I was really saddened yesterday when my wife Barbara read in the examiner that my old friend Francie Hughes had died. Francie came here from County Armagh and lived in Ramsey for many years. He was a leading member of the folk group, the Mannin folk. Francie was a larger than life character, full of fun and always with a song on the end of his tongue. Occasionally he would come back to our house when we lived in Ramsey. With a bottle of porter between us, Francie would entertain us by playing the trumpet, tin whistle, strum his banjo and sing his head off, not all at once of course. I recall one winter driving up to Dublin from Tipperary. We arrived at the ferry port about midnight. It was freezing cold and we were covered in mud after letting our dogs off in the Curragh on the way. I stood in the ferry port passenger terminal waiting to board the IOM boat, when from the back of the hall a banjo struck up and that wonderful gravelly Irish lilt of a voice struck up with Donegal Danny. It could only be Francie. Like me, Francie became a cancer sufferer. Well my old friend, I can’t sing like you, I can’t play the banjo like you, however, each Friday night at the gathering we shall render a few verses of Donegal Danny. I shall miss you me old mucker, and I will never forget you!