Sometimes a project has so much potential, so much more to give beyond its original iteration, that it seems to take on a life of its own. This is certainly the case with Spell Songs, which can trace its roots back to 2015, when the nature writer Robert Macfarlane published Landmarks, a study (or rather a celebration) of language and landscape. It was in Landmarks that Macfarlane first posited the idea of a word-horde, a lexicon of landscape-words at risk of being forgotten – and worryingly culled from children’s dictionaries – as people become increasingly estranged from nature. In 2017, Macfarlane collaborated with the illustrator Jackie Morris to create The Lost Words: A Spell Book, a stunningly produced selection of some of our most wonderful and endangered…

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