Sir, - I note that a monument was recently unveiled by the Taoiseach in what is known as Croppies' Acre to the 1798 insurgents who, according to received wisdom, are buried there. But is received wisdom correct in this instance? A recent dig on the site is reported not to have uncovered any remains and, even more significantly, Robert Emmet's poem, Lines written on the burying- ground of Arbour Hill in Dublin, where the bodies of insurgents shot in 1798 were interred, points to a different spot on the northern side of Collins Barracks:
"Unconsecrated is this ground,/ unblest by holy hands;/no bell here tolls its solemn sound,/no monument here stands," Emmet wrote.
They have their monument now, but is it in the right place? - Yours, etc., Patrick Fagan,
Rathfarnham, Dublin 14.