Good evening Sherry,

I wondered if it were your melody. That it is explains why I couldn't place it. Yes, I would like to use it, and thank you for your kind permission, but will only if you repeat the permission after actually hearing something...which you should be able to do next week, hopefully. I, too, am an organization freak. Or, more exactly, I know I should be, but am egregiously poor at it, so all the ideas, drafts, and revisions of anything I've written wind up in a single folder, rather than the latest versions in one and the rest in a "history" sub-folder. But I'll sort through things this weekend.

The idea something I've heard before has "bubbled to the surface" (good way to put it) occurs to me every time I write something. What starts as an idea that seems completely new and even sometimes not particularly melodious, after I have worked on it, and therefore heard many times, comes to sound like something I MUST have heard at some time in the past. That feeling extends to the instrumentation, even.
Fortunately, I like to play with things I KNOW I've heard, so a lot of what I do combines original and borrowed, or the suggestion of, or a phrase from something borrowed. The second movement of a piano concerto, for instance, uses an old Celtic tune as the main theme and what may sound original, but is derived from it, in the middle section. (I'll bet you are familiar with the song.)

It was the .not file of the aire that I listened to. When I suggested tinkering a bit, I was actually thinking of something I read in an orchestration text about 50 years ago--that the flute, in the first octave of its range, is too weak to be a solo instrument, unless all other instruments are considerably subdued.

When you refer to the whistle, is it the same as or like the tin whistle? I got one for my birthday 15 or so years ago and wore it out. It was great, great fun, but I never would have been able to produce anything like the sound of your piece.

all best,
mgj