Sir, – Now that An Post has issued a stamp to commemorate Brendan Behan is it not time to remember another Irish literary personage, Francis Ledwidge, through the issue of a stamp or perhaps in some other way?
The timing for such a commemoration would now be very apt. This was a man who brought together in his life and in his writings all the strands of the celebrations and commemorations of events of 100 years ago that we are now marking.
His life and work encompasses the fiirst World War, the place of an ordinary Irishman in the British army, nationalism (he was a member of the Irish Volunteers), his trade unionism, his patriotism, his work with the Gaelic League and his love of the environment. In these diverse activities he was associated with all shades of political opinion in Ireland.
His support for Irish independence and his horror at the execution of the leaders of the 1916 rebellion can be seen in his poems “The Blackbirds “ (an allegorical elegy for the poets of 1916) and “Lament for Thomas McDonagh”.
The Garden of Rememberance at Islandbridge carries lines from the English poet Rupert Brooke . Would it not be fitting that lines from our own war poet could also be carried there?
In his poem “In Memoriam Francis Ledwidge” another great Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, covered some of the elements of the emotions and characteristics of Ledwidge in the lines “In you, our dead enigma, all the strains / Criss-cross in useless equilibrium”. The poem concludes: “You were not keyed or pitched like those true-blue ones / Though all of you consort now underground.”
Francis Ledwidge was killed in action in 1917 aged 30. Yours, etc,
ERNEST CROSSEN,
Knockmaroon Hill,
Chapelizod,
Dublin 20