The Book of Secrets

A review of Loreena McKennitt's 1997 album

"In casting your inspirational net as an artist, you become familiar with the humility that comes with watching your best-laid plans veer sideways, and recordings becoming something other than what you expected. So, you set out to travel to Rome… and end up in Istanbul. You set off for Japan… and you end up on a train across Siberia. The journey, not the destination, becomes a source of wonder."

Canadian singer, songwriter and harpist, Loreena McKennitt has explored her Celtic musical roots in some of her earlier albums like ‘The Visit.’ But her musical journey has also been a literal one, as she’s travelled to other parts of the world in her search for musical inspiration. The 1997 album, ‘The Book of Secrets,’ is one of her finest works. The Celtic influence is still there, but she’s also moving further east.

The album comes with extensive bilingual (English and French) sleeve notes and journal extracts which detail McKennitt’s travels. Introducing her first track, ‘Prologue,’ she refers to old religious texts, including The Book of Kells, and writes:

July 6, 1996, Istanbul: One of the organisers of the Istanbul Jazz Festival reminds me that a certain section of the city can be traced back to Celtic roots … in tracing the mosaic of history, I am eager to learn of the influences that come from this place.

The first track certainly has traces of both the Celtic world and the middle east. Her vocalisations are Celtic, but the musical backing has a stronger Arabic sound. The intertwined history that she found in Istanbul is replicated within ‘Prologue.’ And, indeed, it is a very appropriate track to open this musical journey.

‘The Mummer’s Dance’ is one of the highlights of the album. Referring to James Frazer’s book, ‘The Golden Bough,’ McKennitt notes that “mumming has its roots in the tree-worshipping of the peoples who inhabited great regions of a forested Europe now long gone.” Traditionally, mummers would go out in procession, masked and dressed up in ribbon or rags, carrying branches of greenery and singing.

Associated with springtime and fertility, it had its own stock cast of characters like the Fool. In fact, McKennitt’s description brings to mind the procession in the film, ‘The Wicker Man’ which also had a cast of archetypal characters. In ‘The Mummer’s Song’ McKennitt has incorporated the chorus of a traditional mumming song from Oxfordshire: “We’ve been rambling all the night / And some time of this day / Now returning back again / We bring a garland gay.” Otherwise, the music and lyrics are McKennitt’s own, and are in the true spirit of this springtime festival.

‘Skellig’ is the third track and is a reference to the Skellig Islands which lie off the coast of Ireland. Illuminated Celtic manuscripts like The Book of Kells were in McKennitt’s mind when she wrote this song. A monk who has lived on a remote island monastery and spent his life copying religious and philosophical texts is the narrator of this song. An old man whose isolation has been alleviated by the books that have been his companions.

‘Marco Polo’ moves the album east. Quoting from a visit to Venice in 1991, McKennitt remarks on the Celtic artefacts she sees in the city, and goes on to comment: “…walking through the city itself has heightened my awareness of just how important Venice was as a crossroads between cultures.”

As she notes, some historians now believe that Marco Polo’s account of his journey may have been fictitious and that it was simply cobbled together from different sources. Purely an instrumental piece, McKennitt weaves a Sufi melody into the beginning and middle of the track. ‘Marco Polo’ is a wonderful piece of music that really encapsulates the fantastic story of a journey to the East. Like ‘The Mummer’s Dance’ it is one of the best tracks on the album.

On her album, ‘The Visit,’ McKennitt put Tennyson’s poem, ‘The Lady of Shalott’ to music. In the next track on ‘The Book of Secrets’ she does the same with Alfred Noyes’ poem, ‘The Highwayman.’ It’s the tragic tale of an eighteenth century highwayman and his sweetheart, Bess, the daughter of an innkeeper, and McKennitt turns it into a great ballad. It’s the kind of song best listened to when the lights are down and there’s a fire blazing in the hearth.

‘La Serenissima’ returns to the eastern influences of other parts of the album. The title is a reference to Venice. McKennitt mentions reading Jan Morris’ book about the city, and a description there of the visit by young Henri III of France to Venice in 1574. “Upon his arrival, he was dazzled by an extraordinary pageant arranged in his honour: barges decorated with triumphal arches; rafts peopled by glass-blowers who created figurines as they floated past; paintings commissioned from masters of the era.” ‘La Serenissima’ is a beautiful piece of instrumental music that incorporates the harp, cello, viola, and classical guitar within a Renaissance-inspired sound.

‘Night Ride Across the Caucasus’ is a song which, in spite of its title, has a very Celtic vocal sound (though as McKennitt mentions elsewhere, the Celts are believed by some to have come from the Russian Steppes and horses are important both in the cultures of that area and traditional Celtic societies). It’s not one of the stronger tracks, but it does have a relaxing sound.

The album closes with ‘Dante’s Prayer.’ This song includes an excerpt of the St Petersburg Chamber Choir singing ‘Alleluia, Behold the Bridegroom.’ This Russian Orthodox sound perfectly compliments the song, providing both an atmospheric opening, and the track’s final moments. McKennitt’s voice has a suitably hushed quality here at times, but it also rises into a purer sound. ‘Dante’s Prayer’ is a perfect closing track for ‘The Book of Secrets.’

“These songs have been assembled like a mosaic, with pieces fitted in one by one. They are also souvenirs that come of sifting through shards of history and scraping away layers to reveal the fragile past…”

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This review was originally written years ago for the arts and review site laurahird.com. I posted it more recently to my developmental editing Substack a few months ago, but that was because I didn’t have the right place for it. I will be moving anything that seems to belong here over, though not all at the one time.