters, educational materials, and other items.
Music professionals of several sorts heard music in the art and the words; a project to gather together musicians with an interest in nature came to be. Connections, collaborations over distance, and eventually group gatherings took place. Songs were written; eventually, concerts came about, and thus far, three albums have been recorded.
Musicians involved in the project in addtion to Julie and Kris are Karine Polwart, Seckou Keita, Rachel Newton, Beth Porter, and Jim Molyneux. Macfarlane and Morris joined in the collaborative process as well, as did engineer/producer Andy Bell.
Among them, the musicians bring, in addition to English, Gaelic, Scots, and Mandinka languages. Their instruments include guitar, keyboards, whistle, kora, harp, cello, fiddle, percussion of several sorts, and more. Andy Bell
Back toe song th Selkie Boy: at first Macfarlane thought his poem was a song of the sorrow and distance aspects of the selkie legend. When Julie and Kris began to work it into a song, though, they chose to focus on a more hopeful dimension of the story.
Both Julie and Kris grew up in Scotland’s islands, Julie in North Uist in the Outer Hebrides, Kris in Orkney in the Northern Isles.
Perhaps those backgrounds added to their thoughts on the sea legend and the music.
When she sings the song as part of Spell Songs concerts, Julie often pairs it with a song from Gaelic tradition, Oran an Roin/Song of the Seal.
Perhaps these two songs, and your own thoughts on what they bring to mind about nature and the waters, will offer you a moment of reflection.
You may also wish to see
A story about Spell Songs II: Let the Light In, which includes links to some of their other projects, and a bit more backstory
About the book The Lost Spells
About the album Alterum, on which Julie Fowlis has recorded Oran an Roin and many other songs worth the listening
Each of the Spell Songs artists named above has albums and other projects. I encourage you seek those out.
A rather different Spell Songs song, Acorn by Rachel Newton, is part of this story at Wandering Educators.
If you enjoy what you are reading here, I invite you to subscribe…
If you’d prefer to make a one off contribution to support my work, you can do so here -- and thank you.