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Annotation:Niel Gow
X:1 T:Niel Gow M:C| L:1/8 Q:"Moderato" B:Aird - Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs, B:vol. 5 (1797, No. 1, p. 1) Z:AK/Fiddler's Companion K:G e|d>Bgd eAAe|d>B gd e2 (ef)|(g/f/e/d/) gd eAAe|gedB G2G:| |:A|G<GG<G AEEA|G<GBd g>deg|dgBg AEEf|gedB G2G:|]
NIEL GOW. See also spellings "Neil Gow" and "Neal Gow." Gow himself insisted on the spelling 'Niel' for his name.
AKA – “Neil Gow," "Niel Gow's Reel (2)," "Neil Gow's Second Wife again.” AKA and see "Irish Jig", "Keep Your Country Bonnie Lasses" (Shetland) {?}, "New Gun Reel," "Niel Gow's Strathspey." Scottish (originally), English; Strathspey. England; Northumberland, East Anglia. A Major (most versions): G Major (Peacock, Surenne): D Major (Gow). Standard tuning (fiddle). AB (Surenne): AAB (Athole, Gow): AABB (Carlin/Gow, Honeyman, Kennedy, Kerr, Lowe, Peacock). "Niel Gow" was composed by Edinburgh musician, and music and dance teacher biography:Duncan MacIntyre (c. 1767-c. 1807) and was first printed in his Collection of Slow Airs, Reels & Strathspeys (1794), set as a strathspey. MacIntyre was active in Edinburgh in the latter 19th century, but around 1790 he moved to London and at some point embarked for India, after which he has not been traced.
The tune is often misattributed to the most famous of Scots fiddler-composers, Niel Gow (1727-1807), Dunkeld, Perthshire. It is worth remembering Gow’s wry epitaph, inscribed on his gravestone:
Gow and Time are Even Now,
Gow Beat Time and Time Beat Gow.
The witticism, however, long predates Niel's death. Richard Baldwin's periodical The London Magazine of October, 1749, printed a few pages of "Humourous Epitaphs", among which can be found (on p. 495):
On Stephen, the Fidler. [sic]
Old Time and Stephen are now even,
Stephen beat Time, and Time has beat Stephen.
Musician William Clarke of Feltwell, Norfolk, East Anglia, entered the tune as "New Gun Reel" in his mid-19th century music manuscript collection, mishearing the title "Niel Gow." The reel appears in the 1817 music manuscript collection of Patrick McGahon, a scribe of Irish language literature who lived in Dungooley, County Louth, on the Armagh border. It was entered under the title "Neil Gow's Second Wife again" in his ms.
