page_title: Robert Kirk (folklorist)
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Kirk (folklorist) / Life
caption_attribution_description: Balquhidder Church, burial place of Rob Roy MacGregor.
context_page_description: Robert Kirk 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.
context_section_description: Kirk was born in Aberfoyle, Scotland, the seventh and youngest son of James Kirk, minister at Aberfoyle, Perthshire. He studied theology at St Andrews and received his master's degree at Edinburgh in 1661. Kirk became minister of Balquhidder in 1664, and later of Aberfoyle, from 1685 until his death. In 1670, he married his first wife, Isobel Campbel, the daughter of Sir Colin Campbel of Mochaster. Isobel produced a son, Colin, who became a writer to the signet. When she died on 25 December 1680, Kirk cut out an epitaph for her with his own hands. His second wife, Margaret, the daughter of Campbell of Fordy, bore him a second son, Robert, who became a minister at Dornoch, Sutherlandshire.
  Kirk was a Gaelic scholar, the author of the first complete translation of the Scottish metrical psalms into Gaelic, published at Edinburgh in 1684 as Psalma Dhaibhidh an Meadrachd, &c. (Psalms of David in Metre, &c.). During its preparation Kirk learned that the synod of Argyll intended to bring out a rival version, and stories are told of how he used to keep himself awake while working to be first in the field.
  In 1689, Kirk was called to London to superintend the printing of An Biobla Naomhtha, the Gaelic Bible that had begun decades earlier under the direction of Bishop William Bedell. It was published in 1690. To this version Kirk added a short Gaelic vocabulary (6 pp.), which was republished, with additions by Edward Lhuyd in William Nicolson's Historical Library (London, 1702).
  Kirk's involvement in Bedell's Bible was at the request of his friend James Kirkwood, a promoter of Scottish Gaelic literacy. The printing was funded by scientist Robert Boyle, a member of the Royal Society.
caption: Kirk was minister at Balquhidder until 1685.
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