Empire unusual suggested

64 PASSPORT TO MAGONIA
In the last half of the seventeenth century, a Scottish scholar
gathered all the accounts he could find about the Sleagh Maith
and, in 1691, wrote a manuscript bearing the title: The Secret
Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies. The Secret Commonwealth
was the first systematic attempt to describe the
methods and organization of the strange creatures that plagued
the farmers of Scotland. The author, Reverend Kirk, of Aberfoyle,
studied theology at St. Andrews and took his degree of professor
at Edinburgh. Later he served as minister for the parishes of Balquedder
and Abcrfoyle and died in 1692.
It is impossible to quote the entire text of Kirk's treatise on the
Secret Commonwealth, but we can summarize his findings about
elves and other aerial creatures in the following way:
1. They have a nature that is intermediate between man and
the angels.
2. Physically, they have very light and "fluid" bodies, which
are comparable to a condensed cloud. They are particularly visible
at dusk. They can appear and vanish at will.
3. Intellectully, they are intelligent and curious.
4. They have the power to carry away anything they like,
5. They live inside the earth in caves, which they can reach
through any crevice or opening where air passes.
6. When men did not inhabit most of the world, they used to
live there and had their own agriculture. Their civilization has
left traces on the high mountains; it was flourishing at a time
when the whole countryside was nothing but woods and forests.
7. At the beginning of each three-month period, they change
quarters because they are unable to stay in one place. Besides, they
like to travel. It is then that men have terrible encounters with
them, even on the great highways.*
8. Their chameleonlike bodies allow them to swim through
the air with all their household.
9. They are divided into tribes. Like us, they have children,
* Kirk notes that the Scots avoid all travel during those four periods of
the year, and he adds that some country-folk go to church on the first
Sunday of every three-month period to have their family, crops, and cattle
blessed in order to keep away the elves who steal plants and animals.
THE SECRET COMMONWEALTH 65
nurses, marriages, burials, etc., unless they just do this to mock
our own customs, or to predict terrestrial events.
10. Their houses are said to be wonderfully large and beautiful,
but under most circumstances they are invisible to human eyes.
Kirk compares them to enchanted islands. The houses are
equipped with lamps that burn forever and fires that need no fuel.
11. They speak very little. When they do so, when they talk
among themselves, their language is a kind of whistling sound.
12. Their habits and their language when they talk to humans
are similar to those of local people.
13. Their philosophical system is based on the following ideas:
nothing dies; all things evolve cyclically in such a way that at every
cycle they are renewed and improved. Motion is the universal law.
14. They are said to have a hierarchy of leaders, but they have
no visible devotion to God, no religion.
15. They have many pleasant and light books, but also serious
and complex books, rather in the Rosicrucian style, dealing with
abstract matters.
16. They can be made to appear at will before us through
magic.
The similarities between these observations and the story related
by Facius Cardan, which antedates Kirk's manuscript by
exactly two hundred years, are clear. Both Cardan and Paracelsus
write, like Kirk, that a pact can be made with these creatures, and
that they can be made to appear and answer questions at will.
Paracelsus did not care to reveal what that pact was "because of
the ills that might befall those who would try it." Kirk is equally
discreet on this point. And, of course, to go deeper into this matter
would open the whole field of witchcraft, which is beyond my
purpose in this book.
Kirk's conclusion is that every age has left a secret to be discovered.
Sooner than we think, he says, the relations with the
aerial beings will be as natural to us as, say, microscopy or the
printing press, navigation—all things that caused considerable
surprise when they were first introduced. We can only follow him
in this and give a humble salute to a man who managed to gather
such a complete description of our visitors.