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The Skene Manuscript, c.1620 (ed. 1838)Album Playlist — 85 Tunes

Album Summary: The Skene MS (c.1620) is one of the most important early collections of Scottish music. A personal music-book in tablature for the mandour or mandore (a small type of Renaissance lute), it contains some 114 tunes, including the earliest recorded versions of several Scottish popular classics. This ScotMus.com album reproduces the first print edition of 85 of the manuscript's tunes, transcribed into modern staff notation by George Farquhar Graham for William Dauney's antiquarian study, The Ancient Melodies of Scotland (1838). Their edition rapidly became thedefinitive source of "ancient melodies" for several generations of editors and arrangers.

Front-Matter: Selected Notes from the 1838 Edition

01: Alace yat I came owr the moor & left my love behind me02: Peggie is over ye sie wi' ye souldier03: To dance about the bailzeis dubb04: Ladie Rothemayis Lilt05: I love my love for love again06: Blew ribbenn at the bound rod07: Johne Andersonne my jo08: My dearest sueate is fardest fra me09: Prettie weill begann man10: Long er onie old man11: Kilt thy coat Maggie12: Alace this night yat we suld sinder13: The flowres of the forrest14: Ostend15: My Ladie Laudians Lilt16: Good night and God be with you17: My love shoe winns not her away18: Jennet drinks no water19: Remember me at eveninge20: I mett her in the medowe21: Blew breiks22: I cannot live and want thee23: I dowe not gunne cold24: Adew Dundee25: Shoe looks as shoe wold lett me26: I dare not vowe I love thee27: Lett never crueltie dishonour bewtie28: Alace I lie my alon, I'm lik to die awld29: The keiking glasse30: Ladie Cassilles Lilt31: Thrie sheips skinns32: Port Ballangowne33: My mistres blush is bonie34: Bonie Jean makis meikill of me35: Leslies Lilt36: Johne Devisonn's pint of win37: The lass o' Glasgowe

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38: Male simme39: Shackle of hay40: Doun in yon banke41: [ I long for thy virginitie ]42: Aderneis Lilt43: Blew cappe44: Gilcreich's Lilt45: Sa mirrie as we have bein46: Hunters carrier47: Kette Bairdie48: I will not goe to my bed till I suld die49: I serve a worthie ladie50: She mowpitt it comming owr the lie51: Who learned yow to dance and a Towdle52: Omnia vincit amor53: Pantalone54: Sir John Hopes Currant55: Marie me marie me quoth the bonie lass56: Almane Delorne57: Ane Alman Moreiss58: Pitt on your shirt on Monday59: [ untitled ]60: Joy to the personne61: Then wilt thou goe and leave me her62: Come love lett us walk into the springe63: The Spaniche ladie64: Froggis Galziard65: Chrichton's gud night66: Nightingale67: Prince Henrei's Maske68: Comædian's Maske69: Ladie Elizabeth's Maske70: What if a day71: Scerdustis72: What high offences hes my fair love taken73: Sincopas74: The willow trie75: Shipeherd saw thou not76: O sillie soul alace77: Floodis of teares78: Sommerset's Maske79: Veze Setta80: Canaries81: Scullione82: The fourth measur of The Buffins, a fragment83: Brangill of Poictu84: A Frenche85: Trumpeters Currand

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Edition Notes: For this album, I've adopted a "diplomatic" Transcription Policy, which means that I've not only "literally"-transcribed the notational content of the Graham/Dauney edition of 1838, but also closely reproduced its layout (for no particular reason other than the fact that it was easy to do!). The editorial method employed in Graham/Dauney can be scrutinised in the Selected Notesthat I've included in my reprint. So, overall, their faults are also mine (although I've no doubt added a few new ones, too!).

The Graham/Dauney edition is fairly easy to find, either in libraries (especially in Scotland) or as an online PDF facsimile. Picking it up on the antiquarian books market can cost a half-pretty price, although not all dealers seem to think it's worth much. If you want to pick up a free PDF copy, then try a search on either Google Books or the Internet Archive. If you want to make your own edition of any of these tunes, or even the whole thing, then I strongly suggest you go to source — apart from anything else, my transcription is a new copyright edition (while the original is, of course, now in the public domain).

On the audio side of things, well, I've yet to find a MIDI sound-font for the Renaissance instrument that John Skene actually wrote his manuscript for — the mandour, which, amongst other things, has a higher sounding-pitch than the Graham/Dauney edition would have you believe (if you read it as guitar notation). However, it has to be said that their edition is unlikely to have been played by any of its contemporary readers on a mandour anyway — Victorian musicians aren't exactly remembered for their historical authenticity when it comes to pre-Victorian music! It's far more likely that most of Graham/Dauney's readers would've been tinkling through the tunes on the piano, or extracting the melodic lines alone and tweaking them for whatever instrument they happened to play. If they were actually playing it on a plucked stringed instrument, then they'd most likely have been hacking through it on the Spanish guitar (in 1838, still a vaguely-new instrument outside of Spain itself), although richer folks might have also given it a go on the early modern harp. I've tried hacking though a few of the tunes on a modern guitar, and it's best if you transpose them down a bit — bear in mind that the mandour's strings weren't tuned the same as a modern guitar (see the Selected Notes), which often makes Skene's arrangements a bit finger-breaking on the modern machine. Anyway, at least for now, I've adopted the compromise of using a MIDI guitar for my edition's audio files. When time allows, I might re-do them with some more pseudo-authentic tweaks. For general information on my audio realisations, please see my MIDI Policy.

In terms of the performance style, it's worth noting that pre-eighteenth-century manuscripts only rarely bothered to include details like ornamentation, grace-notes, etc. Their contemporary performers added their own details, according to the performance conventions of the day. One scholarly value of the Graham/Dauney edition (especially for a team of Victorian Antiquarians) is that they don't make any assumptions about such details, and leave them out, just giving you their version of the primary source. My audio files follow suit, so consequently sound more than a bit plain in places. If you want to find good, practical demonstrations of how to play these tunes authentically, then it's well worth treating yourself to a few of the commercial recordings that're available of material from the Skene Manuscript by professional lute/mandour-players such as Rob MacKillop and Ronn McFarlane (who are both very canty lads, and well worth supporting) — you'll find links to some of these recordings appearing randomly on the left-hand-side of my edition as you surf around it. And, of course, they'll also give you a much better idea of what mandour actually sounds like!

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The other thing worth mentioning about my audio realisations here is that I've slavishly followed the Graham/Dauney edition's interpretation of the overall structure of each tune — not least regarding section repeats. One issue here is that, prior to about 1800 or so, although in theory, music notation had developed a basic standard for signing repeats during the eighteenth century, in practice, a lot of manuscripts (and even printed editions) were still fairly woolly on the issue. If you check out Graham/Dauney's facsimiles from the manuscript, you'll notice that Skene uses double bar-lines in some pieces. Even as late as the eighteenth century, a blank double bar-line can in actual fact mean a repeat (although not always). In Skene's early seventeenth century, it's pretty-much anyone's guess what they mean in practice (although often, basic musical logic can dictate its own obvious solutions). So, the Graham/Dauney (like any modern edition) makes assumptions about repeat structures. I have to say that I don't always agree with their solutions — I reckon some of the variation sets could do with every section being repeated, despite what Graham/Dauney recommend. Nonetheless, I've followed their directions in this edition. You, however, don't have to!

But one thing I have occasionally completely ignored in my audio realisations is the tempo indications that Graham/Dauney suggest. They are indeed just suggestions — they don't actually exist in the original manuscript (tempo indications are, again, pretty-much a later invention). And in some cases, I reckon Graham/Dauney have got it totally wrong, having based their interpretation on ideas about certain tunes that have subsequently become less certain than they seemed in 1838. A particular case in point is the Graham/Dauney take on Skene's version of Johne Andersonne my jo(Track No.7). You'll notice here that Graham/Dauney recommend a "slow" tempo, while I don't. Graham/Dauney were, without doubt, thinking of Robert Burns's later, far more famous (indeed, subsequently-standard) version of the song in The Scots Musical Museum (1790, III:260). Burns's version paints a gentle, sentimental picture of the true love between a married couple surviving against all of life's trials and tribulations well into their twilight years. It's sung in the voice of the old woman, whose husband has given her everything she wants. Conventionally, Burns's version is played slow — although, intriguingly, his published tempo indication was "lively". And this is intriguing precisely because Burns is in fact totally re-writing a song that existed a long time before he re-wrote it, and his is certainly not the version that Skene's generation knew. The older version that Burns very consciously re-wrote is in fact one of the most notoriously-bawdy songs in Scottish history, if the Georgian and early-Victorian commentaries on it are anything to go by. In the older version, the married couple are neither of equal age, nor of equal prowess in the "marital relations" department. In this version — the version that Skene knew — the song is in the voice of a lusty young lass who's been lumped with some poor old guy who's notably less than capable of giving her everything she wants. And she's heckling him about it in no uncertain terms, point by bawdy point, missing out none of his physical short-comings in her withering gaze. So, at least to my ears, Graham/Dauney's tempo indication of "slow" performs just as limpidly as the auld relic who's the butt of the original joke that Skene got his Jacobean jollies from. The Skene version of the tune just sounds a bit flaccid if you play it without a slightly breathless bounce. Maybe what Graham/Dauney are doing here is the musical equivalent of the kind of lyrical "moral improvement" that's plagued the history of Scottish song — but, as is often the case, their alteration is far from a concrete aesthetic "improvement". So in this case, I've spiced up their tempo a bit, and probably revived a tad of Skene's jollies in the process.

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