ARTHUR Rowe borrowed a kilt for his first Highland games, and became the scourge of Scotland's throwers, yet was regarded with affection by almost all of them.

It was typical of the canny Yorkshireman that he should cadge the kilt to discover if he could beat Scots at their own games. '''Ow mooch,'' was Arthur's invariable response to any offer of an engagement.

In this he mirrored the doyen of Scottish heavies of the previous century, Donald Dinnie: ''Twa poon'. I'll no' tak a penny less,'' as he famously said when asked to toss the Braemar caber again, because Queen Victoria had missed his throw.

Rowe's jousts with Scottish rival Bill Anderson enlivened the circuit for a decade, bringing the best from both. Bucksburn's Anderson was as good as any athlete he had met in the amateur arena. Once, after a hard day in the rain, at Lochearnhead, a reporter's battered Morris was axle-deep in mud. When it was ventured that the farmer might oblige with a

tractor, Rowe looked contemptuous.

He and Anderson plucked the car out with as much seeming effort as a mortal would remove a wine cork. They didn't ask for a penny, but were happy to accept a beer or three in the adjacent hostelry run by throwing legend Ewen Cameron.

A larger-than-life figure, Rowe even drank his tea from a pint pot: ''Because the first cup always tastes the best.''

He died last Saturday, a victim of cancer at the age of 67. His funeral yesterday marked very much more than just the passing of a champion.

He had all the upper body strength you might expect of a man who spent his days at the forge, but the pit blacksmith was a fine technician in the era when efforts with the 16lb ball were still recorded in linear fashion. It is a measure of how good he was that the 6ft 2in

18-stone thrower remains the only Briton to have won both the Commonwealth and European shot titles, and still ranks eighth on the British all-time list with, in the modern jargon, a distance of 19.56 metres.

He won five successive AAA shot-putt titles from 1958 to 1961, a feat subsequently matched but never surpassed by Geoff Capes. He was the first field eventer to upstage those whom he regarded as track posers, and win the UK Athlete of the Year award.

Rowe might never have been a shot-putter at all but for the day when, aged 17, he was playing cricket for a youth club. While he waited to bat, he watched men putt the shot. He asked if he could try, and beat them all by 10 feet.

Their coach advised him not to waste his time with cricket. Rowe proceeded to practise under the street lights in Smithies, the village where he was born. He also broke a British weightlifting record and won the only Mr Adonis competition he ever entered. When he came under the wing of the father of modern athletics coaching, Geoff Dyson, he described him as Britain's strongest and fittest specimen.

Rowe broke his week-old UK record by 20 centimetres to capture the 1958 European title with his final throw, first and only Briton ever to do so. He also won Commonwealth gold that year, still just 21. He was first Briton beyond 60 feet, and went to the Rome Olympics in 1960 as a medal candidate. He had prepared in a field at the back of the Tollgate pub in Barnsley, using ''paddy wheels'' off old pit wagons as weight-training gear. When he failed to reach the final it was ascribed to nerves, but Rowe confided that the heat had got to him. He claimed he had managed to ''fry an egg on the pavement''.

The following year, aged 26, he smashed the European record with 64ft 2ins, and added another inch a month later, but the very next day he shocked British sport by signing for Oldham rugby league side. The cheque bought him a house, a new car, and left some to put in the bank, but he was not a success. He abandoned rugby after a year, and in the Corinthian climate of the day had more chance of taking orders in a convent as returning to amateur athletics.

On his debut at Braemar, Rowe beat the games shot record by nearly nine feet, and then, on realising that Anderson was going to edge him for the all-round heavies' award, he entered the long jump. Fourth secured the Chieftain's Trophy for the best all-rounder in both light and heavy events. Yet with his scientific approach to training, and prodigious work ethic, he soon mastered the technique for Scottish events, and Highland games entrepreneur David Webster took him to numerous events.

Rowe was the first British athlete to make significant under-the-table income. Thirty pounds, perhaps three weeks' wages for an experienced clerk in those days, was par for the course per meeting. He would often ignore significant events to collect a brown envelope at a gala day or local sports event. Clocks, cruets, canteens of cutlery, glassware, tankards, watches, dinner services, dolls, and musical boxes were regularly sold off. ''Maybe if you have gone to Eton or Oxford, you can afford to turn down such offers,'' he later said, ''but if, like me, you haven't got the brass, you take back-handers.''

On quitting the Highland games circuit in 1970 he set up his own building business. He is survived by his wife, Betty, three children Stephanie, Louise, and Steven and two grandchildren.

Arthur Rowe, born August 17, 1936, died September 13, 2003.