CORMAC BEGLEY UNVEILS NEW 'LOW-LOW D' CONCERTINA

One of Ireland's best and hairiest concertina players Cormac Begley, today unveiled the latest addition to his ever expanding collection: a giant, low-low D concertina.

The gigantic instrument is tuned to two octaves lower than the standard Anglo-concertina allowing for endless variations on drones and chords, something which everyone except concertina players are sick of.

The concertina, created by maker Jurgen Suttner, weighs almost the same as an 8 year old child or a 30 year old midget, due to the immense size of its reeds, something which Cormac said takes a while to get used to:

"It's difficult enough to play alright. The buttons are pretty big because of the reeds so you really have to mash them with the palm of your hand. Luckily I have fairly large hands."

"You get a real upper-body workout playing this thing but it helps to have tried a low A concertina first. The low-low D sounds like I'm milking a bull but still, I'm looking forward to trying this out in a few set 'Na Fir Bolg' sets!"

This is the latest in a troubling trend of large instruments appearing on the Irish music scene following last year's giant spoons massacre in Tullamore (pictured left). However Begley says people shouldn't be worried about this concertina as it will only be used for recording and driving any other concertinas out of sessions.

"It's like driving a JCB! There's no way there'd be space for any other concertinas if I whip this out. They'd be far too intimidated anyway! Although when I showed it to Jack Talty he just shook his head and walked away."