2019 Reprint of 1893 Edition Edited by Andrew Lang. Robert Kirk (1644 -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. Left in manuscript form upon the author's death in 1692, this volume was first published in 1815 at the behest of Sir Walter Scott. In 1893, the distinguished folklorist Andrew Lang re-edited the work and it is in this form that the work is reprinted.