Brendan Taaffe: To Sea in a Sieve

In the summer of 2004, I learned Baidín Fheilimi, an Irish children’s song, from Matt Cranitch. I was so taken with playing it that I didn’t want it to end, but I wanted to be playing something different—if that makes any sense—so I wrote this waltz to follow. The title comes from the writing of Edward Lear, and his poem The Jumblies:

They went to sea in a sieve, they did
In a sieve they went to sea
In spite of all their friends could say
On a winter’s morn, a stormy day
In a sieve they went to sea.