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 hands were merely narrators of popular tales
about the state of the dead. That she trafficked with the dead,
and from a ghost won a medical recipe for the cure of Archbishop
Adamson of St. Andrews, was the charge against Alison Pearson. “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, wha confessit hir to haiff learnit medecin of ane
callit Mr. Wilyeam Simsone, that apeired divers tymes to hir efter
his dead, and gaiff hir a buik.... She was execut in Edinbruche for a
witch” (James Melville’s _Diary_, p. 137, 1583). The Archbishop, like
other witches, had a familiar in the form of a hare, which once ran
before him down the street. These were the beliefs of men of learning
like James, the nephew and companion of Andrew Melville. 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. This last feat, creditable to a saint or a
Neo-Platonist like Plotinus, was reckoned for sin to Archbishop
Sharp, as may be read in Wodrow’s _Analecta_. Thus all Fairydom was
commonly looked on as under the same guilt as witchcraft. Yet Mr.
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. 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. Nor,
again, is Mr. Kirk like Glanvil and Henry More. 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. Firm in his belief, he treats his matter in a scientific
spirit, as if he were dealing with generally recognised physical
phenomena.
Our study of Mr. Kirk’s little tractate must have a double aspect.
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.
On the other hand, as mental phenomena are in question—such things
as premonitions, hallucinations, abnormal or unusual experiences
generally—a criticism of Mr. Kirk must verge on “Psychical Research.”
The Society organised for that difficult subject certainly takes a
vast deal of trouble about all manner of odd reports and strange
visions. It “transfers” thoughts of no value, at a great expense of
time and of serious hard work. But, as far as the writer has read
the Society’s Proceedings, it “takes no keep,” as Malory says, of
these affairs in their historical aspect. Whatever hallucination, or
illusion, or imposture, or the “subliminal self” can do to-day, has
always been done among peoples in every degree of civilisation. An
historical study of the topic, as contained in trials for witchcraft,
in the reports of travellers and missionaries, in the works of the
seventeenth-century Platonists, More, Glanvill, Sinclair, and others,
and in the rare tracts such as _The Devil in Glen Luce_ and _The
Just Devil of Woodstock_, not to mention Lavater, Wierus, Thyræus,
Reginald Scott, and so on, is as necessary to the psychologist as
to the folk-lorist.[1] If there be an element of fact in modern
hypnotic experiments (a matter on which I have really no opinion),
it is plain that old magic and witchcraft are not mere illusions,
or not commonplace illusions. The subliminal self has his stroke in
these affairs. Assuredly the Psychologists should have an historical
department. The evidence which they would find is, of course,
vitiated in many obvious ways, but the evidence contains much that
coincides with that of modern times, and the coincidence can hardly
be designed—that is to say, the old Highland seers had no design of
abetting modern inquiry. It may be, however, that their methods and
ideas have been traditionally handed down to modern “sensitives”
and “mediums.” At all events, here is an historical chapter, if it
be but a chapter in “The History of Human Error.” These wide and
multifarious topics can only be touched on lightly in this essay; the
author will be content if he directs the attention of students with
more leisure and a better library of _diablerie_ to the matter. But
first we glance at _The Secret Commonwealth_ as folk-lorists.