Born on 19th August 1887 Francis was the eighth of nine children born to Patrick and Anne Ledwidge. He was the first child born in the family's new home, a Labourers Cottage just outside the village of Slane, situated in the heart of the Boyne Valley, some thirty miles North of Dublin. Christened Francis Edward but known as Frank to his family and friends the fledgling poet would know hardship at an early age. His father died when he was just four years old and only three months after the birth of his youngest brother Joseph. The burden fell on his mother Anne to provide for the family by undertaking backbreaking "outdoor relief" work in the fields for a meagre eight shillings a week.

Francis with his mother Anne

Further tragedy was to befall the Ledwidge family when the eldest son Patrick returned from his book keeping job in Dublin with tuberculosis and a four year death sentence. Francis later said of that time:

"Oh those four years. It was as though God forgot us."

Despite the initial hardship the literary talents of Francis flourished from an early age. Described as an "erratic genius" by his schoolmaster Mr. Thomas Madden Francis joined a literary society for juveniles and was introduced to classic stories like The Arabian Nights, Robinson Crusoe, Don Quixote and the poetic works of Shakespeare, Keats and Longfellow. From as soon as he could write Francis indulged in the creation of rhyme and verse:

"While I was still at school many silly verses left my pen, written either for my own amusement, or the amusement of my companions. Indeed I left many an exercise unfinished hurrying over some thought that shaped itself into rhyme."

His first poem of note came when Francis was aged fifteen. Upon finishing school the young poet went to work as a grocer's apprentice in Rathfarnham Co. Dublin. He hated his time there and was extremely homesick. His poem "Behind the Closed Eye" reflected the memories of the idyllic world he had left behind. After just a week of working in the grocers Francis stole away in the middle of the night and walked the thirty five miles home to Slane.

In the following years Francis undertook a variety of jobs in the Slane area including groom, farmhand, roadworker and miner. He continued to write poetry and had many of his poems published in the local newspaper the Drogheda Independent. Many of these poems were taken to the newspaper office by Ellie Vaughey, the younger sister of his friend Paddy. Their relationship soon developed into love and Ledwidge wrote numerous poems which spoke of Ellie's beauty "Spring Love".

During this time Ledwidge acquired a patron in the form of a local aristocrat, Lord Dunsany. Dunsany wrote of the young poet:
"I was astonished by the brilliance of that eye that had looked at the fields of Meath and seen there all the simple birds and flowers, with a vividness that made those pages like a magnifying glass, through which one looked at familiar things seen thus for the first time. I wrote to him greeting him as a true poet, which indeed he was…"	Dunsany Castle

Dunsany ensured that the poetry of Ledwidge would find a wider audience as his poems began to be published in the literary magazine Saturday Review. Dunsany also facilitated the introduction of the young poet to the Irish literary circle which included AE, Thomas MacDonagh, Katherine Tynan and James Stephens amongst others.

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