Robert Kirk (folklorist), Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Robert Kirk (folklorist)

Scottish folklorist, Bible translator, Gaelic scholar

Date of Birth: 09-Dec-1644

Place of Birth: Aberfoyle, Scotland, United Kingdom

Date of Death: 14-May-1692

Profession: translator, presbyter, Bible translator

Nationality: Scotland

Zodiac Sign: Sagittarius


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About Robert Kirk (folklorist)

  • Robert Kirk (9 December 1644 – 14 May 1692) was a minister, Gaelic scholar and folklorist, best known for The Secret Commonwealth, a treatise on fairy folklore, witchcraft, ghosts, and second sight, a type of extrasensory perception described as a phenomenon by the people of the Scottish Highlands.
  • Folklorist Stewart Sanderson and mythologist Marina Warner call Kirk's collection of supernatural tales one of the most important and significant works on the subject of fairies and second sight.In the late 1680s, Kirk travelled to London to help publish one of the first translations of the Bible into Scottish Gaelic.
  • Gentleman scientist Robert Boyle financed the publication of the Gaelic Bible and pursued inquiries into Kirk's reports of second sight.
  • Kirk died before he was able to publish The Secret Commonwealth.
  • Legends arose after Kirk's death saying he had been taken away to fairyland for revealing the secrets of the Good People.Scottish author Walter Scott first published Kirk's work on fairies more than a century later in 1815.
  • Andrew Lang later gave it the popular title, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies (1893).
  • Multiple editions of The Secret Commonwealth have since been published, with notable scholarly analysis by Sanderson, Mario M.
  • Rossi, and Michael Hunter.

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