Sunset scene with people in flower crowns facing a large woven figure and flags near the ocean cliff.

Summerisle - The Old Ways

My name is May. I come from a place you might recognise — green hills, stone walls, a village that knows its own mind. A place where the old calendar still turns by fire and feast, where the baker waves good morning and means it, where everyone has a part to play and everyone plays it willingly. Or near enough willingly. That's what matters, in the end.
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These aren't fairy tales. These aren't warnings. These are the old ways — and the old ways never left. Sit close. The fire's still warm. Let me show you around.

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Album Track List...

Smiling woman in floral dress and flower crown holding wildflowers in a meadow under a cloudy sky.
Track 1

Invitation

"These are not fairy tales. These are not warnings. These are the old ways. And the old ways never left."

Woman with a floral crown looks at a large wooden wicker figure at sunset by the sea.
Track 2

The Fruits of Summerisle

We begin on the island. The festival is being prepared. The garlands are hung. The strangers have arrived off the boats right on time. Everything is warm and golden and welcoming. Which is exactly how it is supposed to feel.

Group of people posing in an old village at sunset with signs reading Welcome to Summerisle and M. Wilkes Baker.
Track 3

The Ones You Know

In every village, in every century, the calendar has been quietly observed by the most ordinary of faces. That is the horror.

Crowd of people on a coastal village shore waving to a ship leaving under cloudy sky.
Track 4

Come To The Island

Every bargain needs a payment. The island has always understood this better than the mainland. Out here the old logic is cleaner. The sea keeps you honest. And sometimes — when the harvest has been poor and the winter has been long — something comes in on the tide.

Man in old-fashioned clothes stands in a barley field overlooking a coastal village at sunset.
Track 5

John Barleycorn Must Fall

He stands in the field like a king in his gold. He knows what is coming. He has always known. Cut him down, bind him, bury him deep — and wait. Because John Barleycorn always comes back.

Woman in old dress stands on rocky beach at sunset with a lit stone cottage on hillside.
Track 6

Selkie Shore

The sea doesn't take violently. It simply reminds you of what you were before. For some, that reminder is everything.

Woman tying white ribbons on a young girl's braided hair near a window, vintage style.
Track 7

White Ribbons

She was chosen from the girls on the green. The whole village voted. Her mother cried when she heard, which she thought was sweet. They gave her white ribbons on the morning of May and everyone came out to wave.

Woman with floral crown looking right as people hold hands near a large wooden statue at sunset.
Track 8

The May Queen

The land doesn't ask for what you can spare. It asks for what you love most. That has always been the terms. That has always been the price of the green coming back and the sun returning and the apples swelling on the bough.

Sunset over a valley with a figure near a tree and bonfires on a hill, text reads The Longest Night.
Track 9

The Longest Night

The solstice is the hinge of everything. The night when the darkness looks you in the eye and asks — do you still believe? And you have to answer with fire. With song. With staying awake when every part of you wants to sleep.

Dark forest scene with a figure wearing antlers on horseback, surrounded by riders and dogs, title Herne's Wood.
Track 10

Hernes Wood

There are things in the old landscape that even those who know the calendar approach carefully. The Hunt doesn't ask permission. It doesn't make bargains.

Elderly woman with long gray hair stands in a dark garden near a rustic house at dusk.
Track 11

The Cunning Womans Garden

She has been at the end of that lane longer than anyone alive can remember. They come to her before the village wakes. With their sorrows, their sicknesses, their secrets.

Woman in a long dress standing in a field at sunset with text 'Lisbet of the Meadow Summerisle'.
Track 12

Lisbet Of The Meadow

There are some faces that don't belong to any one time. Blonde as harvest barley. Blue eyes that look straight through you into something older. She has a name — though nobody quite remembers how they know it.

Sepia-toned rural landscape with stone monolith, village church, and sunset sky titled The Procession Has Passed.
Track 13

Procession

The procession has begun. No words now. Just the sound of the village moving together through the dark toward the hill. The hurdy-gurdy drone, the steady bodhran, the recorder weaving its ancient melody.

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