Local folklore says many of Scotland’s best loved strathspeys and reels were played and composed beneath this tree and today there is a bench there with words carved on it from the song ‘Niel Gow’s Apprentice’ by Michael Marra and dedicated to local musician, Dougie Maclean.

A portrait of Niel by Henry Raeburn hangs in the Ballroom at Blair Castle beside his fiddle, a reminder of the great friendship between the crofter and the Duke. On his death aged 80 in 1807 he was buried in the local graveyard at Little Dunkeld with a plain marble stone as a memorial. This stone suffered from the ravages of the weather so much that in 1986 the Niel Gow Memorial Trust was formed to have the original stone placed in the Dunkeld Cathedral Chapterhouse and a new one replacing it in the Kirkyard.

Pitcure copyright Gordon Hatton and licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Licence.