The dwellings of these airy shadows of mankind are, naturally, “Fairie Hills.” There is such a hill, the Fairy…
- Date of account
- Written 1691; later edited edition
- Source
- The secret commonwealth of elves, fauns & fairies
- Reference
- The secret commonwealth of elves, fauns & fairies · selected passage 16
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English/Scots historical text
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
The dwellings of these airy shadows of mankind are, naturally, “Fairie Hills.” There is such a hill, the Fairy Hill at Aberfoyle, where Mr
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyThe dwellings of these airy shadows of mankind are, naturally, “Fairie Hills.” There is such a hill, the Fairy Hill at Aberfoyle, where Mr. Kirk resided: Baillie Nicol Jarvie describes its legends in an admirable passage in _Rob Roy_. Mr. MacRitchie says, “How much of this ‘howe’ is artificial, or whether any of it is, remains to be discovered.” It is much larger than most artificial tumuli. According to Mr. Kirk, the Highlanders “superstitiously believe the souls of their Predecessors to dwell” in the fairy-hills. “And for that end, say they, a Mote or Mount was dedicate beside every Churchyard, to receive the souls till their adjacent bodies arise, and so become as a Fairy hill.” Here the Highland philosophers have conspicuously put the cart before the horse. The tumuli are much older than the churches, which were no doubt built beside them because the place had a sacred character. Two very good examples may be seen at Dalry, on the Ken, in Galloway, and at Parton, on Loch Ken. The grassy howes are large and symmetrical, and the modern Presbyterian churches occupy old sites; at Parton there are ruins of the ancient Catholic church.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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