‘There were statues of Burns but no lasting memorial to Gow’
A life-sized bronze statue of the great fiddler will be unveiled at the 16th Niel Gow Festival thanks to Pete Clark
PETE Clark was standing watching sea lions in San Francisco Bay when he took a call on his mobile phone from the United Arab Emirates. A few years earlier Clark had been contacted by a retired minister in Hawick who had heard him talking enthusiastically about the music of the great 18th century Perthshire fiddler and composer Niel Gow on TV the previous evening. The minister, Lindsay Thomson, told Clark he had something in his possession that might interest him. This turned out to be a fiddle once owned by Niel Gow and Clark later played this fiddle in Little Dunkeld kirk, in whose churchyard Gow is buried, in 2009.
Clark didn’t imagine that he’d ever have another chance to play the instrument as Lindsay Thomson died about a year later, so on that morning in San Francisco he was surprised to be hearing from Thomson’s son David.
“I must have made an impression on Lindsay because his son was calling to arrange a meeting. When I suggested recording an album of Niel Gow tunes using the fiddle that Lindsay had been given by his music teacher and had once belonged to Niel Gow as a tribute to Lindsay, David agreed,” says Clark. The album, Niel Gow’s Fiddle, was released in 2017 and Clark is proud to be the fiddle’ custodian still.
Clark’s championing of Gow and his music over the past 30 years or more has bordered on heroic. In 2004 his interest in Gow led to him staging a festival in and around Birnam and Dunkeld to celebrate his hero. It’s now in its 16th year and when its 17th edition takes place next year, a lifesized bronze statue of Gow by the artist David Annand will be unveiled.
“I’ve always been struck by the fact there isn’t a major lasting memorial to Gow who, for me, is one of Scottish traditional music’s most significant figures,” says Clark. “Everywhere you go you see statues of Robert Burns, and I’ve no problem with that, but Gow’s legacy is immense. He and Burns met, of course, during Burns’ Highland tour and Burns set words to Gow’s tunes – Major Graham of Inchbrakie, for example, is believed to be the original air to My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose.
“There’s Gow’s headstone in Little Dunkeld kirk yard and there’s a plaque on the cottage where he lived in Inver, if you know where to look for it. More recently there’s been the carved bench under Niel Gow’s tree on the banks of the Tay but that’s about a mile upriver from Dunkeld, and even just from a tourism point of view we could be doing more to raise awareness in him.”
Clark became smitten by Gow’s music as a teenager. He grew up in Dunfermline and one night he heard Davie Lockhart of Fife group Heritage playing a melody that grabbed him instantly. On asking what this tune was called he was told it was Niel Gow’s Lament for the Death of His Second Wife, an air that could almost be Gow’s theme tune, such is its popularity among fiddle players still.
“I went away and learned that tune and kept my ears and eyes open for more of Gow’s work,” says Clark. “It’s the emotional pull of that particular tune that stayed with me and then years later, just by chance, I ended up living in Birnam, not far from Inver, where Gow lived, and it just seemed natural to delve into the history of the area because a lot of Gow’s tunes were inspired by or dedicated to nearby places and people from roundabout. I got hooked on the man and what he’d done for Scottish fiddle music.”
Gow’s music was preserved through his son Nathaniel’s publishing of a three-volume collection, The Beauties of Niel Gow. The tunes in these books weren’t just Gow’s own. His four sons – Nathaniel, William, John and Andrew – were all fiddlers and tunesmiths and Nathaniel, who set up a publishing company in Edinburgh, documented the repertoire that the family played “on gigs”.
“The bread and butter of what they did was dance music,” says Clark. “That’s how they made their living, mostly, and there’s a wealth of jigs, reels and strathspeys. But there are also a lot of lovely slow airs, a lot of them, but not all, laments and this talent passed down the family. Niel Gow Junior, who was Nathaniel’s son, wrote a lovely lament for Flora Macdonald and Niel himself wrote beautiful airs that Robert Burns picked up on. Their meeting, when they spent a day at least going over tunes in Niel Gow’s cottage, would have been quite some occasion at which to be a fly on the wall.”
Clark gives a flavour of what might have happened on that day in 1787 during the illustrated walk he takes festivalgoers each March. The couple who now live in Gow’s cottage lay on soup and drams as the tour takes in their garden. Along the route Clark plays tunes Gow wrote for the various locations, including the Bridge of Inver and Dunkeld Hermitage Bridge.
To be playing this music on a fiddle that belonged to the composer, as Clark will once again in Little Dunkeld Church on March 16, is a privilege someone so enthralled by Gow.
“I’ve played other fiddles that were Niel Gow’s and the thing that always strikes me is how light they seem,” he says. “The one I have just now is no exception. It almost feels fragile but as soon as I draw a bow across the strings I can hear the gorgeous tone. The thing about this fiddle is that it’s the one Niel Gow treasured during the last few years of his life. It could even be the one on which he wrote his Lament for the Death of his Second Wife and to think I could be playing the tune that introduced me to Niel Gow on Niel Gow’s fiddle, with all the history associated with it, is quite a feeling.”
This sense of being “hands on” with Gow is likely to continue with David Annand’s statue.
“David’s works don’t tend to go on plinths,” says Clark. “He created the statue of Robert Fergusson outside the Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh and another dedicated to another poet, William Soutar in Perth. After I saw the big fiddle that is the memorial to the Scottish fiddler James Hill in Gateshead, I thought about having a big fiddle made for Niel Gow. But it’s more fitting to have a life-size statue that, in the age of the selfie, people can interact with.”
Gow and
Burns met during Burns’ Highland tour and Burns set words to Gow’s tunes – Major Graham of Inchbrakie is believed to be the original air to My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose