Sir, - Windmills on the coast at Dublin Bay! Surely not. I could scarcely believe my eyes when I saw a recent RTE news item on these new wind-powered electricity sources. To most observers they must have looked quite alien. Windmills belong in Holland or in Don Quixote's Spain, they have no place in Irish culture. Or have they?
Your readers may be interested to know that this is not the first time windmills were used on the coast of Co Dublin. The remains of two windmills at Skerries are an example, while a different type of windmill was used to carry stones from the old quarry in Dalkey at the time of the construction of Dun Laoghaire pier. Of course, St Patrick's Tower, the well preserved remnant of the tallest smock windmill in Europe, can be seen in the grounds of Guinness's Brewery at Thomas Street in Dublin.
I have badgered every historical society in the Dun Laoghaire/ Dalkey/Foxrock area during the past few months, trying to establish the whereabouts of the windmills mentioned by Francis Ledwidge in a lost work which I discovered some years ago. Ms Dorothy Donnelly, of Foxrock Historical Society, came galloping to my rescue. She sent me a photocopy of the Skerries windmills as they were in 1917. I am now convinced that these were the ones referred to by Ledwidge in the following lines:
And you are still in that little town
Of wind-mills facing the breezy sea.
Is it nothing to you if my heart breaks down
For the smile that turned to a cold dark frown?
Still are you nothing to me?
The poem from which this extract is taken is entitled "Old Letters" and is obviously addressed to the poet's love, Elizabeth Healy. Her son, Barry Shanahan, remembers that his mother often took him as a boy to Skerries to see the windmills. Incidentally, the poem was never published during the poet's lifetime and it was given its very first airing by Mr Noel Dempsey, the Environment Minister, at the launch of Francis Ledwidge: The Poems Complete in Trim in 1997. - Yours, etc., Liam O'Meara,
Chairman, Inchicore Ledwidge Society, Ballyfermot Road, Dublin 10.