Richard Lionheart - Ja nus hons pris

"No man who's jailed can tell his purpose well..."

"Richard I, Coeur de Lion, was born in Oxford in 1157 and in 1171 became Duke of Aquitaine, where he spent much of his time. A poet and composer, in the tradition of his maternal great-grandfather, one of the first of the aristocratic troubadour poets, he spent two years, 1192 - 1194, as a prisoner in Austria. The story of his rescue by the minstrel Blondel is fictitious, but has had its operatic and dramatic uses. Ja nuls homs pris [sic] is the only one of his poems to survive with the music and was written during his imprisonment. Here he laments his fate, writing this song to comfort himself after two winters as a prisoner and using his own language, siche he never had occasion to learn English."

"It's no surprise if my heart's hurting me
because my father's torturing my land."