Castle CraigLADY CARMICHAEL (OF CASTLE CRAIG). AKA and see "Carmichael's," "Lady Carmichael." Scottish, Strathspey or Schottische. C Major (Athole, Gow): D Major (Kerr, McLachlan). Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB. Composed by John Gow (1764–1826), the youngest son of Niel Gow of Inver, near Dunkeld, Perthshire, who was named for Niel's father, John, a plaid weaver. John went to London in 1788 and established a successful publishing and music-selling firm with his brother Andrew, becoming, in part, the London outlet for Nathaniel Gow's publications in Edinburgh. William Shepherd, a musician and music seller in Edinburgh, became Nathaniel Gow's partner in publishing and music selling in 1797, and c. 1803 published his own Second Collection with the firm, dedicating it to Lady Carmichael of Castle Brant.
Lady Carmichael, in Gow's time, was Janet Grant, the eldest daughter of William Grant, Lord Prestongrange, Lord Advocate of Scotland in the very middle of the 18th century. She married John Carmichael Esq. (1710–1787) of Castle Craig in 1749. Carmichael succeeded his cousin to an earldom and was installed as the 4th Earl of Hyndford in 1767, making Janet the Countess of Hyndford. The couple remained childless, and, after John died, Janet (then the "Dowager Countess of Hyndford") continued to live in her childhood home of Prestongrange which she and her husband had inherited from her father. She died in 1818.
The tune, as "Lady Carmichael's Strathspey," was entered into the huge 19th century music manuscript collection[1](No. 66, p. 17) of prosperous dairy farmer, miller, sometime printer and bookbinder, and fiddler James Barry (1819-1906) of Six Mile Brook, Pictou County, northern Nova Scotia.
Additional notes
Printed sources : - Carlin (The Gow Collection), 1986; No. 84.
Glen (Collection of Highland Bagpipe Music, Book 9), no. 20, p. 10.
Gow (Fifth Collection of Strathspeys, Reels), 1809; p. 18.
Kerr (Merry Melodies, vol. 1), Set 1, c. 1880; No. 5, p. 3.
John McLachlan (Piper’s Assistant), 1854; No. 34, p. 20.
Stewart-Robertson (The Athole Collection), 1884; p. 63.
Recorded sources : - Topic 12TS381, The Battlefield Band – "At the Front" (1978).
See also listing at : Alan Snyder's Cape Breton Fiddle Recording Index [2]
Jane Keefer's Folk Music Index: An Index to Recorded Sources [3]
