The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies

Children can be very capable when it comes to mere trickery. The position of any young Wesley who might have been discovered in such an act would not be enviable. Indeed, Mr. Wesley would have spared no effort in his lamentations.

6. SECOND SIGHT AND “TELEPATHY”

We have already suggested that common occurrences—such as illusions, cases of mistaken identity, or hallucinations—are likely the basis for part of the Highlanders' belief in clairvoyance. Of course, if a certain proportion of hallucinations were, or could be, considered "veridical" original: "veridical"; meaning truthful or coinciding with real events, people would pay attention only to those and ignore the rest.

The Psychical Society The Society for Psychical Research, founded in 1882 has collected and examined hundreds of these cases in modern life.

The Society can investigate, through experiments, whether "second sight" can be acquired in the manner described by Mr. Kirk—either by using a strap made of hair or simply by placing one's foot under the foot of a seer. In this way, physical contact is used for thought-reading, just as in second sight, the seer communicates his hallucination through contact. Second sight itself is now called "telepathy," though this name does not essentially advance our knowledge of the subject. Either it is very common, or it is very common for people to claim they possess it. In our society, it is merely a matter of idle tales; in the Highlands, second sight was a formal belief and a system.

Mr. Pepys and Dr. Johnson investigated the matter, and Dr. Johnson left convinced, though not entirely so. The Psychical Society is now examining clairvoyance in the Highlands. It is interesting to note that Presbyterian seers justified their visions based on the Bible—the same book used to justify the occasional burning of these gifted men. Mr. Kirk is tolerant enough to attribute his visions to a "kindness of Providence." This view may have been accepted north of the Highland line, but in Fife and the south, seers would have been quickly provided with a stake and a tar barrel. The writings of Wodrow and Mr. Robert Blair of St. Andrews (1650–60) prove that if a gifted preacher performed wonders, he was considered inspired; but if an amateur did exactly the same things—prophesying, curing diseases, etc.—he or she was likely to be brought before the presbytery a religious court in the Presbyterian church and possibly dragged to the stake. In the Highlands, these hateful distinctions were not made as strictly. Mr. Kirk treats the entire question with his characteristically scientific, curious, and detached style. If these things occur, he argues, they belong to the realm of nature and result from causes that can be guessed at in various ways. They may be providential, or a quirk of evolution derived from "a constitutional quality of the first person to acquire it," which often becomes hereditary in their lineage.

The letter from Lord Tarbott to the researcher Robert Boyle is added by Mr. Kirk to his short treatise, along with his own annotations. His belief that visions of fairies could only be seen when the eyes were kept steady and without blinking is supported by a well-known anecdote. On the afternoon of the Battle of Culloden, a girl staying with Lord Lovat at Gortuleg was reading in a window seat. Looking out by chance, she saw a company of horsemen hurrying toward the castle. Believing them to be the Sleagh Maith Scottish Gaelic: "The Good People" or fairies, she struggled to keep from blinking so as not to lose the vision. But, alas, they were not fairies; they were Prince Charles and his men fleeing from the victorious English. This account proves that the belief survived long after the time of the Minister of Aberfoyle. Lord Tarbott also mentions the vision of a shroud draped over the chest of a man about to die, a phenomenon that seems to be alluded to in the prophecy of Theoclymenus in the Odyssey. Lord Tarbott’s accounts are among the best known; there are dozens of them in the works of Theophilus Insulanus. Kirk’s notes are especially notable for his citation of the "evil eye" of Walter Grahame, which killed whomever he praised—a worldwide superstition too common to need support from foreign or classical examples.

Unfortunately, at this point, Mr. Kirk abandons what we might call his scientific attitude. He has explained his "supernatural" matters as if they were not supernatural at all, but rather phenomena of Nature subject to laws like any other. But now it occurs to him to explain the behavior of his Sleagh Maith as the result of—