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It sounds like something from a historical novel: the clan chief and family with their retinue. A piper to greet guests on arrival; a harper to play during and after the meal and to write music in various family members' honour. In draughty castles up and down Scotland, for centuries this would have been the norm. These days, such old-fashioned patronage is rare. But where once the harper would be summoned by a man-at-arms, perhaps, the Paisley family from Westerlea just dials Phamie Gow's mobile phone number to see if she's free.
Nineteen-year-old Gow, who brings this year's Celtic Connections New Voices series to a close this weekend, became the Paisleys' official harper after they heard her first public performance. She was then aged 12-and-a-half and had been playing the clarsach, or Scottish harp, for all of six months. But her playing evoked much emotion for the Paisleys and they invited her into the family.
"It's really quite an honour," she says. "But what I particularly like about it...