Sealtress of Time

I hope you can help me; I'm looking for a song.

Last night I was with my sister and one of her friends was visiting. We were in a building that I think must have been someone's house, but not any of ours. It had just two long thin rooms, one above the other with a stairway between, but it nonetheless felt like a rich person's house. My sister and her visitor were playing a game in which they pretended to be two women, one visiting the other. It was the game called "Callers" that Jane played with Ranee in _Seventeen_.

The visitor was bragging about her children and lifestyle, ever patronizing, becoming more and more obnoxious every time she opened her mouth. I couldn't decide whether she really was a horrible person, or was just playing such a character for amusement value in the game. I hoped it was just for the game, because if so, I could enjoy it - she was really putting in an entertaining performance - but in the back of my mind I suspected that nobody could consciously be that good at role-playing and she must surely be doing it unconsciously, and that part of my mind instantly hated her. My sister was responding with escalating sarcasm and thinly-veiled hostility, and I again couldn't tell whether it was the game or for real.

They went off downstairs, leaving me to my own devices on the upper floor. I was looking around for food; I found some Graham crackers and started eating them. Then I noticed something on the floor that looked like the patch of leaked oil you might see in a parking lot; it looked like someone had parked a car there on the carpet, but it wasn't clear how they could have driven it up the stairs, let alone why.

As I was puzzling over this my sister climbed the stairs and rummaged around in the kitchen area. She found some dry toast, broke off a small piece and gave it to me, telling me to eat it. Then she headed off down the stairs with the rest of the toast, telling me to follow. "You'll enjoy this!" she said. I was aware that she was going to play some sort of practical joke on the visitor, telling her to eat the toast and then convincing her that it had been something disgusting; she had fed me some so that she'd be able to say, "Well, Matthew ate it!", as part of the punchline of the joke.

But as I followed her down the stairs, a song started playing (I think there had been background music throughout, but this was the first song I took notice of) and I immediately focused on it. I liked it immediately, and I thought I must make a note of the title and artist; the title seemed obvious, and unique enough to make finding the song easy, but I had no clue about the artist. As I joined my sister and her friend in a circle of leather armchairs, I saw a piece of expensive-looking hi-fi equipment, possibly a receiver or DVD-Audio player. Its 16-segment vacuum fluorescent display read "SEALTRES", obviously a truncation of "Sealtress of Time". There was a television nearby, displaying a static image of a young man wearing a cowboy hat, and the words "FAR WEST" superimposed in the lower right corner, but the song's style wasn't even remotely country and I figured the television must be independent of the music.

It seemed intuitively obvious to me that the title "Sealtress of Time" would apply to a demigoddess or mythological heroine in charge of sealing up Time. The word "sealer" wouldn't be right because that means someone who hunts seals-marine-mammals, not someone who makes seals-like-gaskets. Now in hindsight, looking at the lyrics written down (especially the third line), I wonder if in fact "sealtress" might be "saltress": "one who puts salt in things (feminine)", but that's not what I thought I heard when I was listening to the song, so it may be an artifact of memory. The spelling "sealtress" and pronunciation (the singer sang it with the first syllable stressed and midway between SELL and SULL) seemed natural. Presumably the male equivalent of a "sealtress" would be a "sealtor". However, as of this writing, the word "sealtor" occurs in Web pages indexed by Google, Altavista, and AllTheWeb (Lycos) only as someone's surname, and the word "sealtress" doesn't occur at all.

So it would appear that I may find it quite difficult to locate the correct lyrics, let alone a copy of the recording I heard. But if anyone would know the song, it would be you, so that's why I am asking about it here. Below is my best reconstruction of the lyrics; I have the musical setting too but I never learnt how to write those down properly. If it's any help, the solo male singer had some kind of British-Commonwealth accent (possibly Cockney, or Australian?) in which "time" and "name" rhymed perfectly. Anyone who recognizes this, please let me know.

Sealtress of Time

Child of the Sun and a morning star-father
This is the Sealtress of Time
Scatter a handful of salt in the water
To mark the divisions of Time

Dropping a ribbon for each of her lovers
Betraying them all without shame
Baking a bread with the help of her brothers
This is the fullness of Time

Bricks of the kiln go to building the oven
This is the making of Time
Flour from the field and yeast for the rising
Repeating and ever the same

Words of the priestess engraved in the sandstone
Children pronouncing her name
Words of the prophets destroyed in the river
This is the hammer of Time

I've passed a man on the King's crooked highway
This is a victim of Time
I've been a knight of the black and white glory
Seeking the end of the game

Head in the spheres and vision diminished
With the reversals of Time
Cry out her name at the start and the finish
This is the Sealtress of Time