At a reception following the premiere of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies' psychologically disturbing and musically overwhelming Eight Songs for a Mad King, the composer was approached by Randolph Stowe, the writer who had so vividly imagined King George's hallucinations into prose. "Let's write a funny one as a sequel" he proposed.

They created a counter part to the Eight Songs, using the same instrumental ensemble but replacing the male singer with a female, and choosing an equally intriguing subject: Eliza Emily Donnithorne. Miss Donnithorne had become rather famous in Australia when, upon being abandoned at the altar, she locked herself away in her house and, as the story goes, continued to wear her wedding dress until her death some three decades later. In fact, her odd story is thought to have been one of the inspirations for Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations.

The telling of this tale can be classed as a song cycle, or maggot, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines both as 'a whimsical or perverse fantasy' and 'a dance tune'.

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