Looking through the clippings files in the library of a newspaper office is sometimes akin to watching a film unreel in fast forward. Here are lives as recorded through the fragments of their news-making highlights; each clipping glued down to an A4 piece of paper and date-stamped like a version of the scrap-books parents of famous children keep. Reading back through old interviews is a bit like time-travelling through someone's life: their outlooks and interests and motivations at particular times.

In the Altan clippings file, there is a photograph of flute-player Frankie Kennedy and his wife, singer and fiddler Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh, taken at their home in May 1992. They are both looking straight to camera: Ni Mhaonaigh with her trademark long blonde hair and a big, open smile; and dark-haired shock-headed Kennedy with an expression of barely-restrained mischief, as if he burst out laughing seconds after the picture was taken.

All the photographs in the Altan file after that are of Kennedy wearing a baseball hat over a head that no longer has hair on it: he died of bone cancer in September 1994. By all accounts, he was much loved both by those who knew him personally and those who knew him through the music he played so well. Belfast-born Kennedy only took up the flute at the relatively late age of 18, when he went to Donegal to learn Irish. He realised quickly that a commitment to music was the only way he could attract the attention of the then 15-year-old Ni Mhaonaigh.

When he died, aged 38, Micheal O Suilleabhain, composer and professor of music at the University of Limerick, said in his tribute: "We have lost a great Northern voice." Altan's friend and long-time supporter, Wendy Newton of their Green Linnet label, simply stated: "He was a superior human being and a giant of a musician."

Today, the sixth Frankie Kennedy Winter School opens in Dunlewey, Co Donegal, and will run until January 2nd. The school, which was established as a tribute to his memory and which Altan play at every year, will this year be particularly special to Ni Mhaonaigh and fellow band member, button accordian player, Dermot Byrne: they married each other in October.

On Altan's last CD, Runaway Sunday, the final track is Time Has Passed. It's a short and haunting valedictory hymn to Kennedy, sung by Ni Mhaonaigh, the first tune to which she ever wrote words. The sleeve notes to the tune simply say: "This song is self-explanatory." It begins, Time has passed/ You have gone/ Your tune is played/ I must carry on, and ends, Winter is cold/ Spring melts the snow/ Love is renewed/ I must carry on. No matter how high you turn the volume up on this tune, it never seems to get any louder: it remains as intimate as a whisper in your ear.

Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh has tiny golden fiddles on the Christmas tree in her home in Rathgar, Dublin. She pours coffee and says goodbye to Byrne, who sticks his head round the door before leaving the house. "It wasn't supposed to go on the album, that song," she explains. "But the band liked it and they thought people would want to hear it, because of course they knew about Frankie."

Altan was founded by Ni Mhaonaigh and Kennedy in the early 1980s. At the time of Kennedy's death, Altan's reputation was established, and they were receiving international critical acclaim. Other members joined the band over the years, and there are now six full-time musicians. Apart from Ni Mhaonaigh and Byrne, there is Ciaran Tourish, fiddle and whistle; Ciaran Curran, bouzouki and mandolin; Mark Kelly, guitar; and Daithi Sproule, guitar.

They will all be in Donegal this week, along with some of Kennedy's many friends, when the annual ritual of flute-swapping will take place. A year after his death, Ni Mhaonaigh distributed his flutes among other musicians, keeping one for herself. Tara Diamond has the main flute on permanent loan, but the other three are given to musicians on an annual basis. This week, they will all be played at sessions at the winter school.

"Frankie would have been totally embarrassed to have something named after him. But that's what he was like - always giving. There were never any half-measures. It was always full blast ahead." Kennedy first started getting pains in about 1992. "He took his illness so well. He never complained, so I felt I couldn't either. If it had been me who was sick, I would have been so mad. But the way he accepted it so bravely helped me. He wouldn't let me stop playing in the band. That was the hardest thing: going away playing gigs while he was in hospitals."

Although she was married to Kennedy for many years, they did not have children, choosing instead to concentrate first on establishing the band. "In retrospect, the music took priority in our lives. We put our own needs second. I do regret that. I mean, the music will always be there. Illness puts things in perspective very quickly. Hopefully Dermot and I can have a family, and that would be a really nice extra thing . . . "

Her voice trails off, and she looks a bit lost and bewildered, and then the 100-watt smile lights up again and roots her firmly in the here and now of their bright warm home. Negativity does not play a part in Ni Mhaonaigh's life, though she has been more tested than most of us.

"I guess I want to give some hope to people who are going through a hard time," she says. Emotionally, she has survived the traumatic death of her first husband, balancing her grieving with quietly continuing to thrive both as a person and professionally.

"It's better than going into a depression and dying along with the person who died. There's a fine line between being totally down and feeling you are surviving. You ask yourself why are you here when the person is gone. It's like half of you is gone, and how do you cope with that? But you can't just give up on life; you can't give up on the person who died. I couldn't let my spirit die too. If you haven't hope you've nothing."

She talks about Kennedy with a mixture of pragmatism, respect, affection, and humour. She's not afraid of talking about him; there's a sense that he is often talked of with many people, and that she herself talks to Kennedy. "I always talk to Frankie," she says matter-of-factly. "So in one way, he's never gone."

In the years since his death, she has never dreamed of him. "I talked to a musician who knew him, who is also a psychic, and he said that Frankie is on such a long journey and has so much to do in that other place, that it's very hard to get through to him.

Did he believe in an afterlife? She laughs. "Frankie was a very careful man - he left all the options open!" As for herself, "I want to believe in an afterlife. When someone so close to you dies, you need to believe there's something else."

Her new husband has also had his own darknesses to deal with in the past. His girlfriend and his brother were killed while driving Byrne's car nine years ago. The tragedy happened when Byrne was touring as a guest with Altan in Germany. "We each had an understanding of loss, although each experience was different. I grieved for Frankie even before he died, because I knew he was dying. For Dermot, it just came out of nowhere."

They started going out together a year after Kennedy's death. "I had no qualms about it at all," she says. "It didn't interfere with the love I had had for Frankie. My love for Dermot was a parallel love. When we told my parents we were going to get married, my mother said something wise, she said, `Well, you obviously had a very good first marriage if you want to get married again'." Frankie's family were really pleased too. They know we wouldn't do anything to hurt the past. And life must go on." I open to the world/ The world will give/ No one's alone/ I must carry on . . . Love is renewed/ I must carry on.

The Frankie Kennedy Winter School opens today and runs until January 2nd, with classes in flute, fiddle, uillean pipes, box, whistle, guitar, bouzouki, and bodhran. Altan play at Ionad Cois Locha, Dunlewey, at 8p.m. on January 1st and 2nd. Further information from 075-32127