Rob MacKillop has been teaching and performing for a decade
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A leading Scottish lute player has decided to call it a day because of a lack of support and public funding.
Rob MacKillop, who has released seven CDs, will perform his final concert at the weekend at the Scottish Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh.
He said he had been forced to sell off his collection of historic instruments one by one and he will hand over his final lute on Saturday to its new owner.
There are more than 500 Scottish lute pieces surviving from the 17th century, including famous airs such as Auld Lang Syne and Flowers of the Forest.
Mr MacKillop, who has been performing and teaching for 10 years, said that they form the roots of what we now call traditional Scottish music, "although they appeared before the avalanche of jigs, reels and strathspeys".
He said: "The lute has been part of our culture for about a thousand years. It was more popular in its heyday than the fiddle and bagpipe and it is in some respects the forgotten national instrument of Scotland.
"Over the last year I have been selling my lutes off one at a time and the last will be sold to a buyer from England after the concert.
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We don't seem to value our heritage properly we recognise buildings like Holyrood Palace but are we wiping out the music that was played in them
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"I am deeply disappointed that the last lute will leave Scotland and we might not hear Scottish lute music being played by a Scotsman in Scotland for I don't know how long."
Mr MacKillop believes that a lack of interest from commercial promoters and a lack of support from public bodies like the Scottish Arts Council means he can no longer afford to perform.
Historian and curator at the National Library of Scotland, Louise Yeoman, said the demise of the Scottish lute was a "shocking" thing.
"We don't seem to value our heritage properly, we recognise buildings like Holyrood Palace but are we wiping out the music that was played in them. That is a tragic loss for the Scottish public," she said.
But the Scottish Arts Council said Mr Mackillop's pleas had not fallen on deaf ears because it had given him �7,500 in lottery funding for instruments via the Rowallan Consort Ensemble.
It has also recently appointed an historical musician in residence at the recently opened music resource at the Wighton Heritage Centre in Dundee.
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