The Black Nag — Mandolin Tab

Mandolin tab and sheet music with synced audio · Key of Bm · 120 BPM · 6/8 time · English Traditional · Beginner

Chords used in this arrangement: Bm, A, D, Em, F#m.

The tune you know as "The Black Nag" actually spent decades under a completely different name. It first showed up in Playford's Dancing Master in 1657 as "Black Nagg," but later editions quietly renamed it "The Galloping Nag," and it bounced between the two names across multiple printings before settling back into "The Black Nag" that stuck. The tune is a 17th-century English country dance jig, and here's a neat structural quirk: the melody is only 24 bars long, but the actual dance it was written for is 72 bars. This meant the dancers needed you to play through it three times just to get once around the floor. On mandolin in Bm, that rolling B-part with its cascading triplet figures is where the tune really locks in and starts to feel like it's galloping, which, given the alternate title, makes a lot of sense.

This page includes mandolin tablature, standard music notation, and a chord chart — printable as PDF and playable in sync with the original recording. Change the key, slow the tempo down, and loop the bars you want to practise.