The seals are very fond of music. Everywhere I went people told me that, but I was never fortunate enough to hear first hand the music that belongs to them. I believe there is music that remains privately in the minds of the country people of the West, but can only give here a few pieces that have found their way into print. I shall put first a ballad, "The Grey Selchie of Sule Skerrie," and, last, a few notes which were sung by a seal off the island of Skomer, Pembrokeshire, in 1946, and recorded there by Dr. Ludwig Koch. These two have moved me more than the others.
--from David Thomson's final chapter -- "The Music of the Seals" -- in his The People of the Sea: A Journey in Search of the Seal Legend.
Counterpoint Press: Washington, D.C.. 2000.
First published in 1954 by Turnstile Press Ltd, in Great Britain; revised editions in 1965 and 1980.
Counterpoint edition features an introduction by Seamus Heaney.
