Martin Eastwell - Lady Maggie's Lilt: Music from the Lute Book of Lady Margaret Wemyss 1629-1648

The lute held a central position in the musical life of the Scottish court in the 15th and 16th centuries. Frequent payments to lutenists appear in the Royal accounts. Both James IV and James V were accomplished players, and a French courtier, Pierre de Brant�me, describes Mary Queen of Scots as �blending her voice with the lute which she touched so daintily with a fair white hand�. Despite this, no significant body of specifically Scottish lute music survives from before 1600, by which time Scotland no longer had a court or a monarch in residence. Lady Margaret was born in 1629 at Falkland Palace in Fife, the eighth child of David, second Earl of Wemyss, and died in 1648 aged 19. Lady Margaret�s Lute Book was rediscovered in the early 1980�s among the papers of the Sutherland family, deposited on loan to the National Library of Scotland.