the secret commonwealth of elves fauns and fairies robert kirk

It must be an essay partly on folk-lore, on popular beliefs, their relation to similar beliefs in other parts of the world, and the residuum of fact, preserved by tradition, which they may contain. Kirk's little tractate must have a double aspect. Firm in his belief, he treats his matter in a scientific spirit, as if he were dealing with generally recognised physical phenomena. He does not, save in his title-page and in one brief passage, make superstitious creeds or psychical phenomena into arguments and proofs against modern Sadducees. We may thus regard him, even more than Wodrow, as an early student in folk-lore and in psychical research-topics which run into each other-and he shows nothing of the usual persecuting disposition. Kirk of Aberfoyle, living among Celtic people, treats the land of faery as a mere fact in nature, a world with its own laws, which he investigates without fear of the Accuser of the Brethren. Thus all Fairydom was commonly looked on as under the same guilt as witchcraft. Sin to Archbishop Sharp, as may be read in Wodrow's Analecta. This last feat, creditable to a saint or a Neo-Platonist like Plotinus, was reckoned for Even in our author's own time, Archbishop Sharp was accused of entertaining 'the muckle black Deil' in his study at midnight, and of being 'levitated' and dancing in the air. These were the beliefs of men of learning like James, the nephew and companion of Andrew Melville. The Archbishop, like other witches, had a familiar in the form of a hare, which once ran before him down the street. She was execut in Edinbruche for a witch ' (James Melville's Diary, p.

Wilyeam Simsone, that apeired divers tymes to hir efter his dead, and gaiff hir a buik. 'The Bischope keipit his castle lyk a tod in his holl, seik of a disease of grait fetiditie, and oftymes under the cure of women suspected of witchcraft, namlie, ane wha confessit hir to haiff learnit medecin of ane callit Mr. Andrews, was the charge against Alison Pearson. That she trafficked with the dead, and from a ghost won a medical recipe for the cure of Archbishop Adamson of St. Question' indeed, for some of the witches who suffered at Presbyterian hands were merely narrators of popular tales about the state of the dead.

Haying lived through the period of the sufferings of the Kirk, the author might have been expected either to neglect Fairyland altogether, or to regard it as a mere appanage of Satan's kingdom-a 'burning Robert Kirk, minister of Aberfoyle, it is a kind of metaphysic of the Fairy world. The tract, of which the reader now knows the history, is a little volume of somewhat singular character. Sacred Texts Legends & Sagas Celtic Index Previous Next The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns & Fairies: Introduction: II.

The secret commonwealth of elves fauns and fairies robert kirk