The Lost Words Blessing (cover - The Spell Song Ensemble)

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In 2007, a new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary omitted forty words, all names of common plants and animals, that had apparently fallen so far out of use by children that they no longer warranted inclusion. The “lost” words included acorn, fern, heron, kingfisher, newt, otter, wren, and willow. New words were included in their place: blog, broadband, bullet-point, cut-and-paste, and voicemail.

This inspired author Robert MacFarlane and Illustrator Jackie Morris to create the book “The Lost Words,” a book of “spells” intended to restore these words to our collective vocabulary by restoring their names and forms to our collective consciousness. That book, in turn, inspired a collective of musicians to create the album “Spell Songs,” all featuring the lost words.

This song, “The Lost Words Blessing,” takes its form from traditional Scottish Gaelic folk songs, in particular a type of Scottish incantation called Carmina Gadelica, and it struck us as the perfect benediction for the new year. Each year incurs loss, forgetting, leaving or being left behind. So here's a song of restoration, of calling back to you what has been lost, of allowing yourself to remember that outside the gray box, there is simple magic that is always available to you, as a creature who is both in this world, and of it.

Here’s to a peaceful new year.