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"Sonny's Mazurka", also known as "The Hag With The Fiddle", "Ó Brógáin’s",
"Sonny Ó Brógáin’s", "Garrett Barry's Mazurka" and "The Old Donegal"
is an Irish mazurka in 3/4 time and D Major.
The parts are played AABB.
The tune is named for the late County Dublin accordion player Sonny Brogan (d. 1966), originally from Prosperous, County Kildare. On The Pipering of Willie Clancy the tune is called "Garrett Barry's Mazurka" after an influential blind piper from Inagh, County Clare, born to the Irish-speaking community at the height of the Great Famine in 1847. Most renderings of this tune begin with a one beat pick-up measure which puts the stress on the first beat of the measure as in a waltz. To be a true mazurka the stress falls on the second beat (sometimes the third beat). It has been recorded by Boys of the Lough, The Chieftains, Michael Flatley, Willie Clancy and others. I learned this at our Monday night jam. |