![]() The cover of Sir Walter Scott’s 1815 edition of The Secret Commonwealth. There is also an edition from 1893 published in cooperation with the Society for Psychical Research, to which I cite in this post. ![]() It appears, however, that the work did not find its way to publication until Sir Walter Scott published an edition of it in 1815. Robert Kirk, a Scottish folklorist and minister, wrote The Secret Commonwealth around the year 1692. So I wondered, if these supernatural creatures have a commonwealth, what sort of laws govern it? In this post, therefore, I thought I would try to glean what I can from Kirk’s The Secret Commonwealth about the laws of the fairy realm. ![]() What I find especially interesting about the book is that Kirk describes their collective life as a commonwealth. This book describes what people in Kirk’s time and community believed fairies were, where and how they lived, what they were able to do, and how they interacted with human beings. The Laws of the Good People: Fairy Lore in Robert Kirk’s Secret CommonwealthĪs we approach the last day of the spooky season, I find myself rereading Robert Kirk’s 17th-century classic of fairy lore, The Secret Commonwealth. ![]()
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