07/18/2026
Read on for James Garry's Inspiration for his story, "The Grey Singer," a Runner Up in Prose for our Siren-themed Contest: "The Grey Singer" draws on the selkie and maighdean-mhara tradition, where a female sea-spirit shifts between guardian and threat depending on who's telling the story, confirmed but never named by the seals at the story's close. Its real engine, though, is the process central to my own academic work: a warning becoming a curse once Presbyterian kirk authority needs someone to blame for a bad winter, recasting older beliefs like weather-reading and tide-song as devilry. Màiri's storm-sense is a quiet instance of second sight, inherited rather than taught, and her grandmother's half-translated line — "No every warning comes wi teeth" — works like a fragment of Tobar an Dualchais testimony, compressed and carried in the body more than the memory. All of it is grounded in a specific West Highland fishing economy: haar, creels, ganseys, whelk-sellers, thrift on the cliffs, a fictional Dunarraidh, while the silver bell nods to Hebridean practices of using bells and iron to answer the other world rather than simply banish it.
Congratulations, James! We're so happy to share "The Grey Singer" in the Prose & Poetry Contest issue, Siren Song. Download (free) at: https://www.fairytalemagazine.com/post/contest-winners-2026-siren-song
