Sir, – Hilary Fannin writes of a visit from a robin after her mother died ("When I'm gone, I'm gone. And yet I find myself talking to the dead", Life, November 30th).
The evening my father died, I took his dogs for a walk. We found ourselves being shadowed by a most insistent robin, which followed us through the fields for a goodly distance, even hopping from tussock to tussock when no trees or brambles were available. The dogs ignored it. I went home and did some research, and discovered that the Carrier tribe in North America believed that the village of the beyond was divided by a river, on one side of which were the black houses of the dead, on the other the red houses of the robins. Might the dead sometimes send feathery messengers back to us? I’d like to think so. – Yours, etc,
JIM MANNIX,
Ballyphehane,
Cork.