In south Kilkenny, where Duiske stream joins the river Barrow at Graiguenamanagh, lies one of Ireland's many Norman-Cistercian abbeys. Song of Duiske is a novella set amongst this monastic community in the year 1304, a century after the abbey's foundation. It evokes the textures and rhythms of a medieval religious settlement, its peaceful routines as well as occasional trials, and celebrates with quiet lyricism the seasons and their solaces, 'the open sky, the fields and the woods'.