Biography
Born Margaret Cleary in Cork into a family of Travellers and street singers,[1] she taught herself how to play the zither banjo and the fiddle at a young age. At the age of sixteen, after a family disagreement, Margaret left home and started performing as a street musician.
In the early 1950s, she moved to London, originally to appear on a TV series called The Songhunter, produced by a young David Attenborough. Attenborough described in recent years how Barry’s striking wild, toothless appearance and her out-of-tune banjo playing prompted a volley of angry complaints about Irish tinkers being allowed on the TV.[2] Barry became a well-known name on the London folk scene in the 1950s where, with her distinctive singing style and idiosyncratic banjo accompaniment,[3] she was frequently accompanied by the fiddler Michael Gorman. Her singing and banjo playing became a major influence on the younger generation of ballad singers in Ireland and the UK, including Luke Kelly.[citation needed] She performed in the Carnegie Hall and the Rockefeller Centre in New York.[1]
One song for which Barry is particularly noted is "She Moved Through the Fair".[4] Asked by an interviewer, Karl Dallas, whether she had learned it from her family or from other Travellers, she replied cheerfully, "Oh, no. I got it off a gramophone record by Count John McCormack".[citation needed] The accompanying book to the Topic Records 70 year anniversary boxed set, Three Score and Ten, lists Her Mantle So Green as one of the classic albums[5]: 16 and "The Factory Girl" from Street Songs and Fiddle Tunes of Ireland with Michael Gorman is track 9 on the third CD in the set.
A play, She Moved Through the Fair: The legend of Margaret Barry, co-written by Mary McPartlan and Colin Irwin had its debut in 2017 at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow, as part of the Celtic Connections Festival.[6] Poet/songwriter, Frank Callery wrote a song for the centenary of Barry's birth.[7] Singer/songwriter, Tim O'Riordan, wrote a song in celebration of Barry, "The Heart of the Song (for Margaret Barry)" and recorded it on the album Taibhse in 2018.[8]
At the RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards in 2019, Barry was inducted into the Hall of Fame by American singer Peggy Seeger.[9]
