Artist: Kathryn Tickell
Author: Chris Wood/Robert Southwell
Label: Park
Year: 2001

With the Ensemble Mystical. Music by traditional singer-fiddler (and ex Traffic) Chris Wood on a poem by 16th century English Jesuit and martyr Robert Southwell (1561-1595). While under Queen Elisabeth I it was strictly forbidden for roman catholic priests to remain on British soil for more than 40 days consecutively, Southwell was a clandestine missionary for more than six years when he was betrayed, incarcerated, tortured, hanged, drowned, quartered and eventually proclamed a Saint in 1970. To master the eloquence of a poem like The Burning Babe, written in jail, Ben Jonson (1572-1637) said he would gladly destroy most of his own work.