This song is about a boy who wants to bury his father at sea over the objections of two priests. It's a satire of rituals - the priests think the man should be buried according to their practices.
Sting's father died shortly before he wrote this song, and The Soul Cages album was a result of his grief. Sting wrote in Lyrics By Sting: "We'd had a difficult relationship, and his death hit me harder than I'd imagined possible. I felt emotionally and creatively paralyzed, isolated, and unable to mourn. I just felt numb and empty, as if the joy had been leached out of my life." He added: "I became obsessed with my hometown [Wallsend, England] and its history, images of boats and the sea, and my childhood in the shadow of the shipyards."
The music is based on a Cello suite from Bach.
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