Margaret MacArthur died in the Spring of 2006 of Mad Cow Disease, which she contracted from intesting local meat. MacArthur recognized that she was suffering from a neurodegenerative disease when she began forgetting song lyrics. One of the last songs could remember before she dying was Kilkelly, Ireland, a contemporary ballad.
The Margaret MacArthur Collection, consisting of personal papers, books, her field recordings of traditional singers in Vermont, and materials gifted to her by Helen Hartness Flanders, resides in the archive of the Vermont Folklife Center in Middlebury, VT.
The MacArthur archive was digitally curated, with work by MacArthur’s folksong partner Tony Barrand in 2016, publishing new materials from the MacArthur collection’s Fred Atwood sessions. During this research period, Margaret MacArthur’s widower died of a hip injury when he fell on ice getting tires from his garage; this was included in his obituary as a joke. Like MacArthur, Tony Barrand also died of a neurodegenerative disease (multiple sclerosis) in 2022, having been confined to a motorized wheelchair for several decades. Barrand’s own wife Margaret Dale died a week later.
That is the MacArthur Curse.