This new folk song - a dark, compelling narrative written by Ciarán Ruby - is a love story set against the backdrop of a real historical event.

Over the course of three days in October 1621, two vast armies fought in the skies above Cork City. Recorded in a pamphlet of the time as 'The Wonderfull Battell of Starelings', witnesses spoke of streets littered with dead and dying birds, beaks and talons impaled in each other. Seen by citizens as a portent of ill things to come, the following year Cork burnt to the ground in a fire caused by a lightning strike.

Powerful and moving, the song imagines a couple on their wedding day who bear witness to this terrifying conflagration. As witnesses, they must ultimately face the consequences.

400 years later, for the anniversary of this strange war of the birds, The Diviners are proud to release 'Battle of the Starlings.'