Mary Bergin is a whistle player from Shankill, Co. Dublin. Her mother played fiddle, her father melodeon. She picked up the whistle at nine, having heard Willie Clancy play in an Oireachtas concert in Dublin.. She picked up the whistle at nine, having heard Willie Clancy play in an Oireachtas concert in Dublin. Influenced by visiting musicians (Kathleen Harrington, Paddy Hill and Elizabeth Crotty in particular), and by local and fleadh sessions in the 1960s (in Blackrock with her harper sister Antoinette, fiddlers Joe Liddy and Sean O’Dwyer); whistle player Terry Horan also informed her playing. She played in the Claremen’s Club in Church Street, Dublin and the Thomas Street Pipers’ Club sessions, and learned too from observation of such as singer Nioclás Tóibín in Ring and Willie Clancy in Miltown Malbay while on family holidays.

She took part in CCÉ tours of Britain with, among others, Liam O’Flynn and Matt Molloy, and in the USA with such as Séamus Begley, Joe Burke and James Kelly. She worked for Radio Éireann in Henry St., Dublin, then CCÉ in Monkstown before moving to Spiddal where she now teaches the whistle. She played with the Green Linnet Céilí Band (Dublin: Mick Hand, flute, Tommy Peoples and Liam Rowsome, fiddles, Johnny McMahon, accordion), with Éamon de Buitléar’s Ceoltóirí Laighean, and for a time with De Dannan. She has also toured with her sister Antoinette, who performs with whistle and uilleann pipes player Joe McKenna. She has played much with bouzouki player Alec Finn, and now tours with the group Dordán.

Brightly ornamented but uncluttered, her playing is distinctive with a crisp articulation, and was the role model for two decades of whistle players. Her first solo album, Feadóga Stáin, in 1979, is still definitive; Feadóga Stáin 2 came in 1989, and she has recorded several albums with Dordán. In 2000 she was awarded TG4’s Gradam Ceoil for Traditional Musician of the year.