Is She Moved Through the Fair really a folk song, or is it an early 20th Century parlour song?  The answer to this question takes us deep into Irish social and cultural history and we meet some colourful characters along the way. But our journey's end is a cottage fireside where, in the space of just a few minutes, a woman and two men unwittingly sparked a musical phenomenon.

Music

In addition to She Moved Through the Fair, this episode includes the following music:

The opening music is Eleanor Plunkett by Turlough O’Carolan

The music accompanying Padraic Colum’s words is The Frost is All Over, a tune from Donegal

The piano version of She Moved Through the Fair is Herbert Hughes’s arrangement, published in his book Irish Country Songs vol 1 in 1909. It is followed by an excerpt from La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin by Claude Debussy. Like many parlour pianos, mine is greatly in need of tuning.

The harp tune behind the words of Herbert Hughes is The Airy Bachelor, a tune he also collected in Kilmacrenan, Donegal on the same trip on which he and Colum first heard She Moved Through the Fair.

There’s a verse of “The Grey Cock” played on piano.

The reading of “My Own Rod’s The Sorest” or “Out of the Window” uses the verses reconstructed by Hugh Shields (see below). The tune played is the one originally collected by Herbert Hughes (see below)

The final version of She Moved Through the Fair is the version my Mum taught me, apart from the final verse - I've never heard her sing the final verse.

All music performed by Jenny Shaw.

Acknowledgements

As always I’d like to express my thanks to the team at Stones Barn, Cumbria and the Barnstoners community, who are always supportive and encouraging, and to Steven, Cai and Eleanor Shaw who remain supportive despite having to listen to my nonstop singing and whistling.

References

The song was first published by Herbert Hughes in The Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society in 1905.

A free PDF version of Herbert Hughes’ Irish Country Songs

A copy of Wild Earth by Padraic Colum 

There’s an interesting article on Irish sean-nos singing here 

She Moved Through the Fair in Fresno State’s Ballad Index

Mainly Norfolk’s article about She Moved Through the Fair.

Article about Colum in the Irish Times

Lots of versions of the song; sheet music and video

An article about Margaret Barry from The Guardian:

Pickering, M. (1990). Review of The Singing Bourgeois: Songs of the Victorian Drawing Room and Parlour, by D. Scott. Popular Music, 9(3), 381–384. http://www.jstor.org/stable/853333 

Shields, H. (1975). The Proper Words: A Discussion on Folk Song and Literary Poetry. Irish University Review, 5(2), 274–291. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25477077