Sir, - The article on "The Guinness Business" (May 17th) needs a small correction. My mother Mariga Guinness's funeral service in 1989 was not a "civil ceremony". She had been baptised as a Catholic and it took place at Maynooth Catholic church and was concelebrated by Father Freeney, Monsignor Ledwith of Maynooth College and the parish priest.
She was buried at the Conolly Folly nearby, in a grave blessed by Father Freeney, with a piper in attendance. You published a moving photograph of her grandchildren at the graveside.
The filly can be seen north of the M4 just east of Maynooth. It was built to give work and thus save lives during the Famine winter of 1739-40, in which 500,000 are said to have died, proportionally about as lethal as the Great Hunger of the 1840s. This earlier famine has never been commemorated, probably because there was no sizeable emigration to America afterwards. - Yours, etc.,
Furness,
Naas,
Co Kildare.