Mother Naked

The City of Durham, 1434. Out of a storm, an aging minstrel arrives at the cathedral to entertain the city`s most powerful men. Mother Naked is his name, and the story he`s come to tell is the Legend of the Fell Wraith: the gruesome `walking ghost` some say slaughtered the nearby village of Segerston forty years earlier. But is this monster only a myth, born from the dim minds of toiling peasants? Or does the Wraith - and the murders - have roots in real events suffered by those fated to a lifetime of labour? As Mother Naked weaves the strands of the mystery - of class, religion, art and ale - the chilling truth might be closer to his privileged audience than they could ever imagine. Taking its inspiration from a single payment entered into Durham`s Cathedral rolls, `Modyr Nakett` was the lowest-paid performer in over 200 years of records. Set against the traumatic shadow of the Black Death and the Peasant`s Revolt, Mother Naked speaks back from the margins, in a fury of imaginative recuperation.