I think it's worth pointing out that symbolic links created with Cygwin's ln are only interpreted as such by programs linked with the Cygwin libraries. So, unless you work exclusively in Cygwin, you don't really have symbolic links. It would be really nice if Windows shortcuts were treated by Cygwin as symbolic links.
Symbolic links are just regular text file that contain a magic and the file name linked to.
They are recognized by having there SYS attribute set only by Cygwin tools.