Madam, - To be in David Hammond's company was to be in a privileged place. His presence enveloped you in warmth and welcome.
David's legacy is manifold, but if he had done nothing else but record and preserve Belfast children's street songs in the film Dusty Bluebells and the subsequent CD Green Peas and Barley-O, we would already have been profoundly indebted to him. Recorded in the 1970s, that darkest of decades, those songs were, to use David's own words, "a lighted candle in the window of a city that was consumed by hatred".
"The big ship sails on the alley, alley-o." Bon voyage, Davy. - Yours, etc,
JOHN QUINN,
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Stradbally North,
Clarinbridge,
Co Galway.