Daisy Rickman at the Centre of the Labyrinth

To make the celebratory reopening of Giant’s Castle Maze an even more magical event, we invited the extraordinary musician Daisy Rickman over to the islands to play her mesmerising music in the centre of the newly restored maze. 

Daisy Rickman, Layan Harman and our labyrinth banners out on Salakee Down. If the weather was clearer we would have been able to see Daisy’s childhood home across the water.

Daisy comes from just across the ocean from Scilly in Mousehole (pronounced "Mow-zul") on the Cornish Coast - a tiny town that is actually visible from Giant’s Castle on a clear day, as you can see the mainland from this side of St Mary’s. Despite our childhoods passing less than 30 miles apart (granted, there was 28 miles of ocean in the way), Daisy and I actually met in Berlin in 2019, after I became aware of her work in an exhibition at PZ gallery in Penzance (RIP) a year earlier. As well as being an incredible folk musician, Daisy is also a visual artist, and it was her series of Hilma Af-Klint inspired paintings in this show - and the insistence of a mutual friend that we must meet - that first made me aware of her artistry.

It was only later that I heard her play and was blown away from the beginning. Daisy’s music is as otherworldly as it is sonorous, and when we were dreaming up plan of which artists we could bring to the islands to help us celebrate the newly restored Giant’s Castle Maze, she was first to spring to mind.

Daisy sat on the central stone and played an acoustic version of one of her songs.

Daisy chose to play her song Majestic Sea which is inspired by the coastline of West Penwith, just over the ocean, a place that is as similarly dramatic and magical as Scilly. Like that iconic coast - a stunning natural landscape, which is also steeped in legend - Giant’s Castle Maze has been shaped by wind and coastal spray, the slow growth of heather, and generations of feet. As this music reverberated around the labyrinth’s coils, the ancientness of human habitation on this heathland felt very close. As if, thousands of years ago, people were also converging on the sacred landscape of Salakee Down (there were two Bronze Age stone circles here, as well as the Iron Age Cliff Castle, and our 1950s labyrinth) to engage in the universally human act of playing and listening to music together.

My family always told me that Giant’s Castle Maze was made by the fairies, and it felt easy to believe in the site’s magical powers as Daisy’s transcendent song uncoiled along the labyrinth’s paths. It was an incredibly moving, almost numinous experience and several audience members were moved to tears - including me, laid out on the heather (no longer curled up inside The Bullhorn’s shell) and weeping quietly into my own ears.

Audience members found Daisy’s performance incredibly moving.

I could not imagine a more beautiful way to honour Giant’s Castle Maze, which is not quite natural, not wholly human, and an esoteric piece of folk-history. Daisy embodied the creativity and mystery that spring from this incredible landscapes of both our homes, and I believe it is this same creative brush with mystery that must have inspired Scilly’s maze-makers, winding back through the centuries.

Follow this link to hear Daisy’s music.

And click here to support Daisy’s work by ordering her records, artwork and merch online.

For more of her work and for upcoming gigs, follow her on Instagram @daisyrickman.

Thanks so much to Daisy, and to Inga Drazniece and Anaïs Serres for photography.