In a book titled The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies, Robert Kirk (1644-1692), a Gaelic scholar and Anglican vicar at Aberfoyle in Scotland, describes a “secret way of correspondence” with the invisible world: a means of crossing between ordinary and nonordinary reality at will. Kirk subtitled his work “An Essay of the Nature and actions of the Subterranean and for the most part Invisible People, heretofore going by the names of Elves, Fauns and Fairies and the like.”
Subtle bodies The inhabitants of
these realms are not disembodied. They have “light
changeable bodies, like those called Astral, somewhat of the nature of a
condensed cloud. They shape-shift and can make their “bodies
of congealed air” appear and disappear
at will.
Middle nature: The fairies are “of a middle nature betwixt man and Angel,” like the daimons of the ancient world. Kirk
discusses rival opinions in his parish about whether the “good people”
are spirits of the departed, clothed in their subtle bodies; “exuded forms of the man approaching death”; or “a
numerous people by themselves.”
He suggests that all these descriptions may be valid for different groups.
Doubles. Kirk reports that each of
us has a double who is fully at home in the Otherworld. The old Scots Gaelic
term for this double is coimimeadh
(pronounced “coy-me-may”), which means “co-walker.” Kirk improvises a series of synonyms for the
double, including: twin, companion, echo,
“reflex-man,”
and living picture. The double
resembles the living person both before and after she or he dies. The double
survives physical death, when the co-walker “goes
at last to his own land.” When invited, the
co-walker will make itself “known and familiar.” But most people are unaware that they have a
double. Since it lives in a different element, it “neither
can nor will easily converse” with the everyday
waking mind.
As natural as fishing As a man of the Church, Kirk goes to great lengths to argue that there is nothing ungodly about “correspondence” with Otherworld beings, quoting reports of visionary experiences in the Bible. He also contends that it is as “natural” to encounter the inhabitants of the Otherworld as it is to go fishing; both involve moving into another element. Yeats brings this to poetic life in "The Song of Wandering Aengus", where a man fishing with a hazel rod catches a little silver trout that becomes a girl with apple-blossom in her hair.
Kirk reassures us that
we are dealing with “an invisible people,
guardian over and careful of man,”
whose “courteous endeavor” is to convince us of the reality of the spiritual
world and of “a possible and harmless method
of correspondence betwixt men and them, even in this life.”
However, local legend has it that members of the Secret Commonwealth found the minister too mouthy about them and carried him away one summer evening when he was walking on a dun-shi, a fairy hill behind his house. He was taken before his book was published. It remained for Sir Walter Scott to discover and publish it in 1815. The frontispiece is a watercolor drawing hy Sir D.Y. Cameron depicting the Hill of the Faitries at Aberfoyle. Bailie Nicol Jarvie describes this hill and its legends in Rob Roy.
Kirk's successor as minister at Aberfoyle, the Rev. Dr. Grahame, in his Sketches of Picturesque Scenery, recounted that as Kirk was walking on the fairy hill, he sunk down in a swoon, which was taken for death. “After the ceremony of a seeming funeral,” Scott continued the story in Demonology and Witchcraft , “the form of the Rev. Robert Kirk appeared to a relation, and commanded him to go to Grahame of Duchray. ‘Say to Duchray, who is my cousin as well as your own, that I am not dead, but a captive in Fairyland; and only one chance remains for my liberation. When the posthumous child, of which my wife has been delivered since my disappearance, shall be brought to baptism, I will appear in the room, when, if Duchray shall throw over my head the knife or dirk which he holds in his hand, I may be restored to society; but if this is neglected, I am lost for ever." According to this story, Kirk did appear at the christening, and “was visibly seen;” but Duchray was so gobsmacked that he did not throw his dirk and Kirk went away again.
Kirk lived in a world not yet "dispeopled of its dreams" as Andrew Lang wrote in his introduction to a 1893 edition of The Secret Commonwealth. Lang proceeded to discuss experiences of the co-walker: "All things universally have their types, their reflex: a man’s type, or reflex, or ' co-walker' may be seen at a distance from or near him during his life—nay, may be seen after his death. The gifted man of second sight can tell the substantial figure from the airy counterpart."
Lang was especially interested in the kind of double that goes ahead of you for which the Norwegians use the term vardøger, who "was often seen of old to enter a House, by which the people knew that the Person of that Likeness was to visit them in a few days....It may have occurred to most of us to meet a person in the street whom we took for an acquaintance. It is not he, but we meet the real man a few paces farther on. Thus a distinguished officer, at home on leave, met a friend, as he tells me, in Piccadilly. The other passed without notice: the officer hesitated about following him, did not, and in some fifty yards met his man. There is probably no more in this than resemblance and coincidence, but this is the kind of thing which was worked by the Highlanders into their metaphysics."
