The mandore is a musical instrument, a small member of the lute family, teardrop shaped, with four to six courses of gut strings[2] and pitched in the treble range.

[3] Considered a French instrument, with much of the surviving music coming from France, it was used across "Northern Europe" including Germany and Scotland.

The mandore arrived in France from Spain, and was considered a new instrument in French music books from the 1580s,[4] but can be seen as a development of the gittern.

[10][11][12][3][8] Illustrations in the 13th-century Cantigas de Santa Maria show instruments similar to lutes, mandores, mandolas and guitars, being played by European and Islamic players.

[15] His Hohenstaufen grandson Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor (1194 - 1250) continued integrating Muslims into his court, including Moorish musicians.

[17] The method was being replaced by gluing curved staves together to form back, and adding a neck and peg box.

It is built as a lute, with "strips of fir or other wood" ... "cut and bent into melon shape" to make a rounded back.

"[18] "Those who make perfect use of the mandore would move the pick so fast over the strings that they seem to form even chords as they would be if played at the same time.

"[18] In other words, the mandore used a combination of fourths and fifths the courses of strings, such as c-g-c-g.[23] Mersenne indicated that this was less common than tuning in unison.

Dauney points out in his editing of the Skene Manuscript that the tablature is written strangely, that although it is tabbed for a four-string instrument, it is marked under the bottom line, indicating a five-string instrument:[25] and also an older lute tuning in fourths (except between F and A, which is a third):[25] Marin Mersenne ends his section on the mandore in his book Harmonie Universelle by saying, "It is nothing but an abbreviated lute.

[2] A less visible difference was in the tuning: the Italian mandola and smaller mandolino were tuned entirely in fourths, the mandola using e'-a'-d"-g" (or if using a 5 or 6 course instrument g-b-e'-a'-d"-g"); the French mandore used combinations of fourths and fifths, such as c-g-c-g or c-f-c-f.[2][28] As the instruments developed, they became physically less similar.

By the 17th century, makers such as Antonio Stradivarius had two styles of instrument patterns, with the mandola having strings almost twice as long as the mandolino's.

One example that has survived of a bowl-backed mandola is that made by Vicenti di Verona in 1696, held by the Hungarian National Museum, Budapest, Hungary.

Pictures and illustrations of the mandore show an instrument that at a casual look, appears very similar to lutes and the later mandolins.

[2] Also, It was strung with gut strings, attached to a bridge that is glued to the soundboard[30] (similar to that of a modern guitar).

Another group of related instruments to the mandore are the vandola or bandola, the bandurria and the bandolim, of Spanish origin, also played in Portugal and South America.

A principal source of music for the Scottish variant of the instrument can be found in The Ancient Melodies of Scotland by William Dauney.

A principal source of music for the Scottish variant of the instrument can be found in The Ancient Melodies of Scotland by William Dauney.

Dauney makes it clear that the mandora the Skene Manuscript tunes are written for is the same instrument that Mersenne called the "mandore".