Edited for length and clarity from "The Secret Commonwealth: Of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies" by Robert Kirk
The Good People are said to be of a middle nature between man and angel: intelligent, studious spirits with light, changeable bodies, somewhat like a condensed cloud, and best seen in twilight.
Their bodies are so pliable, they can appear or disappear at will. Some have bodies so spongeous, thin, and delicate that they are fed only by sucking into some fine spirituous liquors that pierce like pure air and oil. Others feed on the substance of liquors, or on corn itself that grows on the surface of the earth, which these fairies steal away. They are empowered to catch prey everywhere as they please.
They are sometimes heard to bake bread, strike hammers, and do similar services in the little hillocks they most haunt. Some, before the Gospel dispelled paganism (and in some barbarous places still) enter houses after all are at rest, and set the kitchens in order, cleaning all the vessels. These go under the name of Brownies.
They remove to other lodgings at the beginning of each quarter of the year, so traversing till doomsday, finding some ease by sojourning and changing habitations. At such revolutions of time, men of the second sight have encounters with them, especially on highways. These seers therefore usually shun to travel abroad at the four seasons of the year, and have made it a custom to this day among the Scottish-Irish to keep Church duly every first Sunday of the quarter to sain, and to hallow themselves, their corns and their cattle, from the shots and stealth of these wandering tribes. Many of these superstitious people will not be seen in church again till the next quarter begin, as if no duty were to be learned or done by them, but all the use of worship and sermons were to save them from these arrows that fly in the Dark.
We (the more terrestrial kind who have now so numerously planted all countries) do labour for these abstruse people, as much as we do for ourselves.
Their bodies are so pliable, they can appear or disappear at will. Some have bodies so spongeous, thin, and delicate that they are fed only by sucking into some fine spirituous liquors that pierce like pure air and oil. Others feed on the substance of liquors, or on corn itself that grows on the surface of the earth, which these fairies steal away. They are empowered to catch prey everywhere as they please.
They are sometimes heard to bake bread, strike hammers, and do similar services in the little hillocks they most haunt. Some, before the Gospel dispelled paganism (and in some barbarous places still) enter houses after all are at rest, and set the kitchens in order, cleaning all the vessels. These go under the name of Brownies.
They remove to other lodgings at the beginning of each quarter of the year, so traversing till doomsday, finding some ease by sojourning and changing habitations. At such revolutions of time, men of the second sight have encounters with them, especially on highways. These seers therefore usually shun to travel abroad at the four seasons of the year, and have made it a custom to this day among the Scottish-Irish to keep Church duly every first Sunday of the quarter to sain, and to hallow themselves, their corns and their cattle, from the shots and stealth of these wandering tribes. Many of these superstitious people will not be seen in church again till the next quarter begin, as if no duty were to be learned or done by them, but all the use of worship and sermons were to save them from these arrows that fly in the Dark.
We (the more terrestrial kind who have now so numerously planted all countries) do labour for these abstruse people, as much as we do for ourselves.
***
Their bodies of congealed air are sometimes carried aloft. Others take on different shapes, and enter into any cranny or cleft in the earth, where air enters, to their ordinary dwellings.
When the countries were uninhabited by us, the Good People had their easy tillage above ground, as we do now. The prints of those furrows still remain to be seen on the shoulders of very high hills, made when the champaign ground was wood and forest.
They live much longer than we; yet die at last, or least vanish from this state. ’Tis one of their tenets, that nothing perisheth, but (as the sun and year) every thing goes in a circle, lesser or greater, and is renewed and refreshed in its revolutions;— as ’tis another, that everybody in the creation moves, (which is a sort of life) and that nothing moves, but has another animal moving on it; and so on, to the utmost minutest corpuscle that’s capable to be a receptacle of life.
These subterraneans are distributed in tribes and orders, and have children; nurses; marriages; deaths; and burials, seemingly just as we do. They have controversies; doubts; disputes; feuds; and siding of parties— there being some ignorance in all creatures, and the vastest created intelligences not encompassing all things.
They are said to have aristocratical rulers and laws, but no discernible religion or devotion towards God, the blessed maker of all: they disappear whenever they hear his name invoked, or the name of Jesus. Yet they do not all the harm which apparently they have the power to do.
They are said to have many pleasant, toyish books. Other books they have of involved, abstruse sense, much like the Rosicrucian style. They have nothing of the bible, save collected parcels for charms and counter charms; not to defend themselves, but to operate on other animals.
When the countries were uninhabited by us, the Good People had their easy tillage above ground, as we do now. The prints of those furrows still remain to be seen on the shoulders of very high hills, made when the champaign ground was wood and forest.
They live much longer than we; yet die at last, or least vanish from this state. ’Tis one of their tenets, that nothing perisheth, but (as the sun and year) every thing goes in a circle, lesser or greater, and is renewed and refreshed in its revolutions;— as ’tis another, that everybody in the creation moves, (which is a sort of life) and that nothing moves, but has another animal moving on it; and so on, to the utmost minutest corpuscle that’s capable to be a receptacle of life.
These subterraneans are distributed in tribes and orders, and have children; nurses; marriages; deaths; and burials, seemingly just as we do. They have controversies; doubts; disputes; feuds; and siding of parties— there being some ignorance in all creatures, and the vastest created intelligences not encompassing all things.
They are said to have aristocratical rulers and laws, but no discernible religion or devotion towards God, the blessed maker of all: they disappear whenever they hear his name invoked, or the name of Jesus. Yet they do not all the harm which apparently they have the power to do.
They are said to have many pleasant, toyish books. Other books they have of involved, abstruse sense, much like the Rosicrucian style. They have nothing of the bible, save collected parcels for charms and counter charms; not to defend themselves, but to operate on other animals.
***
When werewolves’ and witches’ true bodies are (by the union of the spirit of nature that runs though all, echoing and doubling the blow towards another) wounded at home, their astral, assumed bodies are stricken elsewhere— as the strings of a second harp tune to a unison, though only one be struck.
By contrast, the Good People have not a second, material body to be so pierced; but are as air, which, when divided, unites again. They are a people invulnerable to our weapons. Or if they feel pain by a blow, they are better physicians than we, and quickly cure it.
Their weapons are most like solid earthly bodies: nothing of iron but much like stone, like yellow, soft flint shaped like a barbed arrowhead, flung like a dart with great force. These arms (cut by art and tools it seems beyond human) have somewhat the nature of a thunderbolt: subtly and mortally wounding the vital parts without breaking the skin, of which wounds I have observed in beasts and felt with my own hands. They are not infallible, hitting at a hairsbreadth; nor are they wholly unvanquishable.
Those who are unseen or unsanctified (called fey) are said to be pierced or wounded with those people’s weapons, which makes them do things very unlike their former practice, causing a sudden alteration, yet the cause thereof unperceivable at present.
They also pierce cows or other animals, usually said to be elf-shot, whose purest substance (if they die) these subterraneans take to live on for prolonging of life, leaving the terrestrial behind.
The cure of such hurts is only for a man to find out the hole with his finger, as if the spirits flowing from a man’s warm hand were antidote sufficient against their poisoned darts.
By contrast, the Good People have not a second, material body to be so pierced; but are as air, which, when divided, unites again. They are a people invulnerable to our weapons. Or if they feel pain by a blow, they are better physicians than we, and quickly cure it.
Their weapons are most like solid earthly bodies: nothing of iron but much like stone, like yellow, soft flint shaped like a barbed arrowhead, flung like a dart with great force. These arms (cut by art and tools it seems beyond human) have somewhat the nature of a thunderbolt: subtly and mortally wounding the vital parts without breaking the skin, of which wounds I have observed in beasts and felt with my own hands. They are not infallible, hitting at a hairsbreadth; nor are they wholly unvanquishable.
Those who are unseen or unsanctified (called fey) are said to be pierced or wounded with those people’s weapons, which makes them do things very unlike their former practice, causing a sudden alteration, yet the cause thereof unperceivable at present.
They also pierce cows or other animals, usually said to be elf-shot, whose purest substance (if they die) these subterraneans take to live on for prolonging of life, leaving the terrestrial behind.
The cure of such hurts is only for a man to find out the hole with his finger, as if the spirits flowing from a man’s warm hand were antidote sufficient against their poisoned darts.
***
The Good People travel much abroad, either presaging or aping the dismal and tragical actions of some among us. As birds and beasts, whose bodies are much used to the change of the free and open air, foresee storms, so our airy darlings are more sagacious to understand, by the Books of Nature, things to come than we, who are pestered with the grosser dregs of all elementary mixtures, and have our purer spirits choked by them.
In the next country to that of my former residence, about the year 1676, when there was some scarcity of grain, a marvelous vision strongly struck the imagination of two women in one night, living at a good distance from one another, about a treasure hid in a hill called SITHBHRUAICH, or fairy-hill. The appearance of a treasure was first represented to the fancy, and then an audible voice named the place where it was to their awakening senses.
Whereupon both arose, and meeting accidently at the place, discovered their design; and jointly digging, found a vessel as large as a Scottish peck, full of small pieces of good money, of ancient coin; which halving betwixt them they sold in dishfuls for dishfuls of meal to the country people. Very many of undoubted credit saw and had of the coin to this day.
But whether it was a good or bad angel, one of the subterranean people, or the restless soul of him who hid it that discovered it, and to what end it was done, I leave to the examination of others.
The deer scents out a man and powder at a great distance; a hungry hunter, bread; and the raven, carrion: their brains, being long clarified by the high and subtle air, will observe a very small change in a trice. Thus a man of the second sight perceives the operations of these forecasting invisible people among us (indulged through a stupendious providence to give warnings of some remarkable events, either in the air, earth, or waters).
In the next country to that of my former residence, about the year 1676, when there was some scarcity of grain, a marvelous vision strongly struck the imagination of two women in one night, living at a good distance from one another, about a treasure hid in a hill called SITHBHRUAICH, or fairy-hill. The appearance of a treasure was first represented to the fancy, and then an audible voice named the place where it was to their awakening senses.
Whereupon both arose, and meeting accidently at the place, discovered their design; and jointly digging, found a vessel as large as a Scottish peck, full of small pieces of good money, of ancient coin; which halving betwixt them they sold in dishfuls for dishfuls of meal to the country people. Very many of undoubted credit saw and had of the coin to this day.
But whether it was a good or bad angel, one of the subterranean people, or the restless soul of him who hid it that discovered it, and to what end it was done, I leave to the examination of others.
The deer scents out a man and powder at a great distance; a hungry hunter, bread; and the raven, carrion: their brains, being long clarified by the high and subtle air, will observe a very small change in a trice. Thus a man of the second sight perceives the operations of these forecasting invisible people among us (indulged through a stupendious providence to give warnings of some remarkable events, either in the air, earth, or waters).
***
The sagacious and active Scots, by surprises and raptures, do often foretell many real treasures and murders, which are discovered either by souls that pass from among ourselves, or by the kindness of our airy neighbours.
And yet a Scottish seer, banished to America, being a stranger there to the invisible as to the visible inhabitants, was not able to have the warnings, visions or predictions which were often granted him by these acquaintances and favourites in his own country.
As there are parallel stories in all countries and ages reported, it confirms greatly my account of an invisible people, guardian over and careful of men, who have their different offices and abilities in distinct countries.
For indeed, it would be too great an honour for Scotland to have such watchers and predominant powers over it alone, acting in it so expressly, and all other nations wholly destitute of the like.
And yet a Scottish seer, banished to America, being a stranger there to the invisible as to the visible inhabitants, was not able to have the warnings, visions or predictions which were often granted him by these acquaintances and favourites in his own country.
As there are parallel stories in all countries and ages reported, it confirms greatly my account of an invisible people, guardian over and careful of men, who have their different offices and abilities in distinct countries.
For indeed, it would be too great an honour for Scotland to have such watchers and predominant powers over it alone, acting in it so expressly, and all other nations wholly destitute of the like.
*****
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