Margaret Barry

The database records a Margaret Barry who performed on Broadway between 1944 and 1949, appearing in three ice revues: Hats Off to Ice, Howdy, Mr. Ice, and Howdy, Mr. Ice of 1950.

A separate Margaret Barry (1917–1989) was an Irish traditional singer and self-taught musician born Margaret Cleary in Cork into a family of Travellers and street singers. She learned to play the zither banjo and fiddle without formal instruction, and at sixteen, following a family disagreement, she left home and began her career as a street musician.

Her move to London in the early 1950s came about through an invitation to appear on a television series called The Songhunter, produced by a young David Attenborough. Attenborough later recalled that her appearance and her unconventional banjo playing generated a significant number of angry viewer complaints. Despite this reception, Barry established herself as a prominent figure on the London folk scene throughout the decade, frequently performing alongside fiddler Michael Gorman. Her singing style and banjo playing influenced a younger generation of ballad singers in Ireland and the United Kingdom, among them Luke Kelly. She also performed at Carnegie Hall and the Rockefeller Centre in New York.

Among the songs most closely associated with Barry is "She Moved Through the Fair." When interviewer Karl Dallas asked whether she had learned it from family or fellow Travellers, she told him she had taken it from a gramophone recording by Count John McCormack. The accompanying book to Topic Records' 70th anniversary boxed set, Three Score and Ten, named her album Her Mantle So Green a classic, and "The Factory Girl" from Street Songs and Fiddle Tunes of Ireland, recorded with Michael Gorman, appeared as track nine on the third disc of that collection.

Barry recorded prolifically across several decades. Her discography includes Songs of an Irish Tinker Lady (Riverside, 1956), Street Songs and Fiddle Tunes (Topic, 1957) with Michael Gorman, Ireland's Queen of the Tinkers Sings (Top Rank, 1960), The Blarney Stone (Prestige Irish, 1961) with Michael Gorman, Songs From the Hills of Donegal (Washington, 1962), Irish Music in London Pubs (Folkways, 1965) with Michael Gorman, Her Mantle So Green (Topic, 1965) with Michael Gorman, Come Back Paddy Reilly (Emerald, 1968), Sing and Play (Folkways, 1975), Ireland's Own (Outlet, 1976), I Sang Through the Fairs (Rounder, 1998), Travellin' People from Ireland (Emerald, 2001) with Pecker Dunne, Queen of the Gypsies (Emerald, 2007), and The Definitive Collection (Songs of the Travelling People) (PMI, 2013).

Recognition of her legacy continued after her death. In 2017, a play titled She Moved Through the Fair: The Legend of Margaret Barry, co-written by Mary McPartlan and Colin Irwin, premiered at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow as part of the Celtic Connections Festival. Poet and songwriter Frank Callery wrote a song marking the centenary of her birth, and singer-songwriter Tim O'Riordan composed "The Heart of the Song (for Margaret Barry)," releasing it on his 2018 album Taibhse. At the RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards in 2019, Barry was inducted into the Hall of Fame by American singer Peggy Seeger.