Folk Singers: Long Gone Macushla

To some listeners, Irish folk music suggests a vista of the Wee Folk prancing in a Donegal sunrise, described in the sad sweet tones of John McCormack. But Ireland is currently in the middle of a folk-music craze similar to the one that swept the U.S. in 1963, and Macushla's blue eyes would turn glassy at the sound of it all. The undisputed leaders of the revolution are The Dubliners, five bearded, brawling musical assailants whose style is just about as far removed from the McCormack idiom as Sgt. Pepper is from...