Life
1891-1917 [‘the Irish Keats’]; b. 19 Aug., Janevill, Slane,
Co. Meath; f. died young and mother went ot work in fields; prevented from eviction only by a doctor who refused to permit the removal of his tubercular elder brother Patrick, who later died, and was buried at the expense of the Navan Co. Council; left school at 14; worked as a labourer and later in a copper mine at Beaupare; elected sec. of Slane branch of Meath Labour Union,
1912; led labour action in short-lived mining industry in Slane, and was sacked as trouble-maker; fell in love with Ellie Vaughey, who married another and died in childbirth in 1915; headed Slane branch of Irish Volunteers, 1914, and travelled to Manchester to rally support; his first poems appeared
in Drogheda Independent; on advice
of local sculptor encountered in Conyngham Arms, he contacted Lord Dunsany,
who responded to his personality and talent with an invitation to use the castle library and a small gratuity to enable him to write; issued Songs of the Fields (1915); voted against Redmond’s Woodenbridge declaration at three successive meetings of the Volunteers in Meath; met hostility in Slane and travelled to Dublin, where he enlisted in Dunsany’s regt.,
5th Battalion Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers Inniskilling
Fusiliers [10th (Irish) Division], at Richmond Barracks (Inchicore); promoted to lance corporal; stationed at Basingstoke; saw action at Sulva Bay (Gallipoli) with 50% casualties, and in Serbia, participating in the 90-mile forced-march retreat from Salonika; collapsed en route, losing all his manuscripts, and hospitalised in Cairo for four months; afterwards transported home to Manchester; denied request to leave army on medical grounds; composed his elegy for Thomas MacDonagh during home leave in Manchester,
May 1916; visited Dublin and saw ruins in O’Connell Street; (‘if someone were to tell me now
that the Germans were coming in over our back wall, I wouldn’t lift
a finger to stop them. They could come!’); brought before court-martial and demoted for unauthorised absence; stationed for seven months at Ebrington Barracks, Derry before being sent to France and Belgium;
joined regt. at Picquigny, north of Amiens, Dec. 1916; drafted to B Company, 1st Battalion Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers [29th Division]; posted to Carnoy, then Le Neuville nr. Corbie; conducted correspondence with Katherine Tynan; billeted in Le Neuville, early March, 1917; reached 1st Arras, April 1917; moved to Proven nr. Ypres, 27 June; served in trenches; killed by a shell at Boesinghe [nr. Pilkem] while laying duck-boards in preparation for attack
on Ypres (Third Battle), 31 July; bur. at Artillery Wood cemetery nearby [Paschendaele]; Complete Poems issued by Herbert Jenkins (1919); a life by Alice Curtayne published in 1972; a Ledwidge Commemorative Festival at the National War Memorial
Gardens, Islandbridge, estab. 27 July 1997, being addressed by Dermot Bolger and others; Selected Poems edited by Dermot Bolger (1993), with a foreword
by Seamus Heaney, counting Ledwidge among the ‘walking wounded’. DNB DIB DIW DIH DIL OCEL KUN FDA G20 HAM OCIL
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Works
Works, Songs of Peace (London: Herbert Jenkins 1917), intro. Lord Dunsany
[Plunkett]; Songs of the Fields (London: Herbert Jenkins 1918);
[Lord Dunsany, ed.,] The Complete Poems of Francis Ledwidge, with
Introduction by Lord Dunsany (London: Jenkins 1919; rep. 1955); Francis Ledwidge: Selected Poems, ed. Dermot Bolger, with a foreword by Seamus Heaney (Dublin: New Island Books 1993), 80pp. [pb.].
Reprint Edns., Alice Curtayne, ed., The Complete Poems of Francis Ledwidge [rev. and enl. 4th edn.] (London: Martin Brian & O’Keeffe 1974); Dermot Bolger, ed., Francis Ledwidge, Selected Poems, foreword by Seamus Heaney (Dublin: New Island Books 1993), pb., 80pp.; Songs of the Fields (Killeen: Three Spires 1995), 22pp. [ltd edn. of 25 copies]; Liam O’Meara, ed., The Complete Poems (Newbridge: Goldsmith Press 1997), 336pp. [incl. 20 prev. undiscovered poems].
Songs of Peace, by Francis Ledwidge, with an introduction by Lord Dunsany (Herbert Jenkins Ltd [1917]), Intro., 5-8pp., Poems 15-110pp., incl. sections, ‘At Home’; ‘In Barracks’; ‘In Camp’; ‘At Sea’; ‘In Serbia’; ‘In Greece’; ‘In Hospital in Egypt’; ‘In Barracks’ [”Thomas McDonagh” and some 10 others].
Criticism
Lord Dunsany, My Ireland (London & NY: Jarrold’s 1937),
Chap. V [on Francis Ledwidge], pp.53-67.
Alice Curtayne, Francis Ledwidge: A Life of the Poet (London: Martin Brian & O’Keeffe 1972), and Do., introduced by Jennifer Johnston [rep. edn.] (Dublin: New Island 1998).
Seamus Heaney, ‘The Labourer and the Lord: Francis Ledwidge and Lord Dunsany’, in Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-78 (London; Faber & Faber 1980), pp.202-06.
Gerald Dawe, ‘Francis Ledwidge: A Man of His Time’, in The Irish Times (31 July 2004), p.11 [extract from lecture at Slane, Sunday 25th July 2004].
See also Irish Book Lover Vols. 5, 7 ,8, & 13.
Lord Dunsany, Preface to Mary Lavin, Tales from Bective Bridge (London: Michael Joseph 1945), pp.5-8
John Hewitt, review of Alice Curtayne, Complete Poems of Ledwidge (1974),
in Hibernia (24, April 1975).
Keith Jeffrey, ‘Irish Culture and the Great War’, in Bullán (Autumn 1994).
Seamus Heaney, ‘In Memoriam Francis Ledwidge’, a poem (Irish
Times, May 1980)..
Seamus Heaney, essay on Francis Ledwidge, The Irish Times (21, Nov. 1992).
P. J. Kavanagh notes (‘Bywords’, Irish Literary Supplement, 27 Sept., 1996; p.16).
Robert Greacen, reviewing Liam O’Meara, ed., Complete Poems of Francis Ledwidge, 1997, in Books Ireland ( Feb. 1998).
Gerald Dawe, ‘Francis Ledwidge: A Man of His Time’, in The Irish Times (31 July 2004), p.11.
Jessie B. Rittenhouse, The Second Book of Modern Verse, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1922; rep. in Bartleby online.
W. S. Braithwaite, ed., Anthology of Massachusetts Poets, 1922; in Bartleby online.
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Notes
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day Co. 1991), Vol. 2, selects “June” from Songs of the Fields; “A Twilight in Middle March”, “Lament for Thomas MacDonagh, from from Songs of Peace; “The Shadow People, “The Herons”; and “At Lisnaskea”, “Derry”, “The Sad Queen”, and “A Dream” from Songs of Peace. bibl. [774] notes that Curtayne’s edn. contains poems not included by Dunsany. See A. N. Jeffares, Anglo-Literature (1980), p. 185.
Belfast Central Public Library holds Songs of Peace (1917); Songs of the Fields (1918); Complete Poems (1944, 1955).
Websites: see “The Cottage of Francis Ledwidge”, Slane [online]. Toronto Poetry Database (gen. ed. Ian Lancashire) holds four poems of Ledwidge: “Behind the Closed Eye”, “June”; “Soliloquy; “Spring and Autumn” [link]. See also entry at “First World War” website [link].
Slane Bridge: the first stanza of his elegy for Thomas MacDonagh was carved on memorial plaque to be set in parapet of Slane Bridge, but is now affixed to Ledwidge’s Cottage (‘He shall not hear the bittern cry / In the cold grave where he is lain ...’)
Chadwyck-Healey English Poetry Full-Text Database CD-ROM [Release One], holds two poems entitled “In Memoriam: Francis Ledwidge”,
the earlier one by Norreys Jephson Connor and the later by Seamus Heaney.
Seamus Heaney: articles on ‘Francis Ledwidge’ in Stanley Kunitz, ed., Twentieth Century Writers (1967 edn.) and another on Ledwidge in Fortnightly Review (Dec. 1945).
Dermot Bolger, ed., Francis Ledwidge: Selected Poems (Dublin: New Island Books 1993): purports to clarify his reputation smudged by the over-inclusiveness of Curtayne’s earlier edn., viz., Complete Poems (1974).
Musical score: John McQuaid, Songs Of Francis Ledwidge (Scottish Music Centre [q.d.]), 16pp.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)