Regional legend · 4 min read · Set in Skerry Head ·
Why They Burn the Third Letter
Letters that arrive twice on the Skerry Head road are burned at the crossing in a fire set facing the sea, and the smoke that goes up is counted column by column until it is told.
- status: rumor
At Skerry Head the mail comes up the coast road from the south, one van, one collection, the roads being what the road board left them. And at the crossing where the coast road meets the cliff track, there is a habit that is no habit of any post office, and the folk of the head will tell you it first, before they'll tell you the tides.
The second letter is the thing to begin with. A letter arrives at the head that was already delivered once. Same hand, same seal, same words inside, the family will tell you, down to the blue of the ink over the second page. Not a reprint of the letter — the letter itself, the very paper, twice. It happened to the Alcocks of the low croft with a letter from their son, and it happened to the schoolteacher's widow with a bill, and it happened to nobody's shame, twice being no fault of a letter. It is kept quiet indoors and spoken of outdoors the way the head speaks of everything, by degrees.
What is done with it is done at the crossing. The household carries the second letter down to where the coast road crosses the cliff track, and they burn it there. Not at home; not on a hearth, where a letter's paper would go up like any paper and that would be the end of it. At the crossing, in the open, in a fire built on the bare ground where the two ways cross. And they build the fire facing the sea. That is insisted on, and the old ones will correct you on it if you let it slip: not facing the road, not the way the wind sets, but square to the water, the way a man stands to take something that is coming off it.
The burning itself is short. The envelope goes in first, so the address is the first part gone, and then the letter whole, no tearing, no reading out. They stand, they don't walk away while it burns, and when it is done they rake the ground cold with what the sea gives up for shingle. That much is ceremony. The counting is the part that makes the habit more than ceremony, and it is done in the open where anyone watching the crossing can watch the count.
The smoke doesn't go up the way smoke does. It goes out to sea in a column, held straight off the fire as far as anybody can follow it, and they count it — not the letter's worth of it, but the columns, one for each second letter burned, and they keep the count at the head the way a harvest is kept, in the back of the kirk book, against the year. And the count is told for. Not once, not twice — the third. A second letter burned and the smoke column counted, and the fire next time is built with a second letter more in it, and the count is told for again, and so on, and nobody at the head will build a fire short of the number the count stands at. That is why the third letter. The first two are the letters themselves, the one that came and the one that came again. The third is what the count is owed.
Why the fire faces the sea is answered three ways at the head and all three are sworn to. One, that the smoke is carried out to whoever keeps the count out there, the sea being the only address nobody has to write down. Two, that if the fire faced inland the smoke would settle on the roads and the letters would come three times, and nobody will say what comes three times. Three, the one the young ones laugh at and the old ones don't, that the fire faces the sea so the sea can see it done and not do it again. The kirk book doesn't enter a reason. It enters a figure, and the figure is up to eleven this year from five the year before.
Who tells it today: the head tells it on collection days, at the crossing itself, by Mrs Ossory of the low croft, whose hand on the kirk book keeps the smoke count and whose son's letters are twice a year and always twice, and by me, as I had it from her at the crossing with her rake standing ready, she leaving open to me the question every household at the head carries unasked: whether the count is for the letters or against them — and what it will be that comes next, if the count is ever, for one posting, not told for.