Echoes, and a haunting musical lament of seals singing

Wrath is from the old Norse hvarf, meaning turning point, so that’s what we did, altering course from west to south on reaching Robert Stevenson’s lighthouse, tramping down a crumbling road in bright sunshine before striking out across the boggy moor to work our way back to the sea.

The coast around Cape Wrath is among the most dramatic in Britain. East of Kearvaig are the cliffs of Clò Mòr, at almost 1,000ft the highest on the mainland. South of the cape, the sandstone is softer and so more eroded and rotten, seamed with gullies.

Approaching Geodha Ruadh na Fola, the clifftop lost its verdant edge to become a blasted wasteland of grit and pebbles. The Gaelic translates as bloody cove, and I could see why. The dizzying red cliffs, hundreds of feet high, were haemorrhaging sand blown up the cliff by the brisk northwesterly to tear at its rim.

As we turned to leave, a mournful howl emerged from the cliffs, amplified by the walls of rock so that it swelled as it climbed, a round, musical lament with no apparent source. I felt my heart race and the hair on my neck prickle at this disembodied song, so loud and unexpected. Then I spotted them. Six grey seals, out on a platform beneath the cliffs, and two more in the water. They were more than 200 metres away and yet their singing was all around us.

In The People of the Sea, David Thomson’s haunting exploration of seals as shapeshifters – the selkie myths – he records how men were drawn to this singing to discover seal-women who had shed their skins, on land and were vulnerable. Those who knew better let them slip back into the waves unmolested. Their song is echoed in local music, and there are stories of seals that picked up a tune where its human singer left it. Lacking the skill, we turned away and walked on to Sandwood Bay.

@calmandfearless

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