Fourteenth century Ireland was a time of invasions, war, lawlessness, famine and plague. A time of fear, violence and almost unimaginable mutability.
In 1317 Richard de Ledrede arrived in Kilkenny as the new Bishop of Ossory and immediately set about challenging the secular authorities and making a name for himself as a zealous moraliser and "scourge of heresy". He was responsible for the famous witchcraft trial of Dame Alice Kyteler, composed a fantastical and nightmarish list of charges against her and others, and caused the first person in recorded history to be burned at the stake for the heresy of witchcraft; Dame Alice’s servant, Petronilla de Meath.
This is the backdrop to our story. The same fertile imagination that composed the phantasmagoric sorcery charges also composed beautiful, esoteric and richly imagistic poetry; the songs we present here. As Stanley Kubrick said when asked if his characters were good or evil, “They are good AND evil!”
