GOW, NIEL (1727-1807), Scottish musician of humble parentage, famous as a violinist and player of reels, but more so for the part he played in preserving the old melodies of Scotland. His compositions, and those of his four sons, Nathaniel, the most famous (1763-1831), William (1751-1791), Andrew (1760-1803), and John (1764-1826), formed the "Gow Collection," comprising various volumes edited by Niel and his sons, a valuable repository of Scottish traditional airs. The most important of Niel's sons was Nathaniel, who is remembered as the author of the well-known "Caller Herrin," taken from the fishwives' cry, a tune to which words were afterwards written by Lady Nairne. Nathaniel's son, NIEL GOW junior (1795-1823), was the author of the famous songs "Flora Macdonald's Lament" and "Cam' ye by Athol."
GOWER, JOHN (d. 1408), English poet, died at an advanced age in 1408, so that he may be presumed to have been born about 1330. He belonged to a good Kentish family, but the suggestion of Sir Harris Nicolas that the poet is to be identified with a John Gower who was at one time possessed of the manor of Kentwell is open to serious objections. There is no evidence that he ever lived as a country gentleman, but he was undoubtedly possessed of some wealth, and we know that he was the owner of the manors of Feltwell in Suffolk and Moulton in Norfolk. In a document of 1382 he is called an "Esquier de Kent," and he was certainly not in holy orders. That he was acquainted with Chaucer we know, first because Chaucer in leaving England for Italy in 1378 appointed Gower and another to represent him in his absence, secondly because Chaucer addressed his _Troilus and Criseide_ to Gower and Strode (whom he addresses as "moral Gower" and "philosophical Strode") for criticism and correction, and thirdly because of the lines in the first edition of Gower's _Confessio amantis_, "And gret wel Chaucer whan ye mete," &c. There is no sufficient ground for the suggestion, based partly on the subsequent omission of these lines and partly on the humorous reference of Chaucer to Gower's _Confessio amantis_ in the introduction to the _Man of Law's Tale_, that the friendship was broken by a quarrel. From his Latin poem _Vox clamantis_ we know that he was deeply and painfully interested in the peasants' rising of 1381; and by the alterations which the author made in successive revisions of this work we can trace a gradually increasing sense of disappointment in the youthful king, whom he at first acquits of all responsibility for the state of the kingdom on account of his tender age. That he became personally known to the king we learn from his own statement in the first edition of the _Confessio amantis_, where he says that he met the king upon the river, was invited to enter the royal barge, and in the conversation which followed received the suggestion which led him to write his principal English poem. At the same time we know, especially from the later revisions of the _Confessio amantis_, that he was a great admirer of the king's brilliant cousin, Henry of Lancaster, afterwards Henry IV., whom he came eventually to regard as a possible saviour of society from the misgovernment of Richard II. We have a record that in 1393 he received a collar from his favourite political hero, and it is to be observed that the effigy upon Gower's tomb is wearing a collar of SS. with the swan badge which was used by Henry.