The Fairy Min­is­ter steps qui­et­ly into his­to­ry dur­ing the trou­bled year of 1692, where con­flict raged at Kil­liecrankie and lives were lost to both sword and polit­i­cal betray­al. Yet in Aber­foyle, away from blood­ied fields, Rev­erend Robert Kirk walked in peace among mossy hills, believed to be touched by some­thing more del­i­cate and ancient than war. Revered by his con­gre­ga­tion and, curi­ous­ly, beloved by the Fairies, Kirk spent his final days in qui­et com­mu­nion with the unseen. Leg­ends grew from his deep knowl­edge of the fairy realm—of green knolls, twi­light dances, and whis­pers car­ried on the breeze. When he van­ished, not buried but absorbed into mys­tery, many said he had been tak­en by those oth­er­world­ly friends. Nei­ther con­demned nor saved, he became a soul lodged between realms, immor­tal­ized in silence and folk­lore, remem­bered as the min­is­ter who knew too much.

His fate stirred both won­der and envy. While oth­ers aged and fal­tered under earth­ly bur­dens, Kirk was believed to serve in the eter­nal twi­light of the Fairy Court, dressed in green, his ser­mons now deliv­ered beneath moon­lit branch­es. Tales of labor­ing Brown­ies and seduc­tive fairy maid­ens have since fad­ed, and the heaths lie qui­et where once ghost­ly dances spun through the night. The world has become too loud, too taxed, too log­i­cal for fairies to remain. Yet in some cor­ners of the imag­i­na­tion, Kirk’s voice still lingers, offer­ing bless­ings beyond human creed. His sto­ry remains not as warn­ing, but as an invi­ta­tion to believe in some­thing soft­er, more mys­te­ri­ous, and defi­ant­ly unknow­able. That he was cho­sen speaks not to pow­er, but to a deep har­mo­ny with the hid­den order of the world.

In a whim­si­cal shift, the tale drifts to Robert Louis Steven­son, a man far from Scotland’s lochs but bound by the same love for myth and won­der. Steven­son, though exiled by health to gen­tler cli­mates, car­ried the wild spir­it of the north with­in him. There were no peats to burn, no trout-filled streams to stir, and cer­tain­ly no Pres­by­ter­ian fire in his trop­i­cal surroundings—but his imag­i­na­tion made up for all that. The poem gen­tly mocks his absence from the home­land, yet prais­es how his words ignite the same flick­er­ing belief that Kirk once embod­ied. Though phys­i­cal­ly dis­tant, Steven­son stayed teth­ered by mem­o­ry, and that connection—like Kirk’s with the Fairies—transcended time and soil.

Where Kirk brought the unseen close, Steven­son brings the dis­tant near. Through sto­ry, he feeds for­eign read­ers with glimpses of Scotland’s soul—its fierce piety, its mossy hills, its leg­ends half-believed and whol­ly loved. Even the pagan heart, the text jokes, might one day crave ban­nocks or shiv­er under the weight of a Scot­tish ser­mon. Steven­son becomes, in his way, a mod­ern fairy minister—not snatched away, but will­ing­ly exiled, spread­ing the old songs in new lands. Just as Kirk became an emis­sary to the Fairies, Steven­son becomes a bridge from Scot­land to the world. The two are kin­dred spir­its, one caught between dimen­sions, the oth­er between con­ti­nents, both shap­ing the way we imag­ine what lies beyond the veil of real­i­ty.

This chap­ter, half ele­gy and half praise, car­ries the mur­mur of moss and myth, and in doing so, it reminds us why we turn to folk­lore. In Kirk, we find the sacred­ness of mys­tery kept alive by faith in the unseen. In Steven­son, we find the joy of trans­mit­ting that mys­tery to places unknow­ing. Both men reveal that won­der is not lim­it­ed to child­hood or to place; it trav­els through lan­guage, mem­o­ry, and belief. Whether wan­der­ing fairy hills or trop­i­cal islands, the work remains the same—to keep enchant­ment alive, even when the world for­gets. And in doing so, they both become leg­ends, not because they chased mag­ic, but because they let it find them.