Francis Ledwidge,  1887-1917

Michael has created a masterpiece in his new CD release titled "Behind the Closed Eye". As he points out in the liner notes, much of this new album is an inspiration by the poetry of Francis Ledwidge. Michael states that "beneath the gentle surface of Ledwidge's work runs a direct line to the ancient nature poets of Ireland, where beautiful, natural imagery conceals a poetic truth."

For those of us unfamiliar with the many great poets of Eire, I have come up with some history on Ledwidge and would like to share it with you all. Hopefully this will give a better insight into the man who helped inspire Michael in composing this new CD. And for those of you who have not had the oppurtunity to hear the new CD yet, by all means, get it. A delightful treat, as usual.

The following is an excerpt from the Irish Times in which a story was written on the celebration of Ledwidge's death 80 years ago. The story is titled "An Irishman's Diary" by Tom Farrell:

Grocer's apprentice

Francis Ledwidge was born outside the village of Slane on August 19th, 1887, the second youngest in a family of four brothers and three sisters born to Anne and Patrick Ledwidge. He left school at 14 and his first recorded poem, Behind the Closed Eye, was written at the age of 16 while he was working as a grocer's apprentice in Rathfarnham. He also worked the roads, the farms and the copper mine of Beauparc, where his involvement with trade union activities caused his dismissal for organizing a strike against bad conditions. His debut came when he sent his principal notebook of poems to Lord Dunsany, who immediately recognized the young man's potential. Ledwidge was introduced to the Dublin literary circle, connecting him with such writers as AE, James Stephens and Olives John Gogarty. His first volume of 50 poems, Songs of the Field, was not published until 1915, by which time he was immersed in the slaughter convulsing Serbia.

Frustrated love

The roots of his decision, on October 24th, 1914, to enlist in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers are complex. Ledwidge's personal life had been thrown into turmoil by his frustrated love for a local girl, Ellie Vaughey. Ellie's parents did not think him a suitable match for their daughter and married her off to a local farmer named John O'Neill. Ledwidge's work, its heritage part Yeatsian, part Keatsian, was crafted against a rich tapestry of influences. The River Boyne, snaking through the rolling Meath hills, on whose bridge his commemorative plaque is placed, acted as a natural boundary between two island cultures: the Ascendancy, fey and rather decadent, living in its twilight time; the resurgent Gaels, celebrating the revival of their prehistoric heritage. As a child, the backdrop to his world ranged from the neolithic tumuli of Newgrange, Knowthand Dowth and the Celtic burial grounds of Rosnaree to Slane Castle and the Marquis of Conyngham's parklands. I wonder if such a world imprinted on the young poet's mind a sense of almost medieval chivalry, which added to his desire to set the loss of Ellie Vaughey into the wider, impersonal context of the Great War. If so, it is appropriate that he did not survive: the coming war would disband the European empires of medieval lineage just assuredly as the next war spelt the end of the younger, global ones. Ledwidge acted as a branch secretary for John Redmond's Irish Volunteers. When Redmond urged them to batten down "not only in Ireland itself, but wherever the firing line extends in defense of the rights of freedom and religion in this war", Ledwidge held out with those refusing to congratulate him. But talk of "rights of freedom and religion" might eventually mutate into "for God and Country" and the 1914-18 war causes one to wonder if the God was like some ancient Aztec deity, appeased only by ever more blood sacrifices.

Devastated by executions

Ledwidge, whose enlistment had nothing to do with Lord Dunsany, was devastated by the executions of the Easter Rising leaders. He drank more, reported late and was court martialled for making offensive remarks to a superior officer. Even if his work deals only obliquely with war, it is significant that he is of the lost generation of the trenches, the young men born into a world whose permanence and security seemed absolute, but whose innocence died in the golden summer of 1914.Today's Northern France has the languid tranquility of the Meath hills, but it is tempting to believe that somewhere, ghostly regiments are still marching to the Army brass. It seems almost flippant therefore, to add that our world, moving into a new century, is defined in its entirety by that obscene conflict. The Middle Ages ended in the trenches. Sweeping away the Romanovs, Hapsburgs, Hohenzollerns and Ottomans, the maelstrom made Communism and Nazism possible; it heralded the end of what Professor Eric Hobsbawm calls "the long 19th century".But it is almost gone from living memory. It disturbs me to think that the first World War will soon be as distant as the Crimean or Boer wars, and by that token, as sterile. I hope future readers find joy in Ledwidge's poems -joy that may help them appreciate his cruel and useless loss, 80 years ago.

Then in the lull of midnight, gentle arms

Lifted him slowly down the slopes of death.

Lest he should hear again the mad alarms

Of battle, dying moans, and painful breath.

And where the earth was soft for flowers we made

A grave for him that he might better rest.

So, Spring shall come and leave it sweet arrayed,

And there the lark shall turn her dewy nest.

-Francis Ledwidge