Five Beards With Irish Folk Songs

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31661, 23 April 1968, Page 10

Five Beards With Irish Folk Songs

A troupe of five longbearded folk-singer* called the Dubliners will make a three-week tour of New Zealand In June, offering boisterous bawdy entertainment with the beguiling charm and brash belligerence that has endeared the Irish and exasperated their friends.

They seem tough with their harsh brogue, their careless hair and their openneck shirts, and they all come from Dublin.

Barney McKenna is the biggest, with a big, black and bushy beard that gives an impression of a, benign Californian black bear. He plays the banjo with an unbearlike dexterity. Ronnie Drew, the leader, has an even blacker beard, smaller and trimmer yet encirling his face in such a way that his eyes resemble a cat’s peering out of a coal cellar.

He plays guitar and though he was once a boy soprano he now sings in a voice like coke being crushed under a door. “I’m not sure whether it’s a blessing or a curse, but at

the moment I’m making a living with it,” he says. The Quiet Man Ciaron Bourke’s beard is lighter in colour and straggles a little. He is Hie quiet member of the group. He plays the whistle and his voice has a softer texture. Luke Kelly has a smart, sharp ginger beard and is accused by the others of being an intellectual. He sings in a voice to wake the dead and scare recording engineers and he plays the banjo. The trim fifth beard is that of the group’s fiddler, John Sheahan, who claims to lead a more orderly life than the others. He studied the classical violin and now applies his technique to Irish folk song. Together the five are Dublin’s darlings—enough to warm the heart of any Irishman and to frighten the British immigration authorities. On their first New Zealand tour, for the Kerridge organisation, they will sing in Christchurch on June 13 and 18, in Timaru on June 17, in Greymouth on June 19, in Nelson on June 20, and in Blenheim on June 21.