The libretto is by William Plomer, who translated the setting of the original into a Christian parable, set in early medieval times near the fictional Curlew River, in the fenlands of East Anglia.
The piece is meant to evoke feelings of traversing East Anglia's often bleak Fen landscape, illustrated by the solo opening melody, then wide open spaces as portrayed by sweeping string orchestral textures.
The extension of the plain into England consists mainly of the flatlands of East Anglia, The Fens and Lincolnshire, where the landscape is in parts strikingly similar to that of the Netherlands.
Thorney Abbey was a medieval monastic house established on the island of Thorney in The Fens of Cambridgeshire, England.
Efforts are being made to re-introduce it to newly suitable habitat in The Fens as part of the Great Fen Project.
A monk named Guthlac came to what was then an island in the Fens to live the life of a hermit and he dwelt at Croyland between 699 and 714.
People of Market Deeping, Deeping Gate and Deeping St James, together with other villages along the River Welland, presented a petition to Elizabeth I, requesting that the fens should be drained, as the banks of the river and of the neighbouring River Glen were in a poor state of repair.
In the 1820s, several wharves were built on the Fens Branch, to serve the developing collieries near Kingswinford, and the company considered applying for a new Act of Parliament in 1829, to give them powers to build extra lines in this area, but they did not proceed.
A separate company built the Stourbridge Extension Canal from the Fens Branch to Shut End (in Kingswinford) thus opening up another part of the coalfield to development.