INTRODUCTION

1. THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK AND THE AUTHOR

The bibliography of the following small treatise is extremely obscure. The title page of the 1815 edition, which we reproduce, gives the date of 1691. Sir Walter Scott says in his Demonology and Witchcraft (1830, p. 163, note): "It was printed with the author's name in 1691, and reprinted, in 1815, by Longman & Co." But did a printed edition of 1691 actually exist? Scott says he never found an example.

Research in our great libraries has not discovered any, and there is none except the 1815 edition at Abbotsford Abbotsford was the country house of Sir Walter Scott. The reprint of one hundred copies was made, as it says, not from a printed text, but from "a manuscript copy preserved in the Advocates' Library." On page 45 of the 1815 edition, at the end of the comments on Lord Tarbott's letters, there is a "Note from the transcriber"—that is, the person who transcribed the manuscript in the Advocates' Library:

"See the rest in a small manuscript belonging to Coline Kirk." Now,

Coline or Colin Kirk, a Writer to the Signet term: A senior lawyer or solicitor in Scotland, was the son of the Reverend Kirk, the author of the treatise. If the son possessed his father's book only in manuscript, it seems very likely that it was not printed in 1691, and that the title page was merely the title page of a manuscript. Until some printed text from 1691 is discovered, we may doubt whether the hundred copies published in 1815—now somewhat rare—are not actually the original printed edition. The editor has a copy from 1815, but it is the only one he has found for sale.

The Reverend Robert Kirk, author of The Secret Commonwealth, was a student of theology at St. Andrews; however, he obtained his Master of Arts degree at Edinburgh. He was (and this is notable) the youngest and seventh son of Mr. James Kirk, minister of Aberfoyle—a place familiar to all readers of Rob Roy A famous novel by Sir Walter Scott. As a seventh son, he was undoubtedly considered specially gifted, and in The Secret Commonwealth he emphasizes the mystical privileges of such a birth. There may be "some secret virtue in the mother's womb, which increases until the seventh son is born, and decreases in the same degree afterward." We would not be surprised if Mr. Kirk, no less than the Reverend Robert Blair of St. Andrews (1650–60), could cure scrofula term: A form of tuberculosis affecting the lymph nodes, historically called "The King's Evil" because it was believed a monarch's touch could cure it with his touch, like royalty—such as Charles III in Italy, for example. As is well known to everyone, the House of Brunswick The British royal dynasty at the time of this writing has no such powers.

Be that as it may, Mr. Kirk was probably drawn by his status as a seventh son to study psychic phenomena more closely than most of his brothers in the ministry. Little is known of his life. He was a minister in Balquidder, from where, in 1685, he was transferred to Aberfoyle. This was not a Covenanter district note: Covenanters were a Scottish Presbyterian movement known for strict religious and political views, and there is no intolerance in Mr. Kirk's dissertation. He worked on an "Irish" note: original: "irlandesa"; here referring to Gaelic translation of the Bible and published a Psalter in Gaelic (1684). He married, first, Isobel, daughter of Sir Colin Campbell of Mochester, who died in 1680; and second, the daughter of Campbell of Fordy, who survived him. Because of his relationship with the Campbells, we may doubt that he was a Whig note: A political faction often associated with the Covenanters and opposition to absolute monarchy (belonging...