The Lost Spells

"Loss is the tune of our age, hard to miss and hard to bear. Creatures, places and words disappear, day after day, year on year. But there has always been singing in dark times -- and wonder is needed now more than ever. 'To enchant' means both to make magic and to sing out. So let these spells ring far and wide; speak their words and seek their art, let the wild world into your eyes, your voice, your heart." - from The Lost Spells

About halfway through the newest collaboration between British nature writer Robert Macfarlane and artist Jackie Morris, The Lost Spells, I am suddenly reminded of a chapter in The Dark is Rising, the award-winning children's book by Susan Cooper about an English boy named Will Stanton, who discovers on his 11th birthday that he is the last of the Old Ones, immortals dedicated to keeping the world safe from the forces of evil, the Dark.

Will reads the ancient Book of Gramarye, a magical book that is more than merely paper; it is a rite of passage of an Old One, in which in the reading, one experiences magical spells and is taught everything about one's powers.

This youngest Old One might read no more than one line -- I have journeyed as an eagle, "and he was soaring suddenly aloft as if winged, learning through feeling, feeling the way of resting on the wind and tilting round the rising column of air, of sweeping and soaring, of looking down at patchwork-green hills capped with dark trees, and a winding, glinting river between."

Although The Lost Spells won't imbue the reader with ancient powers as The Book of Gramarye does, there are moments when it almost feels like that might happen, and it truly IS a magical and charming little book. In the reading of its acrostic spell-poems while enjoying the accompanying art, one undergoes an educational and inspirational journey too, even if it's not quite the same as Will Stanton's.

"This is a book of spells to be spoken aloud," promises the introduction. "It tells its stories and sings its songs in paint and word. Here you will find incantations and summoning charms, spells that protect and spells that protest, tongue-twisters, blessings, lullabies and psalms. Here you might swoop with a swallow, follow a seal through the sea or sky-race with swifts."

In a dreamlike way, the reader is guided page by richly illustrated page on a journey through nature, language and art through Macfarlane's deft wordsmithing and Morris' masterful illuminations.

Deceptively simple in format, and while it can be read quickly, it is actually a deeply satisfying drink, an invitation to slow down and linger in the magical world of animals and nature, where one might encounter beeches conversing with the wind; or goldfinches gilding the land for free; or cheeky beatboxing, whipcracking jackdaws:

"Why not learn
the Jackdaw beatbox
the Jackdaw seesaw
the Jackdaw uproar,
the zigzag riprap
Jackdaw soundtrack,
pulling on the ripcord
furthermore and evermore,
giving it the chainsaw,
the whipcrack, the hee-haw,
giving it the wherefore, the whyfore,
the therefore, the J-J-J-J-Jackdaw!"

Much as Will Stanton suddenly found himself up on a bare crag of rock above the world after reading only a few words of The Book of Gramarye, the reader is suddenly at the side of a red fox, a guide who appears at the beginning of the book. Green eyes gaze at the reader calmly out of an auburn pelt, wordless. Then the reader is asked, after a turn of the page:

"I am Red Fox -- how do you see me?
A bloom of rust
at your vision's edge
The shadow that slips
through a hole in the hedge,
My two green eyes
in your headlight's rush
A scatter of feathers,
the tip of a brush."

At the end of the fox's "chapter," a turn of the page reveals a moth, tiny and dark against a full moon; then another page turn, and it's the moth's turn to speak; and then the moth flutters away, leading to an image of a cheerful daisy. Then it's daisy time, and so on; at the end of each "chapter," a new subject appears, previewing what is to come, such as jackdaws, heartwood, woodpeckers, oak.

This method of transition makes the experience of reading feel organic, smooth and natural, like you're flowing down a river or coasting on air drifts or sinking gently into a snowbank, rather than the usual hard jolting stops of chapters ending and new ones beginning.

Much too soon it is time again for the fox, who has returned to bookend the reader's journey, finding himself curled up for sleep in a snowy bower of silver birches. They are singing him a lullaby:

"...Break of dawn is far away
But you are safe, my silver-sleeper,
Safe to sink down deep and deeper;
In the night the birches watch you
With their black, unblinking eyes,
Standing guard and keeping vigil
While you make your dreaming journeys..."

Morris's art sometimes stands alone, and sometimes is accompanied by Macfarlane's words. Her rendering of the world of animals and nature is both dream-like and quite realistic, beautifully and playfully expressing motion, stillness, inscrutability and emotion.

After the foxes' birch lullaby, an owl carrying a skeleton key invites the reader to a glossary, where one can "seek each flower and insect in these pages, speech each creature, find each tree," and take the book out into nature and use it to identify those birds, animals, insects, trees and bushes that might be encountered there.

If The Lost Words, an oversized coffee table book measuring at approximately 11x14, is the big sister, and The Lost Words: Spell Songs is the middle sister at a general book size of 9x7 (and includes a CD of music), then The Lost Spells at a cozy 4.5x7 is the baby; and indeed it is called such on the front flap of the bookcover, "the little sister" to The Lost Words.

But it's not necessary to have read The Lost Words or its middle sister, The Lost Words: Spell Songs, before reading The Lost Spells; although the three books form a cohesive trilogy, this book stands perfectly on its own. It is also not necessary to be British to enjoy them, though it is true that some American readers might not immediately be familiar with a few of the subjects in them, such as gorse bushes, conkers and jackdaws. But that's part of their charm, to my mind.

The Lost Words: Spell Songs

The Lost Words: Spell Songs is both book and musical companion piece to The Lost Words, and it's how I came across the beautiful partnership of Macfarlane and Morris in the first place.

After the incredible success that met the publication of The Lost Words, Caroline Slough, director of the Folk by the Oak Festival, heard a talk by Morris and Macfarlane at the Hay Winter Festival in 2017, in which a video of a musical response to the book's "Wren" spell was played by composer Kerry Andrew. "A few fluttering, textural, clustered consonants and haunting vocals later and the musicality of the spells shone out at me," says Slough in Spell Song's introduction.

Slough and husband Adam gathered musicians to help bring the book to musical life and, with the full support of the avid folk music fans Morris and Macfarlane, sought out those with "a love of nature, a concern for conservation, tonal quality, innate talent, cultural influences, delicious speaking and singing voices, a love of books, an understanding of the collaborative process, true professionalism and an experience of many musical genres...."

One of those musicians was Beth Porter, who performs "Charm on Goldfinch," the musical response to the "Goldfinch" spell-poem. Porter, a multi-instrumentalist and singer, is part of The Bookshop Band with husband Ben Please.

I had encountered these British musicians for the first time at several bookshop concerts in 2019 during their first tour of the United States, and after being utterly charmed by them and their music, I sought out more. This led to the discovery of Porter's musical contribution to Spell Songs, which led me to The Lost Words and now to The Lost Spells.

The Bookshop Band has made an art out of crafting songs inspired by literature; it was a no-brainer to include Porter in this collaboration. "Charm On, Goldfinch" opens with her whistling a catchy, goldfinchy tune against a simple ukulele, which then adds her beautiful cello and other musical elements that accompany her lyrics. Morris often enjoys listening to The Bookshop Band while she works, Porter says in the book, and after learning this at the beginning of their collaboration, "I felt like we were all old friends."

"Charm on Goldfinch, charm on
Heaven help us when all your
gold is gone...."

In this book, Morris has painted each of the musicians' instruments with birds; Porter's 1794 cello has been painted with multiple goldfinches alighting upon it. "Seeing Jackie delicately paint the cello and surround it in a charm of goldfinches brought a new dimension to the history and beauty of the instrument," Porter writes. Later in the book, Morris has again painted the goldfinches, this time in a nature setting, along with Macfarlane's "Goldfinch" spell-poem.

Another song, "Heartwood," is a plea from the center of a tree to a wood-cutter, a response from Macfarlane against the unjust feeling of trees, particularly those on the streets of Sheffield, England. Says singer Karine Polwart, "It's a spell in praise of trees, not in blame of woodcutters (who know more about trees than anyone else, when they do need to come down)."

"Would you hew me to
the heartwood, cutter?
Would you lay me low
beneath your feet?"

In Spell Songs, the full lyrics are drawn in a golden spiral, echoing the whorls of heartwood, over a photo of Polwart performing the song. In The Lost Spells, Heartwood appears again; same spell-poem, but with new art by Morris. This theme of elements reappearing throughout all three books but with new art, elements and formatting is something that ties the books together.

The Spell Songs CD features 14 songs, the last of which is "The Lost Words Blessing." It opens with the sound of birdsong, and then Polwart begins to sing; she had suggested this idea of "a blessing that borrows images and phrases from many of The Lost Words spells (Bluebell, Dandelion, Fern, Heather, Heron, Kingfisher, Lark, Otter, Raven and Starling), as well as from new spells (Goldfinch and Grey Seal).

The form of "The Lost Words Blessing" is inspired by blessings in Scottish Gaelic, particularly from a beautiful collection of charms and incantations called Carmina Gadelica. "Many of the old blessings invoke local landscapes and a litany of non-human life," says Polwart. "And many are framed as lullabies. We gathered our blessing together round Jim's piano in just over an hour. And we offer it both in hope and light, and in grief for the losses and dark times yet to come."

"Enter the wild with care, my love
And speak the things you see
Let new names take and root and thrive and grow
And even as you travel far from heather, crag and river
May you like the little fisher, set the street alight with glitter
May you enter now as otter without falter into the water...."

Spell Songs includes multiple photographs and new pieces of art by Morris, lyrics to the tunes on the CD, Macfarlane's spell-poems, conversations and essays, including one by Polwart, in which she writes about how Spell Songs came to be as just one response to The Lost Words:

"In its wild journeying, The Lost Words has become symbolic of this commitment to something greater, to coexisting with non-human life, noticing it and cherishing it, rather than having dominion over it ... the skills and qualities required to make music are subject to the same atomizing forces of disconnection and devaluation that catalyzed The Lost Words. They need our attention, love and advocacy as much as wrens and larks and otters do," Polwart says.

The Lost Words

The Lost Words, first book in the "trilogy" (though it's not really billed as such), began this journey by taking a stand against the discovery of the disappearance of certain words referring to nature when they were no longer deemed "important." Children, apparently, no longer needed the wild landscape of imagination and play; but only the practical world of computers and blog posts.

In 2007, a reader noticed about 40 common words concerning nature were disappearing when a new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary, widely used in schools around the world, did not include such words.

These "lost words" included acorn, adder, bluebell, dandelion, fern, heron, kingfisher, newt, otter and willow. Taking the place of these natural, wild words were indoor, tame and virtual ones such as attachment, blog, broadband and voice-mail.

Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris made a "spell book" 10 years later to combat this awful disappearance; an oversized, beautiful book of words and art, it conjures back 20 of these lost words, and the beings they name, from acorn to wren.

The book went on to become a best-selling award-winner, including the Kate Greenway Medal and the British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year in 2018. Helping bring back some of what has been lost, it's a book not just for children, but for all people.

"Once upon a time," begins the book, "words began to vanish from the language of children. They disappeared so quietly that at first almost no-one noticed -- fading away like water on stone. The words were those that children used to name the natural world around them: acorn, adder, bluebell, bramble, conker ... gone!

"You hold in your hands a spellbook for conjuring back these lost words. To read it, you will need to seek, find and speak. ... It is told in gold, the gold of goldfinches that flit through its pages in charms...."

In this book, as in The Lost Spells, enchantment is woven in the blending of art and acrostic poetry; otters gracefully perform underwater ballet, dandelions proudly flower sunshine yellow and puffball white, and regal birds snap up tiny fish into their bills while Macfarlane elegantly captures their essence:

"Kingfisher: the colour-giver, fire bringer, flame-flicker,
river's quiver:
Ink-black bill, orange throat, and a quick blue
back-gleaming feather stream..."
Neat and still it sits on the snag of a stick, until with...
Gold-flare, wing-fan, whipcrack the kingfisher --
zingfisher, singfisher! --
Flashes down too fast to follow, quick and quicker
carves its hollow...."

The Lost Words has been adapted not only for folksong but for classical music, rap, film, drama, dance, radio, card games and jigsaws, as well as murals for hospital walls. Copies of the book have now been donated to more than two-thirds of British primary schools, as well as every hospice in the country, thanks to donations to community campaigns.