Why did 'Fireman' duo use this title?

Subject: Why did 'Fireman' duo use this title?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Jun 15 - 05:19 AM

Checking the biog of Paul McCartney in connection with some other topic, I found that he has sometimes played with Martin Glover as a duo called 'The Fireman'. The name of the title-track of a 1993 album of theirs, "Strawberries Ocean Ships Forest", must surely derive from that rather odd stanza in the familiar lament for a lost love, "The Week Before Easter", recorded by The Coppers, Martin Simpson et al:


The men in yon forest, they asked of me
How many strawberries grow in the salt sea?
And I answer them back with a tear in my eye
"How many ships sail in the forest?"


The McCartney/Glover track is, I find from YouTube, an 8+ minute ostinato instrumental riff with a few scat voices in the background, of no particular discernible theme. Has anyone any idea what, if any, was the connection, or the relevance, of this somewhat arbitrary sounding folksong-derived title?

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Why did 'Fireman' duo use this title?
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 07 Jun 15 - 07:44 AM

According to the book "Lennon and McCartney - Together Alone" by John Blaney the construction, mixing and naming of the tracks was mainly down to Glover and quotes Glover as stating

"The titles were arrived at on impulse. I wasn't really thinking too much about them. They came spontaneously - it was a full moon that night so I was getting quite esoteric"

So perhaps the folk lyric was at the back of his mind somewhere?