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The Fairy Minister |
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This shows that not only were older superstitions were still looming large in the minds of ordinary people, but also that the ruling classes were aware of these beliefs and quite happy to manipulate them for their own ends.
As Edward J Cowan states in In Search of Scotland:
“It was little wonder that some people turned to the supernatural for some explanation of their plight. If there were comparatively few practising witches, there were plenty who consulted them. In the course of some witch trials, it became obvious that the wretched victims were confessing to fairy belief, were speaking of charms communicated by wise women or of cures provided by folk-healers for perennial maladies.
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In a deeply religious age such folk were convinced that God had deserted them. The kirk, for its part, scrutinised the morality of its flock through the mechanism of the kirk session, sniffing out Sabbath breakers, the frivolities of song, music and dance, and sexual misdemeanours. The politicians were not the only ones who seemed to have lost their way as something of a neurosis gripped the whole of Scottish society.”
This demonstrates that fairy, and other folk beliefs were still common throughout Scotland in the lifetime of such figures as Lord Kames and Francis Hutcheson, two of the most important early figures of the Scottish Enlightenment. Perhaps what the case of Robert Kirk shows, is that the population of Scotland was not quite as rational, or as Calvinistic, as the history books tell us.
Your comments
1 Nia Guffie from Cumnock, Scotland - 13 February 2004
"i think this is very interesting, quite cool, as i believe coincidences do not happen this is rather strange."
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