The peat-fire flame : folk-tales and traditions of the Highlands & Islands

FAERIES : THEIR
PROPENSITIES AND ACTIVITIES
commemorating' the life of the Rev. Robert Kirk, one time
minister of Aberfoyle, who, about the year 1691, wrote the
Secret Commonzvealth of Elves, Faunes, and Faeries—
mysterious work that Eneas MacKay of Stirling has
republished recently in most attractive form from the 1893
edition, together with a fascinating introduction by that
grand old man of Scotland, the late Robert Bontine
Cunninghame Graham. This stone is now inventoried as
an ancient monument, under the care of the Office of
Works. It bears the following dignified and simple
inscription :
RoEERTUs Kirk, A.M.
Lingiice Hibernice Lumen.
But it is disputed whether Kirk was ever interred in the
tomb at Aberfoyle, since he is said to have been carried off
to Faeryland.
" The ashes of Mr Kirk are not there," wrote Andrew
Lang in the singularly learned introduction he contributed
in the form of " A Comment " to the .1893 edition of Kirk's
treatise. The account of Kirk's translation to the Secret
Commonwealth of Faeries, as given by the Rev. Dr Patrick
Grahame, D.D., his successor at Aberfoyle, runs as
follows :— " He was walking, it is said, one evening in his
nightgown upon a little eminence to the west of the Manse,
which is still reckoned a Dim shi'. He fell down dead, as
was believed ; but this was not his fate :
" It was between the day and night.
When the faery king has power.
That he sunk down (but not) in sinful fray.
And, 'twixt life and death, was snatched away
To the joyless Elfin bower."
" Mr Kirk was a near relation of Graham of Duchray.
Shortly after his funeral, he appeared in the dress in which
he had sunk down, to a mutual relation of his own and of
Duchray.' Go,' said he to him, '
to my cousin Duchray, and
tell him that I am not dead; I fell down in a swoon, and
was carried off into Faeryland, where I now am. Tell him,
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