“I REMEMBER her singing A Mother’s Love’s a Blessing. I hope she will give this book her blessing tonight.”
I don’t think Jim Livingstone need worry. His mother, singer Bridie Gallagher who died in 2012, would surely approve of the story of her life told with love and truth.
“Ours wasn’t a showbiz family,” he said. “When she came back from touring her first question was had we been doing our home work and why was my room so untidy. We didn’t even know she was famous.”
She certainly was famous and from the halls and hills of her home place in Donegal to top of the bill in top venues in London, The Lincoln Centre New York, Australia, her voice sang out about The Homes of Donegal and the Boys from the County Armagh all round the world.
I remember Bridie Gallagher coming into Ulster Television to appear in Fiddle and Flute. In later years Frank Carson talked to me about her and her charisma, of Bridie Ward and Gertie Wine and the fun they all had.
However, her first experience of stage lights and curtains came when she appeared at St Mary’s Hall in Belfast, the start of a professional career when she modelled herself on Judy Garland. George Jones, who spoke at the book launch on Wednesday, said she was an icon, a trailblazer and an ambassador.
At a time when artists coming out of Ireland were Irish tenors, Bridie established herself as an international artist; she opened doors for women like Ruby Murray. Daniel O’Donnell remembers seeing her in Annagry Hall when he was 10 years old.
“To see her glide across the stage in her wonderful gown singing all the songs we came to know through her is a memory I will never forget.” She had the X-factor before it was invented.
At the launch of Bridie Gallagher, The Girl From Donegal, I sat between Vivienne McMaster and Muriel Day. Vivienne toured for two years with Bridie in 1957. “I was the soubrette singing and dancing and I remember when we appeared in the Royal Albert Hall we’d a record of over 7,500 people in the audience. Mounted police were required to keep back the crowds. Then we’d go home to beans and toast."
Although Bridie was put up in a top hotel she turned down the luxury to go and live with Vivienne and the dancers. Jim tells the story that it was there Vivienne taught his mother to smoke.
“They’d stand in front of the mirror, cigarettes poised and practiced looking sexy!” Muriel recalls being asked by the BBC to take part in a programme of Irish music. “I was 16 and I was in awe of the star, she sang Oh Hill of Donegal. I came to know her when I became a professional too. She was a mentor.”
With a recording of her singing softly in the background and with his mother’s emerald, white and red ball gowns beside him, Jim talked of a "great woman". He explained that the last thing he wanted was to take his mother’s own unfinished writings and turn them into a catalogue of dates and venues.
“It’s about the home I loved and our mother, the good times and bad times and all the things I discovered about her life I didn’t know. For over a year I interviewed family and friends, people she worked with, even old boyfriends – one of 92 who remembers leaving her home after a dance in Creeslough on the bar of his bike.”
Bridie had two sons: Jim went on to be her manager, sadly Peter died in a motorbike accident in 1976. Ciaran Collins, Peter’s teenage chum, told me how the two boys fixed Bridie’s broken lawn mower and cut the grass.
“When she got home Peter said he thought £5 would cover it. She burst into the song No Charge. For the nine months I’ve carried you growing inside me, no charge, for the nights I’ve sat up with you, doctored you, prayed for you, no charge ….” She had a great sense of humour and obviously knew how to deal with people.
Many a time when I was in Ardara I joined Bridie and Conal Haughy on the bench outside the Nesbitt Arms and we’d sit in the sun and reminisce as she greeted her loving public. Special days of craic and laughter.
But she suffered her own devils and how difficult it must have been for Jim to write about those times. But he has done it with style and dignity. She worried audiences wouldn’t come, she suffered depression after Peter’s death, she drank too much and she depended on Jim. It was he who brought her out of those dark days and back on to the stage, this time to head the bill in Sydney Opera House.
Despite travelling the world bringing her Irish songs to those far away from home, her heart remained in Donegal. No wonder, growing up in the large farmhouse on Ards Peninsula, her love of the beaches around Ards Forest Park at the foot of Muckish Mountain was strong – it formed a well-grounded woman who knew the value of friendship and truth.
Growing up on a farm instilled in her a pattern of hard work, bringing water from the spring well, the big stew pot on the open fire and the smell of turf mingling with the cooking and baking. Hard but happy days when her mother could hear her daughter a mile away as she sang at the top of her voicer coming up the lane.
Bridie Gallagher, The Girl From Donegal is a fascinating book, the story of an entertainer who reached the heights, was fated around the world, touched many people with her performances, yet experienced great suffering.
Jim Livingstone’s book brings Bridie Gallagher to people who thought they knew her and those who have only heard of her, it’s a powerful story about a powerful woman who never lost touch with the girl from Donegal. (Published by The Collins Press, £18.)
