Rosin the Bow and other fiddle violin thoughts from a dark and dusty attic

Talking about preserving and treating – we were weren’t we? I haven’t had any rosin on my fiddle bow recently. I had a feeling that my fiddle bow was feeling a bit … neglected.

A violin bow needs a bit of rosin every now and then. If a violin is played often, of course it needs more, but, then, it’s been a bit quiet on the playing front for me recently.

Talking about rosin makes me think of the old folk tune Rosin the Bow. It’s a nice tune that Tom, my owner, used to play at pub folk music sessions along with the other aged folkies.

Rosin the Bow has a nice little lilt to it. I remember with affection the many times we played Rosin the Bow … except for one occasion.

Tom had taken me to a new pub where a folk club had only just been started. A new landlord had moved in and was keen to get some custom.

You can always rely on the folkies to buy a pint of beer or two although they do tend to drive out any local custom. Of course, in this case, there was no local custom because the pub had been empty for a while until it was taken over by this new landlord – so he had nothing to lose by letting the folkies in.

Anyway, the evening started off quite nicely with a few tunes. There was Tom and I on the violin, a bodhran, a couple of tin whistles, a wooden flute, a couple of acoustic guitars and a few people that I reckoned were probably the audience – a bit unusual for a folk club to have an audience, I thought.

As it turned out, the audience proved not to be an audience, instead, they were people who expected to be allowed to do some singing.

Aargh!

Now I have nothing against human beings singing, especially if they do it somewhere else, but, in my opinion, it is not a natural thing for a human being to do.

Making lovely sounds is the province of musical instruments that are designed for this express purpose. Human beings are not and, quite honestly, if they had to sing for their supper, as a species, I reckon they would soon be extinct – perhaps not a bad thing in many cases.

Well, Tom obviously agreed with me because he soon made his excuses and we disappeared back home, never to return to that pub again and its painful sing-around.

I heard him talking on the telephone some time later about how the pub had been converted into flats so I guess quite a few other people felt the same.

Anyway, I wonder how Mr Woodworm is getting on?