Above: "Teif on da Lum" by fiddler and composer Vicky Gray, from the Shetland Islands. The song appears on her debut EP, Atlaness (2021). The video is by Shetland film-maker JJ Jamieson.

Below: "The Grey Selkie of Sule Skerry" (Child Ballad 113), a traditional song of the Orkney and Shetland islands, performed by singer/songwriter Maz O'Conner. The video of seals is not by O'Connor but underscores the song beautifully, filmed by divers off the coast of Coll in the Inner Hebrides, and the Farne Islands of Northumberland. The song itself can be found on O'Conner's second album, This Willowed Light (2014). For previous selkie posts, go here.

Above: "Selkie-boy" by Julie Fowlis, from the Outer Hebrides, based on the words of Robert Macfarlane, the art of Jackie Morris, and the lore of selkies. The piece was created for The Lost Words: Spell Songs (2019), a glorious album and concert series that turned the "spells" found in Jackie & Robert's beautiful book The Lost Words into equally beautiful music. The video was filmed near Jackie's home on the coast of Wales, where she inked the verses of "Selkie-boy" onto stone as a gift to the sea. “When we went in search of seals for the film it was almost as if they knew," she says. "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.”

Below: "The Arms of the Ocean" by Gaelic singer/songwriter Rachel Walker, with Alec Dalglish (from Skerryvore). The song was released as a single in 2017. Walker's most recent solo album is Gael (2020), and it's a beauty.

Above: "Charmer" by Salt House (Jenny Sturgeon, Lauren MacColl, Ewan MacPherson), a trio based in Scotland whose music I listen to constantly.  This one is from their gorgeous second album Undersong (2018). The album was made and the video filmed on the Hebridean island of Berensay.

Below: "Caim Chaluim Chille chaoimh (The encompassing of Columba the kindly)" by Julie Fowlis, Éamon Doorley, Zoë Conway, and John McIntyre. The piece "is based on a text from Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica, a multi-volume collection of Gaelic prayers, incantations, charms and songs collected in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland over one hundred years ago. The musicians have also woven into the text some words from a blessing from the Middle-Irish period. Their composition bridges the Sea of Moyle and generations of tradition in a contemporary and layered arrangement using voices, guitar, bouzouki, violin and oboe to commemorate the remarkable Columba -- a man who left an indelible mark on the life, literature and landscape of both Ireland and Scotland. In the video they have made to accompany their composition, the four musicians and singers have invited artist Ellis O’Connor to respond in paint, inspired by the music they have created."

For a previous post on Columba and other "peregrini" of the northern islands go here.

The art today is from The Seal Children by Jackie Morris (Frances Lincoln Children's Books, 2005, & ‎Otter-Barry Books, revised edition, 2016), which I highly recommend. And speaking of seal and selkie tales, there's been a discussion on Twitter recently on just how good Margo Lanagan's selkie novel The Brides of Rollrock Island is.