The hypothesis that the Fairy belief may be a tradition of an ancient race dwelling in subterranean homes, is older than Mr. McRitchie or Sir Walter Scott. In his _Scottish Scenery_ (1803), Dr. Cririe suggests that the germ of the Fairy myth is the existence of dispossessed aboriginals dwelling in subterranean houses, in some places called Picts’ houses, covered with artificial mounds. The lights seen near the mounds are lights actually carried by the mound-dwellers. Dr. Cririe works out in some detail “this marvellously absurd supposition,” as the _Quarterly Review_ calls it (vol. lix., p. 280). _Note_ (_e_), p. 30.—“Master Great-rake, the Irish Stroaker.” Glanvill, in _Essays on Several Important Subjects_ (1675), prints a letter from an Irish Bishop on Greatrex, the “stroker.” He cured diseases “by a sanative contagion.” According to the Bishop, Greatrex had an impression that he could do “faith-healing,” and found that he could, but whether by virtue of some special power or by “the people’s fancy,” he knew not. He frequently failed, and his patients had relapses. See his own _Account of Strange Cures: in a Letter to Robert Boyle_. London, 1666. POSTSCRIPT. It has been said that no trace can be found of a printed _Secret Commonwealth_ before 1815. The present editor is inclined to believe that in 1699 the work was still in manuscript. In a letter of Lord Reay’s to Mr. Samuel Pepys (Oct. 24, 1699), he says, “I have got a manuscript since I last came to Scotland, whose author, though a parson, after giving a very full account of the Second Sight, defends there being no sin in it.... With the first opportunity I shall send you a copy of his books.” This description answers very well to Mr. Kirk’s treatise, and to no other contemporary work with which I am acquainted, unless it be _A Discourse of the Second Sight_, by the Rev. Mr. John Frazer, minister of Tiree and Coll. There were, doubtless, other parsons busy with these topics; and the minister of Rerrick informs me that several MSS. by Mr. Telfair, author of the tract already quoted, were only dispersed about 1877. Examples of these clerical psychical researchers may be found in C. K. Sharpe’s prefatory notice to Law’s _Memorials_ (Edinburgh, 1818). Such an one is the Rev. Robert Knox, who writes from Cavers to the Rev. Mr. Wyllie on the case of Sir George Maxwell of Pollock. He dare not attribute the mediumship of Janet Douglas “positively to an evil cause.... _It is our ignorance of any natural agent_ that makes us impute the effects to evil spirits” (_Memorials_, p. lxxv). Moreover, Lord Reay writes as if his “parson” were still alive in 1699, whereas Mr. Kirk “went to his own herd” in 1692. “I am promised the acquaintance of this man, of which I am very covetous.” Lord Reay was at Durness, and may not have heard of the mishap which carried the minister of Aberfoyle into Fairyland. It may be added that Dr. Hickes writes to Mr.