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Soul Music

She Moved Through The Fair

Soul Music

BBC

Music, Music Commentary

4.7831 Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2013

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Irish traditional song She Moved Through The Fair is well loved and well recorded by many.

To some it is a ghost story that tells of unfulfilled longings and of hopes and aspirations cut short.

Sinead O' Connor and other fans talk about the haunting beauty of this ancient song and of why its imagery is carved into their souls.

Featuring:

Sinead O'Connor Catriona Crowe Bernie Warren David Johnston.

Producer: Maggie Ayre

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in February 2013.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

The Traitors is back, and so is that mysterious cloaked figure with the familiar fringe.

0:06.6

Yeah, it's me.

0:07.8

And when you've watched Claudia in the castle, join me, Ed Gamble, for the official visualised companion podcast.

0:13.6

And remember, I'll be listening.

0:15.8

Okay?

0:16.6

No, seriously, I love it.

0:18.4

What a faithful.

0:19.7

We'll unpack betrayals and spill scandalous secrets with celebrity guests, traitors' legends,

0:25.0

and murdered and banished players.

0:27.0

The Traitors Uncloat.

0:28.3

Watch on EyePlayer, listen for more on BBC Sounds.

0:32.0

You're listening to a program from BBC Radio 4.

0:36.8

She Moved Through the Fair was a song that was very important in my family

0:40.5

because my father sang it to my mother on the morning of their wedding,

0:44.7

at their wedding breakfast in 1951.

0:47.1

I always knew it but never sang it, although I do sing myself

0:50.2

because I see it as a man's song.

0:53.4

And then when I met my partner, Pori Gauphuelan,

0:56.0

I found that it was one of the songs in his repertoire that he liked to sing.

1:00.7

He was never a professional singer, although he was known as a singer in the town.

1:05.1

And that's sort of still, I suppose, a tradition in Ireland today,

1:08.0

that somebody can be known as a singer with a large repertoire and asked to sing at parties or in pubs or wherever

...

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