I was told by someone over 25 years ago that the song was based on Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, a three-book science series in which the protagonist, Hari Seldon, is a mathematician who invents a new field called psychohistory, which could predict the course of history based on a mathematical analysis of the emotional state of the people of the universe - emotion revealed as the ocean maid. Throughout the course of the history covered by the books, merchants, and later, religious, take over control of society, only to both eventually fail - coins and crosses never know their fruitless worth. The series is also a mystery, where the central unknown is the location of one of the two Foundation planets of a spiral galaxy where the psychohistorians that guide the future of civilization reside - a foundation left to create the spiral aim. Knowing the song, I was able to determine the location of the first foundation before it was revealed in the third book. Many of the elements of the song fit the story, enough for those intrigued to pick up the books. Of course, that doesn't discount what many others have said here, as the themes of the books are ancient traditional themes of many cultures.
I was told by someone over 25 years ago that the song was based on Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, a three-book science series in which the protagonist, Hari Seldon, is a mathematician who invents a new field called psychohistory, which could predict the course of history based on a mathematical analysis of the emotional state of the people of the universe - emotion revealed as the ocean maid. Throughout the course of the history covered by the books, merchants, and later, religious, take over control of society, only to both eventually fail - coins and crosses never know their fruitless worth. The series is also a mystery, where the central unknown is the location of one of the two Foundation planets of a spiral galaxy where the psychohistorians that guide the future of civilization reside - a foundation left to create the spiral aim. Knowing the song, I was able to determine the location of the first foundation before it was revealed in the third book. Many of the elements of the song fit the story, enough for those intrigued to pick up the books. Of course, that doesn't discount what many others have said here, as the themes of the books are ancient traditional themes of many cultures.