Jumblies

Guinea -- might they not have set sail from Caffraria, New Guinea, or the country of the Papuans, long years before the Christian era, like the "Jumblies," in their frail canoes, perhaps escaping persecution, driven by the winds and currents, to land at last on the unpeopled shores of Filipinia?

The Great White Tribe in Filipinia 1914

On the Caedmon recording of Edward Lear's poetry, Beatrice Lillie and Stanley Holloway perform "The Jumblies" in a rising, dipping, melodious atonal lilt.

Singing Our Song Roger Sutton 2006

Then Dad would read me the more serious nonsense about the Owl and the Pussycat, or the Jumblies, who went to sea in a sieve, or the Dong with the Luminous Nose, as lonely a figure as exists in English literature.

Summer of Deliverance Christopher Dickey 1998

Then Dad would read me the more serious nonsense about the Owl and the Pussycat, or the Jumblies, who went to sea in a sieve, or the Dong with the Luminous Nose, as lonely a figure as exists in English literature.

Summer of Deliverance Christopher Dickey 1998

Then Dad would read me the more serious nonsense about the Owl and the Pussycat, or the Jumblies, who went to sea in a sieve, or the Dong with the Luminous Nose, as lonely a figure as exists in English literature.

Summer of Deliverance Christopher Dickey 1998

"The Jumblies" is a setting of Edward Lear's elusive nonsense, as full of the flavor of subtile humor as its original.

Contemporary American Composers Being a Study of the Music of This Country, Its Present Conditions and Its Future, with Critical Estimates and Biographies of the Principal Living Composers; and an Abundance of Portraits, Fac-simile Musical Autographs, and Compositions Rupert Hughes 1914

But before coming to that, let us quote a few lines from "The Jumblies," who, as all the world knows, went to sea in a sieve: --

Nonsense Books Edward Lear 1850

Whether it's the (Norse) souls of the dead sailing on a ship made of fingernails, or (Edward Lear's) Jumblies setting to sea in their sieve, the surreal always has a resonance that the plainly symbolic may not, and Ali's got a good sense of how to balance the timelessly-evocative with those images that root a song in a time.

Drowned In Sound // Feed 2009

Cryptograms lead on to Jumbles-emigrants, one assumes, from the lands where the Jumblies live; these are anagrams on various themes.

VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol III No 4 1977

“Kubla Khan”) the foremost of the poets of the world; at no long distance would come Mr. William Morris as he was when he wrote “Golden Wings,” “The Blue Closet,” and “The Sailing of the Sword;” and, close up, Mr. Lear, the author of “The Yongi Bongi Bo,” an the lay of the “Jumblies.”

Letters to Dead Authors 2006