Welcome to SEXTET Issue V: We Fear Nae Evil.

This fifth issue constitutes a full year of SEXTET. Since our first issue the magazine has grown through our open calls, returning contributors, new voices, and an expanding readership. Published alongside Six Foot Gallery’s autumn open call exhibition, We Fear Nae Evil gathers new poetry and prose from sixteen authors in response to Scottish folklore, superstition, seasonal shifts, tale-telling, and Robert Burns’s 1791 mock-epic narrative poem, Tam o’ Shanter.  

Wi’ tippeny, we fear nae evil;
Wi’ usquabae, we’ll face the devil!

In Tam o’ Shanter, Tam leaves the pub after a night of drinking and rides home on his horse, Meg, through a storm past the ruins of Alloway Kirk, where he is lured in by the light of a witches’ sabbath. Witches and warlocks dance to music with the devil. Emboldened by drink, Tam exclaims the famous line “Weel done Cutty-sark“, giving himself away and sending him fleeing.

The selected works for this issue come from far beyond Alloway. Across poetry and prose, our contributors draw on Scottish myth and magic: ghost stories, wild landscapes, ecology, memory, ritual, seasonal power, haunted places, strange weather, old customs, and transformation, showing how traditional tales can speak to contemporary experiences of place and belief.

We hope you enjoy this issue.

–Catriona