You can never trust the weather, of course, so people came with umbrellas and raincoats but there was no need. The sky was blue, the red roses bloomed and a large dragonfly, straying over from the Liffey, glinted silver in the Sunday morning sun.

We were gathered yesterday at the National War Memorial Gardens in Dublin's Islandbridge for the beginning of a week of celebrations marking the 80th anniversary of the death of Francis Ledwidge, poet, soldier and son of Slane, who perished on July 31st, 1917, at the age of 30, in the third battle of Ypres. He had just taken a break from bolting together some planks of wood to make a road across the mud - it had rained all through June and July that year - when a shell fell and shattered his head. Ironically, he'd been a road mender in Co Meath too, and used to read his poetry to his fellow-gangers during the tea break. Unbeknown to him, a workmate sent one of the poems to the Dro- gheda Independent, which is how he first got into print.

His cottage in Slane has long been a place of pilgrimage but yesterday it was the turn of the recently formed Inchicore Ledwidge Society to honour a man who, though a staunch nationalist, had in 1914, donned the khaki and enrolled in the nearby Richmond Barracks, with the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers: the war in Europe was bigger than the conflict in Ireland and in any case, he believed, Home Rule was on the way. Once in the army, he was given an office job and, with access to a typewriter, wrote 12 new poems as well as 20 letters to his beloved Eilish Vaughey - all of them on army notepaper. Guest speaker Dermot Bolger remembered reading of how the 15-year-old Ledwidge, well set up in a secure job as a grocer's assistant in Rathfarnham, had been overcome with homesickness and had walked all the way home to Slane, stopping to rest on each milestone. One of those milestones lay close to Bolger's home in Finglas and as a 15-year-old he himself used to sit on it, comforted in the knowledge that he was not alone. The people gathered together yesterday were many and various. Jim Corrigan, retired from his job in Arnotts' menswear department, had cycled over through the Park. Denise Phelan, working in Paris as an industrial designer, had chosen to come home this weekend because of the Ledwidge Week. Tony Quinn, whose explanatory texts can be seen at the Ledwidge Cottage in Slane, goes to every such event. Leo Murphy, an artist from Boston, was there by chance because the people in his B&B had told him about it. John Hickey, retired from Aer Rianta, had driven up from Fermoy.

Tomas McGiolla was there because he lives locally but also because he's a Ledwidge fan: "Things have changed. Now we think of all the people who have died. It's not a battle between the poppy and the lily any more." Dr John Robb, just down from Belfast, was there, and Ciara O'Flanagan (11), daughter of the secretary of the Inchicore Ledwidge Society, was there to lay the wreath. Organiser Liam O'Meara, himself an award-winning poet, is about to publish the complete works of Ledwidge, which includes a plea for peace in Ireland even more relevant now than it was then:

For the price of a field we have wrangled

While the weather rusts the plough.

Twas yours and twas mine but tis ours yet

And it's time to be fencing it now.

Ledwidge Week continues throughout this week in Dublin with many events including a seminar on Ledwidge followed by the award-winning RTE film Behind The Closed Eye next Thursday at 8 p.m. at De Mazenod Centre, 52a Bulfin Road. For more details, ring 01-454-215 or 01-623-050