The Secret Commonwealth
A 17th century Scottish minister claimed to be on intimate terms with the fairies and rumour had it they kidnapped him to prevent him writing any more about them
by RICHARD HOLLAND
Robert Kirk is one of the most significant figures in British fairylore and his fascinating little book, ‘The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies’, is an essential source of information on these twilight beings.
Kirk became minister of Aberfoyle, a pretty village in the Trossachs, Scotland, after his father retired. As a native of the village, a trusted clergyman and a speaker of the Gaelic language, Kirk was uniquely placed to record the beliefs and folklore that were fast disappearing from even remote corners of the British Isles during the 17th century. Increasingly repressive forms of Protestantism and the rise of a scientific orthodoxy combined to erode cultural beliefs that had been cherished for centuries. People like Kirk were determined to preserve them while there was still time.
The fruits of his researches, ‘The Secret Commonwealth’, appeared as a few hand-written copies in 1691. It would be a mistake to consider it as simply a collection of folk beliefs, however. On the contrary, in ‘The Secret Commonwealth’, ‘we are dealing with a living person who experienced and attempted to formulate the knowledge of another world’ (to quote R J Stewart in the Preface to his 1990 edition of the book).
For Kirk, the fairies were real: spirits inhabiting a world close to our own but distinct from it. It is this personal belief and his serious attempt to understand their nature that makes his book so interesting.
Kirk may have paid a price for his curiosity and scholarship, however. If he had had personal contact with ‘the good people’, as many of his parishioners believed, then he would have broken the fairies’ taboo by relating their secrets in print. Just a year after the publication of ‘The Secret Commonwealth’, Kirk’s body was found lying on the Fairy Knowe, a wooded mound central to the Aberfoyle fairy traditions.
More than 100 years after his death, local tradition was still strong that Kirk was, in fact, still alive, but a prisoner of the fairies in their world. Legend has it that his spirit appeared on the anniversary of his death but because his family failed to act out a prescribed ritual, he was prevented from returning permanently. Robert Kirk remained trapped in the Otherworld. He may be there still.
[Source: ‘Robert Kirk: Walker Between Worlds' by R J Stewart, 1990]
© Richard Holland 2008
Tags: Aberfoyle fairies, British fairies, British fairylore, fairies in Britain, fairies in Scotland, goblins, Reginald Scot, Robert Kirk, Scottish fairies, Scottish fairylore, Secret Commonwealth, Seelie, Unseelie
