Margaret Barry

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.

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.

Her singing and banjo playing became a major influence on the younger generation of ballad singers in Ireland and the UK, including Luke Kelly.

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.