Paul Brady is a very talented musician, multi-instrumentalist and composer from here in Northern Ireland, a local boy born in Belfast, and now living right on the border between N.I. & The Irish Republic, in Strabane, Co.Tyrone…which is the same county I live in, but about 45 miles to the west of here. I actually posted one of his songs The Long Goodbye in the Music fans group earlier today, he wrote and recorded it in 2000, but he’s really much better known as a traditional or folk artist who reinterprets and rearranges older music sometimes writing new lyrics. I’m posting his interpretation of this folk song which caught my interest some years ago because it’s called Arthur McBride, and that is my own surname, at least it’s that of my late husband Peter and which I took on marriage to him in 1973.

Im posting first Paul Brady’s fine 1977 rendition of his adaptation of the song and then an explanatory video from an Irish language programme on Irish TV. which tells us the whole background story to the song and its history. I’ve followed all that with a1977 film drama of Brady’s Arthur McBride made by Irish director Tiernan McBride (yes…another McBride, but no relation, at least none that I know about!)