Subject: RE: Tune Req: Jean Redpath's Song of the Seals
From:
Stewie
Date: 14 Nov 01 - 07:19 PM
Here is Jean's note on the sleeve of the vinyl issue [Philo PH 1054, 1978]. I don't know how it stacks up with liner notes in the CD reissue:
'Those of you who have read the Dan nan Ron, the Song of the Seals, will recall how Manus MacCondrum, himself one of the seal-folk, would be knowing when the tide was ebbing across the great Reef of Berneray – how he would hear the call of the skua on the rocky promontory, and the wailing of the moon-restless plover on the hill behind – how, after the earthing of his love, and the tide had ebbed in his heart, he would be crossing the Sound of Berneray continually and making for the old Pictish tower known as Dun Sticir in the shadow of Beann Bhreac – how the island folks would be seeing him at low tide upon the Reef of Berneray, singing wild and strange runes'. (MacGregor: 'The Peat Fire Flame).
So does Alasdair Alpin MacGregor's book talk of one of the descendants of the seal-folk – those creatures which could cast their sealskins and assume mortal form, and with whom other clans too claimed kinship.
This rather arty song (poem by Harold Boulton; music Granville Bantock) has a chorus which touches something so close to the heart that it has been 'recognised' by those born as far from the Hebrides as the Calabrian Hills of Italy. I learned it from the singing of Father (now Canon) Sidney McEwan.
--Stewie.
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sj
