Where did she get the name, I asked Matt Anderson about the sister he knew as Molly McAnailly Burke? Oh she made it up, he answered, although the Burke bit did come from an Irish emigrant maternal grandmother.
Born in Portland, Oregon, on December 18, 1952, Molly was a free spirit of the latter half of the 20th century, whether she was living in Ireland, Turkey, Bulgaria or, latterly, Mongolia. All she needed was the clothes she wore, the five-stringed banjo slung on her back and a party she could join. I met Molly busking on Shop Street in Galway in 1975, said her friend, the singer Mary Coughlan.