The Skene mandore MS is renowned for its settings of Scottish tunes -
often rather strange pentatonic melodies. But there are plenty of tunes
that would have been popular in England too. I'm supposing that the six
here are in fact English and am happy to stand corrected! Number 3, "O
Sillie Soul alace" sounds very familiar indeed. John Skene (d1644) was
an amateur musician. The mandore tablatures are a mess and there are
parallel octaves all over the shop.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm_XHOsgUkQ
Dauney's "Ancient Scotish [sic] Melodies" from the 19th century, has
transcriptions by George F. Graham of the tunes. The transcriptions omit
some notes clearly visible in the tablatures, omit all ornaments and
are, I would say, pretty unreliable. But they (and Dauney's book) are
very interesting in themselves and a place to start to try and make
sense of the haphazard notation.
The Skene in question is John Skene of Hallyards and his father was a
judge who (evidently) took on the prosecution of witches with great
energy. The Hallyards Castle is now (it seems) a ruin near a sewage
farm near the runway at Edinburgh airport!
Stuart
To get on or off this list see list information at
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
