The comical history of Rosin the Bow. My failure as a podcaster. What on Middle-earth is a “smial”? A Doctor Whovian Spotlight on Matt Hughes. Welcome to the Pub Songs Podcast, the Virtual Public House for Celtic Geek culture. I am your Guide. My name is Marc Gunn. Today’s show is brought to you by my Gunn Runners on Patreon. Subscribe to the podcast and download free music when you sign up at PubSong.com. WHO'S PLAYING IN THE PUB TODAY 00:27 - SONG: “Rosin the Bow” from Happy Songs of Death What does “Rosin the Bow” mean? Rosin is a solid form of resin that's obtained from pines and other conifers. ... Used by cellists, violinists, and other string musicians, rosin helps create friction between the bow hair and strings. Essentially, rosin helps the bow grip the strings and produce sound. That’s from The Vault at Music & The Arts. The song was popularized in America in the 19th century. Though it probably had British or Irish origins according to Wikipedia. The most interesting fact was that the music for the song was used by several US presidential campaigns, including for William Henry Harrison ("The Hero of Tippecanoe"),[3] Henry Clay ("Harry, the Honest and True") and Abraham Lincoln ("Lincoln and Liberty"). 3:02 - WELCOME -- Post a review in Apple Podcasts. If you enjoy this show, please subscribe or post a review on Apple Podcasts. I’d love your feedback. -- The first episodes of the 2020 Celtic Christmas Podcast are now online. As usual, the show is free to listen to. And there are over 50 episodes to enjoy with mostly music, but also a lot of holiday entertainment. Get Celtic Christmas music. -- Browncoat Christmas is now online. Mikey Mason and I released this four song EP of Christmas songs inspired by Joss Whedon’s TV show, Firefly. It’s upbeat and fun. You can download or stream it most everywhere online. -- Short Story of what’s new: My failure as a podcaster. - CD SPONSOR: SCOTTISH SONGS OF DRINKING & REBELLION Hi. I’m Marc Gunn. You may remember me from such kilted bands as the Brobdingnagian Bards, Kilted Kings, and Marc Gunn. Ye know. Me. But perhaps, you don’t know my music. But you may know some fine Scottish Songs of Drinking & Rebellion. That may be a rip off title from a Clancy Brothers album, Irish Songs of Drinking & Rebellion. But the music is pure Scottish fun. You’ll get 17 Scottish songs that will make you want to drink or rise up against England. You’ll hear songs I learned from Ed Miller, The Corries, Widening Gyre (you probably have never heard of that band), and even Outlander… Well, sort of. There are five songs by Robert Burns, including “MacPherson’s Farewell”, “Scots Wha Hae”, “Ye Jacobites by Name”, “A Man’s A Man for A’ That”, and the clean love song version of “Green Grow the Rashes”. There’s the unofficial national anthem of Scotland, “Flower of Scotland”, by The Corries. The “Skye Boat Song” was a fantastic traditional Scottish song even before the lyrics were modified for the Outlander TV show. There’s the great drinking ballad, “Jock Stuart”. And let’s not forget Hugh S. Roberton’s incredible “Mingulay Boat Song” that is given a Louisiana gospel edge. You’ll find it all on Marc Gunn’s Scottish Songs of Drinking & Rebellion. Get it at CelticMusic.org. Now let’s go geek with a song that’s not from that CD... 9:09 - GEEK SONG: “The Smial or the Tree” from Sci Fi Drinking Songs "In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole and that means comfort." - The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien What on Middle-earth is a “smial”? Well the Tolkien Gateway has the answer. “Smials were the hobbit-holes tunneled into earth mounds and hills. For generations the Hobbits dug into the earth to live. By the later Third Age the poorest Hobbits still went on living in burrows of the most primitive kind with only one window or none. For the most