f She Fairly Moved

Born a hundred years ago, the magnificent Irish street singer Margaret Barry was once seen, never forgotten. Colin Irwin isn’t even trying to…

I

t was a hundred years ago today. Well, it would be if you happen to be reading this on January 1, 2017. The day Margaret Barry was born. Maggie Barry, Irish street singer, who literally stopped the traffic and went on to fame (though never ever fortune) to become a colourful, strong-minded, wilful, individual and revered figure, on the British and American folk scenes.

See, the thing is, Margaret Barry stole my life. And I’m not sure exactly how, why, where or when. Very probably that Sunday night ceilidh at the Wooden Bridge Hotel in Guildford in another century.

The Rakes were there providing the music but, taking a rest between dances, they introduced Margaret. She seemed to be huge at that time. With her ink black hair tumbling in all directions, an imposing glare aimed at the ceiling and a “mouth full of no teeth”, she looked ferociously intimi-

dating. And when she played… my, my… when she played… jaws tumbled to floors, paint peeled off the walls and, never mind surrounding hate and forcing it to surren- der, her raucous banjo was a stringed weapon of mass destruction in its own right.

And there was that weird, electrifying voice – paradoxically raucous, wayward and uncompromising, yet ornamentally decora- tive, elegant and oddly moving at the same time – which seemed to encircle the room before descending on you from a great height and knocking the breath clean out of you. Some bikers at the back whistled and barracked, but she paid them no heed, just thrashed the banjo more viciously, sang louder and glared harder at the ceiling.

After years of singing on the harsh streets of Cork, Dublin, Newry and Belfast and overcoming the noise of the traffic, markets, football matches, bars and – on one famous occasion – a juke box in a chip-

With Michael Gorman (left) at Cecil Sharp House, 1962.

pie – a couple of bikers weren’t about to faze Maggie Barry.

It was certainly something to do with the albums I heard later: Her Mantle So Green; Queen Of The Gypsies; and, especial- ly, the Rounder collection, I Sang Through The Fairs, with its snippets of Alan Lomax interviews, which offered a teasing insight into the extraordinary, fast-talking charac- ter and impenetrable Cork accent behind the extraordinary voice.

More than any of that, it was to do with the blessed Reg Hall, the fount of all knowledge on things London Irish, who’d played with Margaret on many occasions in fabled sessions at the Favourite and the Bedford Arms when she first came to Lon- don. Attending one of his characteristically inspirational lectures announcing the release of the original Topic Voice Of The People collection, he painted a graphic account of her adventures after cycling out

Photo: Brian Shuel