© The Sirens Call
My short story The Faire Chlaidh, written under the pseudonym Jim Mountfield, has just appeared in the winter 2022 edition of the dark fiction and poetry ezine The Sirens Call.
The story is inspired by an old Scottish belief that, to quote Wikipedia, “the spirit of the person most recently buried in a churchyard had to protect it until the next funeral provided a new guardian to replace them. This churchyard vigil was known as the faire chlaidh or ‘graveyard watch’.” A more detailed account of this belief – with, if you’re not familiar with Scottish Gaelic, a chance to hear the correct pronunciation of faire chlaidh – can be found here.
226 pages long, bursting with some 175 stories, poems and features, and absolutely free of charge, the winter 2022 issue of The Sirens Call can be downloaded here.