Well I was three and he was five, and he said "I’ll take your hand wee Cathy", and I was smitten. The next time I saw him he was 13 and sent my heart a-flutter just the same. I knew then that he was the one for me and I avowed I would marry him or I would be a nun!

He was gone from home early to work with the men felling trees for new towns. He stayed in a ’bothy’ and played the harmonica with the best of them. He dreamed of being a pilot in World War  II and would watch the planes as they crossed the sky but when it came to it, he was put down the coal mine for the war effort: "The Bevin Boys" they called them, named for the politician who came up with the scheme; every 10th man conscripted down the mine for the duration of the war. That’s what happened to Duncan, and he got sent to Yorkshire from Scotland. His landlady treated him very kindly and there was also a young woman at the local bakery who took a shine to him. She used to get teased because she kept special treats by for him. He was serious about her but in the end she said his religion was not the life for her.

He came home from the War and to see his parents in Ireland (with whom I was serving since I got my Calling) and he and I walked out together, really for the first time. Then one day when we were taking the favourite walk out along the cliffs and around the lighthouse, he said to me "I’m in love more and more with the girl I left behind!"

We both set out together, Mate O’ Mine
When youth was in its prime
Life the road we had to climb
We neither of us knew the road
How long the journey, great the load
Nor I, how great the debt I owed
To God, for Mate O’ Mine

We both set out together, mate o’ mine, now it’s homeward through the valley
I (we) must wander at God’s Will
If I (you) be last returning Home,
I’ll Greet Thee Mate O’ Mine!!

Well it’s me that was the one ’left behind’ like the wee lame boy in the Pied Piper:

"And if Heaven is Kind" (as I am sure it is!!)
I will wait there to find,
Two eyes of blue,
come shining through...

Yes, blue eyes my Duncan had, and that dark hair like my own grandmother Lamont who came from way down the South of Ireland, and God only knows where her People came from before that, and on and on it goes....!

And that’s the story all told!!