Niel Gow

He inaugurated a new professional era in Scottish fiddle playing and achieved national recognition as a performer and composer.

For the previous century fiddle playing in Scotland had been largely a local, amateur art.

Niel Gow was mainly self-taught, but by the age of 18 had already developed a distinctive playing style. In 1745 he entered a competition at which the judge, who was blind, declared he could ‘distinguish the stroke of Niel’s bow among a hundred players’. Later he was patronized by the Duke of Atholl, the Duchess of Gordon and other Scottish aristocrats. His services were soon in demand for balls and house parties throughout Scotland. He retained, however, a personal modesty, lived most of his life in the village where he was born, and was 57 before any of his compositions reached print.