The Magic of Wild Words

In 2017, a children’s book was published to treasure the disappearing language of nature. It became a worldwide hit that has now spawned two musical albums. Annabel Ross met author Robert Macfarlane to explore the phenomenal power of The Lost Words

- By Annabel Ross. Photographs by John Cartwright

Once you have had a book published and it goes out into the big wide world, you have no control of what will happen to it, how it will be received, what it might become. Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris couldn’t have known how phenomenally successful The Lost Words would be and the extent to which it would inspire people around the world.

“Yes, it makes me so happy,” says Robert, “but it’s so much bigger than us now and, in a way, it’s nothing to do with us. And I think what it speaks profoundly to is this moment of loss and love and grief and hope that we live through with regard to nature.”

One of the most recent testaments to its enduring power – inspired by the creatures, art and poetry of both The Lost Words and follow-up book The Lost Spells – is the release of a second album by the Spell Singers, Spell Songs: Let the Light In. The musicians were delighted to be given the opportunity to get back together in the studio.

This is thanks to the Folk by the Oak partnership of Caroline and Adam Slough, but it all started at the Hay Festival, explains Robert. “I wrote the spells to be spoken; that was definitely always the idea, because they have to be spoken aloud for the magic to work.

“It was only a step from that for them to be sung. I asked Kerry Andrew, the brilliant composer and singer musician, if she would speak the wren spell, and she wanted to set it to music, so she created this absolutely haunting version. We played that, just because it was so magical, at an event at Hay Festival. Caroline and Adam were in the audience and turned to each other afterwards and said, ‘well, there’s an album in that book, we just need to find a way let it out’. So they then gathered this incredible group of musicians.”