Hi Ed, Thanks for confirming that I wasn't completely wrong. I seem to remember some such suggestion coming in a publication of the UK Lute Society. The possibility that the signs might refer to fingering and the lines to sustaining notes, as others have suggested, did in fact occur to me. But I felt that if they occurred to a complete beginner such as myself, then they were too obvious to be worth mentioning, hence the other suggestion which I dredged from the depths of a failing memory. Cheers
Tom. --