Slane's own Francis Ledwidge was born in Slane in 1887 and raised in a small cottage that survives today as Ireland's only "poet's cottage" museum. The cottage is situated about half a mile east of the Village on the left hand side of the Drogheda Road (N51). The cottage was purchased through the tremendous efforts of local volunteers, including Pearl Baxter, as well as through donations obtained through cousins in the States.

The cottage has four small rooms including some original and period furnishings in the bedroom and kitchen. The cottage evokes the simple life of the rural Irish while the displays of original manuscripts and the poetry itself proclaim the transcendence of one man's thought in verse. It is proof that humble surroundings, close family and day laborer's work can be the forge of a great soul.

Ellie Vaughey 

Francis Ledgwidge wrote from a young age and at one point his work was recognized as brilliant by Lord Dunsany who became his patron. Lord Dunsany introduced Ledwidge to the Dublin Literary circle and he had his first volume of Fifty poems, entitled Songs of the Field, published in 1915. His poems celebrated nature, quiet mornings before dawn and his love for Ellie Vaughey.

"So light she tripped across the brook,
Gathering water cresses,
The sparklng mossy stones scarce shook
So wondrous light her step was -
"Ellie!", cross the hill it rang,
The valleys back the echo sang;
Deep in my heart I felt love's pang
In the morning early."

from A Moving Picture

The poet's courtship of Ellie Vaughey is celebrated in "Thoughts at the Trysting Stile" and in poems throughout 1913-1914, but the love was not meant to be. She was the daughter of a landowner and he was a poor but working man with an ear for a phrase and a pen for his soul.

Ellie married another, and shortly thereafter, in England, 1915, she died during childbirth.

The garden in back of the cottage is testament to the hard work of local volunteers in creating a contemplative atmoshere for visitors to the museum. By the poet's own hands, the tiny yard once produced cabbage and potatoes. The beautiful garden now contains a large stone, moved here from the top of the Hill of Slane, bearing a plaque "To One Dead" and the following verse, dedicated to his lost love, Ellen Vaughey:

A Blackbird singing
On a moss-upholstered stone,
Blebells swinging,
Shadows wildly blown,
A song in the wood,
A ship on the sea.
The song was for you
And the ship was for me.

A blackbird singing
I hear in my troubled mind,
Bluebells swinging
I see in a distant wind.
But sorrow and silence
Are the wood's threnody,
The silence for you
And the sorrow for me.

The Soldier

Given these sensibilities, it can be somewhat surprising to learn that Francis Ledwidge enlisted as a soldier to fight in France during the first World War. Ledwidge had himself organized the Irish Volunteers in Slane in furtherance of Ireland's indepednece. It is said that his sense of duty came from his unwillingness to sit idly by while others fought for the freedom he might later enjoy, complex though it was for the nationalist to join with the British army:

"she stood between Ireland and an enemy common to our civilisation and would not have her say that she defended us whilewe did nothing at home but pass resolutions"

Ledwidge's poem "The Call to Ireland" summarized the compulsionto act despite the complexity of joining forces with the British army that occupied his own country and had for centuries past:

"We have fought so much for the nation
In the tents we helped to divide;
Shall the cause of our common fathers
On our earthstones lie denied?
For the price of a field we have wrangled
While the weather rusted the plow,
' twas yours and 'twas mine and 'tis ours yet
And it's time to be fencing it now."

Deep down his resolution to fight probably derived from his love of his home in Slane, fighting "neither for a principle nor a people nor a law, but for the fields along the Boyne, for the birds and the blue skies over them.

In a military hospital, wounded, Ledwidge heard the news of the Easter Uprising and the executions that followed. He penned his most well-known poem for the rising's slain leader, Thomas MacDonagh:

He shall not hear the bittern cry
In the wild sky, where he is lain,
Nor voices of the sweeter birds
Above the wailing of the rain.

Upon reporting back to duty, Ledwidge saw the ruins of the Post Office on O'Connell Street following the rising. To the British officer who derided the "rebels" Ledwidge shot back that when he had fought on two battlefields and been wounded, he had foolishly believed that he was fighting for Ireland too.

The tragedy of the first World War is reflected not so much in Ledwidge's verses but in the simple fact that after surviving the hellish decimation and folly at Gallipoli and the blizzards of Serbia, Francis Ledgwidge was killed in Belgium in 1917 at age 29. As with the young English poet Wilfred Owen, Francis's death exemplified how the generation's finest young men were mown down by the wasteful hands of war.

The Collected Poems

The Poems of Francis Ledwidge were gathered in a collection by Alice Curtayne, a great benefactor to the Ledwidge Museum. The collected poems' publication was launched in Slane in 1972.

The Museum

Open seven days a week.
Hours: 9am to 1pm, 2pm to 6pm.

The second Sunday in August is Francis Ledwidge Day and at the cottage it is a day of poetry reading and dancing. Otherwise the museum is open year 'round for visitors.

Telephone: 041-24285

The Cottage of the Poet Francis Ledwidge

The Hill of Slane

The Megalithic Tombs

The Town: History, Lodging, Pubs and Restaurants, Shops

Slane Castle & Concerts

By the Author "Slane"