Guernsey people used to find little perforated stone discs and tiny clay tobacco pipes in the ground and call them "rouets des faïkiaux" and "pipes des faïkiaux", the fairies' spindles and the fairies' pipes. On Sark the pipe-smoking fairies had one more oddity: their heads came off, and they carried them under their arms. MacCulloch recorded this without comment. The modern Sark history site still repeats it with some affection.
The sirens were taken more seriously. Carey's Sark informant described them sitting on the rocks and singing before bad weather. Curious sailors let their ships drift closer to hear the music, then the storm broke, the ships went onto the rocks, and "the sirens, whether young or old, carry down the sailors to the bottom of the sea, and eat them." In Sark, he insisted, they were young and lovely. It was the Guernseymen who spoke of old women.
Neither belief attaches to a single place, so the map point is placed in the middle of the island. The coast of Sark, with its caves, stacks and reefs, is where both the pipe-smoking fairies and the singing women would have been looked for.
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