A Scottish minister sat alone in a parish manse in 1691, writing a description of a people he believed lived invisibly alongside humanity. He called them the Subterranean. The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies is a late 17th-century manuscript by Reverend Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle, recording the beliefs, habits, and social structures of the fairy race as understood in the Scottish Highlands and Ireland. It remains the most detailed primary source on Celtic fairy belief ever written by someone who claimed to see them.
The Man Who Wrote It
Robert Kirk was born in 1644 in Aberfoyle, a parish in the Scottish Highlands. He studied theology at the University of Edinburgh and later at St Andrews, becoming a minister of the Church of Scotland. In 1685 he was appointed to the parish of Aberfoyle, where his father had served before him.
Kirk was no credulous peasant. He was a scholar who knew Greek, Latin and Hebrew. He translated the Bible into Scottish Gaelic. He owned a library of several hundred volumes. Yet he also collected fairy testimonies from his parishioners and reported them with the same matter-of-fact tone he used for crop yields and weather patterns.
The manuscript was completed around 1691. It circulated in handwritten copies for over a century before being published in 1815 by Sir Walter Scott, who treated it as a curiosity. Modern scholars take it more seriously: it is now recognized as a foundational text in British folklore and an ethnographic document of rare value.
What Kirk Actually Claimed
The Secret Commonwealth describes a race of intelligent, invisible beings who live parallel to humans. Kirk calls them by several names: the Subterranean, the Sith (Scottish Gaelic sìth), the People of Peace. He insists they are not demons, not angels, but a distinct order of creation somewhere between human and spirit.
His fairies are not the winged, gossamer creatures of Victorian children’s books. They are human-sized, organized into kingdoms, governed by kings and queens, and capable of marriage, childbirth and death. They have their own language, their own weapons made of stone, and their own livestock — fairy cattle that appear to humans as deer.
Kirk claims they live inside hills and mounds, which he calls “sithbrughs” or fairy forts. They emerge at night to ride horses, hunt, and sometimes interact with humans. They are visible only to those with “second sight,” a gift Kirk himself claimed to possess.
The book’s full title is The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies: A Study in Folk-lore & Psychical Research. The phrase “Secret Commonwealth” was Kirk’s term for the fairy nation itself. He meant it literally: a commonwealth, a political body with laws and hierarchies, kept secret from human eyes.
Where Did the Belief Come From?
Kirk did not invent the Secret Commonwealth. He documented what his neighbors already believed. The fairy faith of the Scottish Highlands predates Christianity, likely reaching back to the Iron Age or earlier.
Scholars debate the origins. Some argue the fairy belief is a memory of pre-Celtic peoples who lived in underground dwellings: the mounds and stone forts that dot the Scottish landscape. When later Celts arrived, they may have turned these earlier inhabitants into supernatural beings. The fairies were simply the first people, driven into the hills.
Others see a class dimension. In Gaelic society, the fairies were sometimes called “the gentry” — a noble race that lived in splendor while humans worked the land. The line between fairy and ancestor was thin. The dead might join the fairy host. The fairies might be the dead.
Kirk himself leaned toward a natural explanation. He wrote that fairies were a “middle nature” between human and angel, made of matter so refined that human eyes could not normally see it. He compared their bodies to flames or condensed air. This was not superstition to Kirk; it was natural philosophy, applying the science of his day to a phenomenon he observed.
The Second Sight and How It Worked
The second sight — in Gaelic an dà shealladh, “the two sights”, was the ability to see the fairy world. Kirk described it as a physical condition, not a spiritual gift. He wrote that some people were born with a membrane over their eyes that could be peeled back, revealing the invisible.
He collected several cases. A man in Aberfoyle saw a funeral procession of fairies carrying a corpse. A woman watched a fairy woman spin wool at a wheel that looked like a whorl of mist. A child pointed to a hill and said it was full of people. These testimonies fill the manuscript.
Kirk believed the second sight was hereditary and common in the Highlands. He estimated that one in twenty people possessed it. The gift was not always welcome. Those who saw fairies often suffered from melancholy, isolation, or fear. The fairies themselves might punish a human who spoke of what they saw.
The second sight became a central concept in later occult thought. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn adopted it. W. B. Yeats wrote about it. It appears in modern fairy research as a key to understanding how the boundary between worlds was crossed.
How Humans Interacted with the Fairies
Kirk’s manuscript is not theory. It is a handbook of survival. The fairies were dangerous. They stole human babies and left changelings. They lured adults into their hills, where time ran differently: a night in the fairy mound could be a century in the human world. They caused illness, madness and death.
But they could also be bargained with. Kirk records that offerings of milk, butter, bread and beer were left at fairy forts. The practice was called “leaving the sith.” A household that neglected the offering might find its cows dried of milk or its children struck with sickness.
Certain days were dangerous. The quarter days, Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh, were when the fairy host moved. On Samhain, the gates between worlds opened. On Beltane, the fairies stole cattle. On such nights, prudent Highlanders stayed inside, locked their doors, and did not look back when they heard someone call their name from behind.
Kirk also describes protective measures. Iron repelled fairies. A knife or a nail in the doorframe kept them out. Turning a garment inside out confused them. Salt was a barrier they could not cross. These were not superstitions; they were proven methods, passed down for generations.
The Fate of Kirk Himself
The story of Robert Kirk’s death is as strange as his book. In 1692, he was walking on a hill near Aberfoyle called the Dun. He collapsed and died, apparently of a stroke. He was buried in the churchyard at Aberfoyle.
But the local people told a different story. They said Kirk did not die. He was taken by the fairies. The man buried in the churchyard was a stock, a fairy replica, and Kirk himself was alive in the fairy mound, serving as their chaplain.
The tradition says that Kirk appeared to a living relative after his death. He told them that on a certain night, he would lead a fairy procession past the church. If a human threw a knife over his head, he would be freed. The relative tried, but his courage failed him when he saw the fairy host. Kirk remained with the fairies.
The story is called “the Raid of the Fairies on Aberfoyle.” It endures because Kirk himself wrote that such things happened. In his own manuscript, he described how humans were taken and how they could be rescued. The community applied his rules to him.
The Secret Commonwealth in Modern Occultism
The manuscript was rediscovered by occultists in the late 19th century. Andrew Lang, the Scottish folklorist and psychical researcher, wrote about it. W. Y. Evans-Wentz used it in his 1911 book The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries. The Theosophical Society cited Kirk’s “middle nature” as evidence for their doctrine of elemental beings.
In modern fairy witchcraft and esoteric practice, Kirk’s work is treated as a primary source for fairy contact. Some practitioners use his descriptions of fairy mounds as meditation focal points. Others attempt to develop the second sight through exercises Kirk described: staring at stone circles, visiting fairy forts at dawn, or fasting at the quarter days.
The book has been called the earliest work of parapsychology. Kirk’s insistence that the fairies were a physical species, not a spiritual one, aligns with modern theories of non-human intelligence. Some contemporary researchers compare the Secret Commonwealth to UFO contact narratives: an invisible race living alongside us, occasionally seen, rarely understood.
What Kirk Got Right and Wrong
Sources disagree on how much of Kirk’s account is reliable. Folklorists note that he faithfully recorded the beliefs of his time. He did not invent the fairy faith. He described what his community believed, and independent sources confirm those beliefs from other parts of Scotland and Ireland.
But Kirk was not an impartial observer. He believed in the fairies himself. He interpreted everything through that belief. His claim that the second sight was a physical condition is not supported by modern medicine. His estimates of how many people possessed it are likely inflated.
What Kirk got right, and what makes the book valuable, is the structure of the belief system. He understood that the fairy faith was not a collection of random superstitions. It was a coherent worldview with rules, categories, and practical applications. That coherence is rare in folklore collections. Most collectors treat the beliefs as quaint errors. Kirk treated them as data.
FAQ
Is the Secret Commonwealth a real book? Yes. Robert Kirk wrote the manuscript around 1691. It was first published in 1815 by Sir Walter Scott and has been reprinted many times since. Modern editions include annotations by folklorists.
Did Robert Kirk really believe in fairies? He did. Kirk was a scholar and a minister who believed fairies were a real physical race. He wrote about them with the same seriousness he applied to theology and natural philosophy.
Can I visit the fairy hill at Aberfoyle? The Dun of Aberfoyle, where Kirk is said to have been taken, is a real location near the village. It is accessible but sits on private land. Local folklore discourages visiting at night.
What is the second sight in the Secret Commonwealth? The second sight is the ability to see the fairy world. Kirk described it as a physical condition, not a spiritual one, and estimated that one in twenty Highlanders possessed it.
Related Guides
The Secret Commonwealth is one window into a much larger tradition. For more on the beings Kirk described, read our guide to the fairy faith in Celtic tradition. The concept of the second sight connects to other forms of visionary perception in Gaelic magic. And for the seasonal practices that Kirk’s Highlanders used to negotiate with the fairies, see the quarter days and fairy contact.
The Secret Commonwealth is not a relic. It is a record of a worldview that still lives in the hills of Aberfoyle, in the stories told by the fireside, and in the practice of those who still leave offerings at the sith. We do not know if Kirk’s fairies are real. But we know his book is true: it faithfully describes what a people believed, and why they believed it. That kind of truth has its own power.