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Cover of The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies by Robert Kirk

Witchcraft & Folk Magic

PUBLIC DOMAIN

The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies

By Robert Kirk

Original publication
1893
Language
English
Pages
76
File size
197.1 KB

A Highland minister describes the subterranean people believed to inhabit an invisible commonwealth, recording second sight, changelings and perilous contact across worlds.

About this text

Description

Written in 1691 by Scottish minister Robert Kirk, this remarkable treatise records Highland beliefs concerning elves, fairies, second sight and an invisible population existing beside humanity. Kirk presents the material with an observer’s seriousness, describing bodies, customs, abductions and exchanges between worlds. Later legend claimed that the author himself was taken by the beings he studied. Whether folklore or metaphysical speculation, the text remains a narrow door left open in the hills, with no certainty about what passed through.

Archive notes

Historical context

Seventeenth-century Scottish Highlands; 1893 edition

Source and rights

Rights information

Licence: PUBLIC DOMAIN

The Project Gutenberg catalogue identifies this edition as public domain in the USA. The identified author, editor and translator dates were screened against the EU life-plus-70 term; the latest identified contributor died no later than 1950, or the work is centuries old. The builder retains the complete Project Gutenberg licence in the converted PDF. Distribute the resulting PDF without charge unless the Project Gutenberg trademark terms are reviewed separately.

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