The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies
"A slim quarto-size book (like a paperback novel in boards) and less than a hundred pages of text, this New York Review of Books edition is the first in more than a century and contains a well-written introduction and end notes by Marina Warner. Also included is Kirk's own glossary of "difficult words," in which we learn the 17th-century meanings of adscititious, defaecat, lychnobious and noctambulo." --The Philadelphia Inquirer“Kirk is a magnificent dish to set before any student of either folk-lore or folk-psychology"--The Times Literary Supplement“The importance of Robert Kirk’s manuscript for a deeper understanding of late seventeenth-century Scottish beliefs about fairies and second sight is hard to exaggerate.  There is simply no other source with such fulsome detail about the Guid Neighbours…”–Folklore“Kirk’s ‘Secret Commonwealth’ is one of those books which are well known but hard to come by…His little treatise is a most careful and thorough piece of work, made the more so by the spirit in which it was written…The result is one of the completest descriptions extant of that special phase of popular belief.”–The Times Literary Supplement"[F]illed with delightful maunderings on seers and second-sighters and ‘glimpses of the moon’…”–The Critic“[A] cult classic.”–The Glasgow Herald--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.