Prince Harry tells how he sang to seals on Caithness coast – then stripped off to join them
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Prince Harry has revealed how he "serenaded" seals on the Caithness coast – and concluded that his wife Meghan must have magic powers when the animals sang back at the couple.
Harry then stripped off and went into the sea to swim with the seals, although he was later warned that singing to them could have led to their "blood-soaked deaths” if orcas had been in the vicinity.
The shoreline encounter happened near the Castle of Mey in the summer of 2018, a few months after the marriage of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, and is recounted in Harry's newly published book Spare.
The controversial memoir went on sale in the UK on Tuesday. Many of the claims and allegations about members of the royal family within its pages had been leaked to the media in advance.
In the section involving the Castle of Mey, Prince Harry describes how he and Meghan had spent a few days there with King Charles III, then the Prince of Wales, whom he refers to as "Pa".
Harry says the bond between his wife and his father had been strong and that it "grew even stronger during that weekend".
He explains how Charles had been pleased to learn, over pre-dinner cocktails, that the Duchess of Sussex shared her birth date of August 4 with "Pa's favourite person": the late Queen Mother, known as Gan-Gan.
“At the memory of Gan-Gan, and the link between her and my bride, he suddenly became buoyant, telling stories I'd never heard, essentially performing, showing off for Meg," Harry writes. “One story in particular delighted us both, captured our imagination. It was about the selkies."
Charles, according to the book, explained to the couple that these were "Scottish mermaids" which "took the form of seals and cruised along the shore outside the castle", within a stone's throw of where they were sitting at the time.
"When you see a seal," the couple are said to have been told, "you can never tell... Sing to it. They often sing back.”
Harry writes that he and Meghan went down to the beach near the castle, stood on the rocks and looked out at the sea. They spotted a seal, watching them with "soulful eyes", then saw another.
“Just as Pa instructed, I ran to the water's edge, sang to them. Serenaded them," Harry writes.
Initially there was no answer.
"Meg joined me, and sang to them, and now of course they sang back.
"She really is magic, I thought. Even the seals know it.
"Suddenly, all over the water, heads were bobbing up, singing to her."
Harry likened it to "a seal opera" and considered it to be "a good omen". He writes that he took off his clothes, jumped into the water and swam towards the seals.
Later, a chef at the castle informed the couple that singing to the seals had been "a supremely bad" idea.
“This part of the Scottish coast was teeming with killer whales, the chef said, and singing to seals was like calling them to their blood-soaked deaths.”
