Short and sweet
One of the shortest pieces from the Margaret Board Lute Book, and good fun to play. I have had to take some liberties with the lower voice, but it sounds OK. There is a lot of space for you to add your own decorations (graces, divisions, etc).
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| "Fair ministers" as it appears in the MS |
I have tried (not very diligently, I must admit) to trace the origin of the words, presumably a song or part of a masque:
Fayre my[ni]sters disdayne me not though hard fauored I be
For Venus did not w[i]th V[u]lcan match yet none so foule as he
In [...] that text What [...] knowe
What if he were a cuckold made would be so served so
That's the best my slight skills in palaeography can achieve. It does not appear to be a reference to the poem “Disdain me not without desert” by Sir Thomas Wyatt.
Nevertheless it's good fun to play.
You can download a pdf of the piece freely here.
