Niel Gow

Niel Gow (22 March 17271 March 1807) was a Scottish fiddler in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Early life Gow was born in Strathbraan, Perthshire, in 1727, as the son of John Gow and Catherine McEwan. The family moved to Inver in Perthshire when Niel was an infant. He started playing the fiddle when very young, and at age 13 received his first formal lessons from one John Cameron of Grandtully. In spite of being something of a musical prodigy, he originally trained as a weaver, but eventually gave up that trade to become a full-time musician. He was widely considered the best fiddle player in Perthshire, an area which was renowned for its musicians—the story goes that at age 18 he entered a competition that was being judged by John McCraw, a blind musician, who awarded him the first prize and then went on to claim that he “would ken his bow hand among a hunder players” (detect Niel’s style among a hundred players). This attracted the attention of the Duke of Atholl, who became Gow’s patron, and also ensured his employment for balls and dance parties put on by the local nobility. In time he became renowned as a fiddler. Musical career According to John Glen (1895), Gow comp