This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies opens as both a scholarly inquiry and an enchanted memorial, honoring the Rev. Robert Kirk while questioning the book's publication history and the possibility that the surviving 1815 text is the earliest true edition. Kirk emerges as a Highland minister, scholar, and seventh son whose life, work on Bible translation and Gaelic psalmody, marriages, childre...

This book is annotated with a rare extensive biographical sketch of the author, Andrew Lang, written by Sir Edmund Gosse, CB, a contemporary poet and writer. Mr. Kirk's little book was written in 1691 and was probably not printed until 1815, when an edition of only one hundred copies appeared at Edinburgh from the press of James Ballantyne & Company for Longman & Company of London. Mr. Kirk's book is the most curious imaginable. Written in 1691 by a Scotch divine, it is nothing less than a...

One of the most sought after and enigmatic texts about Celtic fairies. Written by a Scottish clergyman, Robert Kirk, in 1691, and not committed to print until the early 19th century, The Secret Commonwealth is an unusually sympathetic account of the denizens of fairyland, and a complex of still mysterious extrasensory phenomena including poltergeists, clairvoyance and doppelgangers.Magic was a part of everyday life for Kirk and his fellow Highlanders, and this remarkable book offer...

The tract, of which the reader now knows the history, is a little volume of somewhat singular character. Written in 1691 by the Rev. Robert Kirk, minister of Aberfoyle, it is a kind of metaphysic of the Fairy world. Having 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 question” indeed, for some of the witches who suffered at Presbyterian han...

A classic, enchanting document of Scottish folklore about fairies, elves, and other supernatural creatures.Late in the seventeenth century, Robert Kirk, an Episcopalian minister in the Scottish Highlands, set out to collect his parishioners’ many striking stories about elves, fairies, fauns, doppelgängers, wraiths, and other beings of, in Kirk’s words, “a middle nature betwixt man and angel.” For Kirk these stories constituted strong evidence for the reality of a s...

The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairiesby Robert Kirk and Andrew LangThis monograph, originally written in 1691, is a classic of Scottish fairy folklore.These Subterraneans have Controverfies, Doubts, Difputes, Feuds, and Siding of Parties... As to Vice and Sin, whatever their own Laws be... they tranfgrefs and commit Acts of Injuftice... -from Chapter 11 As a study of 17th-century folklore, this mysterious and remarkable text is fascinating. As a documen...

THE bibliography of the following little tract is extremely obscure. The title-page of the edition of 1815, which we reproduce, gives the date as 1691. Sir Walter Scott says in his Demonology and Witchcraft, (1830, p. 163, note), "It was printed with the author's name in 1691, and reprinted, in 1815, for Longman & Co." But was there really a printed edition of 1691? Scott says that he never met with an example. Research in our great libraries has discovered ...

In "The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns & Fairies," Robert Kirk delves into the rich and often mystical folklore of the Scottish Highlands, presenting a nuanced examination of the beliefs surrounding the faerie realm. Written in the late 17th century, the text is characterized by its vivid descriptions and meticulous observations, blending elements of personal narrative with scholarly inquiry. Kirk employs a lyrical prose style that invites readers into a world where the boundaries bet...

“The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies” is the famous and mysterious treatise on fairy folklore, witchcraft, second sight, and ghosts by Gaelic scholar and minister, Robert Kirk. Written before he died in 1692, the work was not published until 1815 after many legends had grown around Kirk’s death, which imagined that he was secreted away by the fairies themselves for revealing their secrets. Most famous during his own lifetime for publishing one of the first translations of ...

This book offers the first in-depth intellectual and cultural history of British subversive propaganda during the Second World War. Focussing on the Political Warfare Executive (PWE), it tells the story of British efforts to undermine German morale and promote resistance against Nazi hegemony. Staffed by civil servants, journalists, academics and anti-fascist European exiles, PWE oversaw the BBC European Service alongside more than forty unique clandestine radio stations; they maintained a...

"Kirk is a magnificent dish to set before any student of either folk-lore or folk-psychology."—Times Literary SupplementIn the late seventeenth century, a Scottish minister went looking for supernatural creatures of "a middle nature betwixt man and angel." Robert Kirk roamed the Highlands, talking to his parishioners and other country folk about their encounters with fairies, wraiths, elves, doppelgangers, and other agents of the spirit world. Magic was a part of everyday l...

This book distills twenty-five-plus years of personal study done by a Harvard Law-trained trial attorney to determine whether Darwin’s big idea—the notion that more complex species evolved from more simple ancestors—is supported by the scientific evidence. Spoiler alert: it is not. Yet most Americans have been taught to believe that Darwin’s theory has been proven beyond all reasonable doubt. Sadly, most people do not have nearly enough time to do the reading and study necessary to underst...