They tell us about human beings that undertake journeys through

the wilderness of heath and forests, the otherness of the fairy world,

the oddities of human behaviour. They tell us about nature, friend and

foe to man, sheltering and destructive, a place of exile and restoration,

a place where one gets lost in the meanders of the human mind. They

tell us about queens and paupers, faithless lovers and lovesick suitors,

the generous and the wicked, the bold and the submissive. Deep down,

they tell us about human nature: how it aspires to loyalty, delights in self-sacrifice

but falls into the traps of rash promises, jealousy, and the

thirst for fame.

They tell us about the Otherworld, complete with dragons, gem-paved

castles, cruel kings and lascivious fairies, a world that is but a mirror of

our own, so easy to enter but so hard to forget. Each is unique but they

all pretend to spring from the strings of harper-kings. They descend

from courtly romances written by a French lady, but rich London

merchants loved to hear them told. Nameless copyists wrote them

down in parchment and they have travelled though seven hundred

years. They are the Breton lays in Middle English. They will take you

there and back again , on a journey of poetic exploration.