Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 4.djvu/141

Rh or pasteboard automatons in a raree show. How different from the time when the first nobles in the land were proud when a reel or strathspey was named after them, and would pay considerable sums for the composition. We have before us n letter of the late duke of [Buccleugh to Nathaniel Gow, in which he says "I wish that at your leisure you would compose [start not, gentle misses!] a reel according to the old style. It should be wild, such as your father would have liked—highland,—call it 'the Border Raid;'" and we are happy to learn that the present duke and duchess encourage the resumption of our national dances, whenever they have an opportunity. The neglect of them has no way improved the openness and cheerfulness of our female character.

Nathaniel Gow was a man of great shrewdness and good understanding—generally of a lively companionable turn, with a good deal of humour—very courteous in his manners; though, especially latterly, when misfortune and disease had soured him, a little hasty in his temper. He was a dutiful and affectionate son, as his father's letters abundantly prove—a kind brother, having resigned his share of his father's succession to his sister, who wanted it more than he did at the time; and indulgent and faithful in his duties to his own family. In his person he was tall and "buirdly"—and he dressed well, which, added to a degree of courtliness of manner on occasions of ceremony, gave him altogether a respectable and stately appearance. His illness came to a crisis in the beginning of 1831, and finally terminated in his death, on the 17th of January of that year, at the age of sixty-five. He was buried in the Greyfriars' churchyard; but no stone points out to the stranger where the Scottish minstrel sleeps.

He was twice married. By his first wife, Janet Eraser, he had five daughters and one son, of whom two of the daughters only survive—Mary, married to Mr Jenkins of London; and Jessie, to Mr Luke, treasurer of George Heriot's Hospital. By his second wife, Mary Hog, to whom he was married in 1814, he had three sons and two daughters, only two of whom survived him namely, John, who was educated in Heriot's Hospital; and Augusta, who became a teacher of music in Edinburgh, after having undergone five years' training in London. A spirited likeness of Mr Gow was painted by Mr John Syme of Edinburgh, which, with the portrait of his father Neil, the Dalhousie Goblet, and small kit fiddle, are in the possession of Mrs Luke.

GOW,, a celebrated violin player and composer of Scottish airs, was the son of John Gow and Catharine M'Ewan, and was born at Inver, near Dunkeld, Perthshire, on the 22d of March, 1727. He was intended by his parents for the trade of a plaid weaver, but discovering an early propensity for music, he began the study of the violin himself, and soon abandoned the shuttle for the bow. Up to the age of thirteen he had no instructor; but about that time he availed himself of some lessons from John Cameron, a follower of the house of Grandtully, and soon placed himself at the head of all the performers in the country; although Perthshire then produced more able reel and strathspey players than any other county in Scotland. Before he reached manhood, he had engaged in a public competition there, and carried off the prize, which was decided by an aged and blind, but skilful minstrel, who, in awarding it, said, that "he could distinguish the stroke of Neil's bow among a hundred players." This ascendancy he ever after maintained, not only in his native place, but throughout Scotland, where it has been universally admitted that, as a reel and strathspey player, he had no superior, and, indeed, no rival in his own time.

Neil Gow was the first of his family, so far as is known, who rendered the name celebrated in our national music; but his children afterwards proved that