7. RESULTADOS
7.5 PARTE IN SILICO A POSTERIORI
7.5.4 Acoplamiento molecular sobre GPR40
Robert Kirk
* Second sight was not uncommon in the Scottish Highlands.
The term referred to psychic gifts, such as the ability to see into the future, to heal, to find lost objects, or to see the fairies. Kirk himself may have possessed second sight. He was the seventh son in his family; and it was believed that seventh sons possessed such abilities.
Over the years, Kirk gathered a sizable collection of lore.
Some fairies were human-sized, his parishioners told him;
but most were smaller. They were fond of mischief, and would pilfer from kitchens at night. They dressed in tartan, just like Highlanders, and were similarly divided into tribes.
They had rulers and laws. The fairies loved to dance and make music. They dwelt underground, in large houses, and held banquets in subterranean halls. They married and died, though living to a ripe old age. They were quarrelsome. And they were godless—utterly irreligious.
Kirk was told how to see the fairies. You sought out a seer—a person with second sight—and placed a foot on his foot. The seer then placed his hand on your head. And looking over his right shoulder, you would see the fairies!
And he was told about the fairy hills—the earthen mounds scattered throughout the Highlands. Beneath them dwelt the fairies. (Though some said it was the souls of the dead who dwelt there.) It was dangerous, he was warned, to remove wood from a fairy hill, or to otherwise disturb it.
But Robert Kirk already knew about fairy hills. For he had grown up in the shadow of one.
The Kirk family had resided in the Manse—the parsonage at Aberfoyle. A short walk from the Manse was a mound, on which young Robert and his siblings had played. They knew, of course, who dwelt beneath the mound. For it was called Dun Shi, or “mound of the fairies.” Dun Shi was overgrown with trees and bushes. At its summit was a clear-ing, in which grew a solitary pine. The river Forth flowed nearby. And the mound seemed to be brooding beneath the gray skies of Aberfoyle.*
In 1685 Kirk succeeded his father as Aberfoyle’s minis-ter. He returned to the town and moved back into the Manse, his boyhood home. And in addition to preaching the gospel, he began to write a treatise. It was based on the lore he had collected over the years—lore he had come to believe was factual. Fairies were real. By 1691 the manu-script was complete. He made a copy for an interested party in London; tucked away the original in a drawer; and went about his pastoral duties.
Now it had become his habit to take a stroll in the evening, on Dun Shi. Roaming the mound in his nightshirt, Kirk was a ghostlike figure, and a peculiar one, too. For he was sometimes seen with his ear to the ground—listening for fairies. On the evening of May 14, the Reverend Kirk took such a stroll.
Later that night he was found collapsed on the mound—
the apparent victim of a heart attack. Carried back the Manse, Kirk was pronounced dead. He was 48 years old.
* Sir Walter Scott describes Aberfoyle and its environs: “These beautiful and wild regions, comprehending so many lakes, rocks, sequestered valleys, and dim copsewoods, are not even yet quite abandoned by the fairies, who have resolutely maintained secure footing in a region so well suited for their residence.”
As for that solitary pine atop the mound, it would become a tourist attraction: the “Minister’s Pine.” Visitors to Aberfoyle tie ribbons to its branches, inscribed with wishes. And children run around it seven times, in hope of seeing a fairy.
A funeral was held. And Robert Kirk—or what was believed to be him—was buried in the churchyard. And there, pre-sumedly, his tale had ended.
But there was more to come. For a few days later Kirk—
still clad in his nightshirt—appeared to a relative in a dream.
And he said:
“Go to my cousin Duchray, and tell him that I am not dead; I fell down in a swoon, and was carried into Fairy-land, where I now am. Tell him, that when he and my friends are assembled at the baptism of my child [Kirk had left his wife pregnant], I will appear in the room, and that if he throws the knife which he holds in his hand over my head, I will be released, and restored to human society.”*
The relative neglected to deliver the message. So Kirk appeared to him a second time, threatening to haunt him until he complied. The message was delivered. And on the day of the christening, cousin Duchray came prepared with a knife.†
Family and friends gathered in the Manse. The child was baptized. And suddenly, Robert Kirk entered by the front door. The apparition was seen by everyone. Alas, so aston-ished was Duchray that he failed to throw the knife. And Kirk (no doubt sorely disappointed) passed through and exited by the rear door.
Now what exactly had happened to him? Kirk had apparently been taken captive by the fairies—something known to occur in the Highlands. But why? According to Sir Walter Scott, his abduction was a punishment—for gathering information about the fairies, and for trespass-ing on their hill. Sir Walter describes his final moment
* This speech is found in Patrick Graham’s Sketches of Perthshire (1812). The Reverend Graham, who succeeded Kirk as minister in Aberfoyle, was quoting a local tradition.
† It was believed in the Highlands that fairies had an antipathy to iron, and that an iron object—such as a knife—would counter-act their spells.
on Dun Shi:
He sunk down in what seemed to be a fit of apoplexy, which the unenlightened took for death, while the more understanding knew it to be a swoon produced by the supernatural influence of the people whose precincts he had violated.
His more grievous offense, though, had been to delve into their secrets:
It was by no means to be supposed that [the fairies], so jeal-ous and irritable a race as to be incensed against those who spoke of them under their proper names, should be less than mortally offended at the temerity of the reverend author, who had pryed so deeply into their mysteries, for the purpose of giving them to the public.
For these transgressions, Kirk was spirited away—“a terri-ble visitation of fairy vengeance.”
But what about the body that was found on Dun Shi and brought back to the Manse? For that the local Highlanders
—wise to the wily practices of the fairies—had a ready explanation. The body was a “stock”—a facsimile—a kind of changeling. The fairies had taken Kirk and left behind a substitute.
Buried in the churchyard was that substitute. And Kirk, it was widely believed, was a captive in Fairyland.
•
In the years that followed, he appeared in dreams to res-idents of Aberfoyle, with a plea for help. And occasionally, someone crossing the bridge near Dun Shi would feel a sud-den bursud-den on his back—the soul of Robert Kirk, seeking to escape. But the clergyman’s fate had been sealed. And he remained among the fairies.
Three centuries have passed since his abduction; and Kirk has probably become resigned to his captivity. And he
may even be making the best of it. Perhaps he is joining the fairies at their banquets (along with Thomas the Rhymer)...
visiting them in their homes...taking notes for a sequel to his treatise (the fairies themselves now his informants).
And—futile as it may seem—preaching the gospel to the fairies.*
* That manuscript that Kirk left behind in a drawer? It fell into the possession of his eldest son, and was eventually deposited in a library in Edinburgh. And in 1815 The Secret Commonwealth was published in a limited edition.
The book begins with a preamble:
“ on the Nature and Actions of the Subterranean (and, for the most Part) Invisible People, heretofore going under the names of , and , or the like . . . as they are described by those who have the ; and now, to occasion further Inquiry, collected and compared, by a Circum-spect Inquirer residing among the Scottish-Irish in Scotland.”
The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies (as later editions were titled) is a study of the inhabitants of Fairyland—
by a man who believed in their existence. It describes their origin, appearance, customs, crafts, food, social organization, and lifestyle
—information that Kirk had collected from his parishioners. And it includes a discourse on second sight, in which he seeks to show that the talent is “not unsuitable to Reason nor the Holy Scrip-tures.” For Kirk viewed such subjects as second sight, ghosts, and fairies through a dual lens: the scientific spirit that arose in the seventeenth century, and the traditional world view of a Christian.
He discusses in his treatise the nature of fairies. Materially, they evince “a middle Nature betwixt Man and Angel, as were Dæmons thought to be of old . . . somewhat of the Nature of a condensed Cloud and best seen in Twilight.” As for their character, fairies can be as troublesome as humans. “These Subterraneans have Controversies, Doubts, Disputes, Feuds, and Siding of Parties;
there being some Ignorance in all Creatures. . . . they transgress and commit Acts of Injustice, and Sin.”
And sadly, the fairies are godless. They have “no discernible Religion, Love, or Devotion towards God, the blessed Maker of all: they disappear whenever they hear his Name invoked, or the Name of .”
Clearly, such creatures bear little resemblance to the dainty
fairies—the sprites with gossamer wings—of the Victorian era.
Robert Kirk was a folklorist, who specialized in traditions about the supernatural. And he holds a unique position among folk-lorists. For not only did Kirk believe in the factual nature of the lore he collected; he became, with his alleged abduction, the stuff of lore himself.
T
he
, and has become a popular tourist destination. Its principal inhabitants are of German descent. But they share the island with another people—a mysterious race who dwell underground; are short of stature (barely knee-high to the Germans); and are known as zwergen, or dwarfs.The dwarfs reside beneath the Nine Hills, near the village of Rambin. There they labor as silversmiths and goldsmiths.
During the winter the dwarfs keep to their workshops, deep within the earth. But in the spring they emerge from the hills, to enjoy the sunshine and flowers. And at night they cavort upon the grass, making music and dancing. The vil-lagers hear the music, but cannot see the dwarfs, who make themselves invisible.
Now a family named Dietrich once resided in Rambin.
The youngest child was Hans—an intelligent, well-behaved, and studious boy, whose passion was to listen to stories.
One summer Hans was sent to work on an uncle’s farm.
He was eight years old at the time. His job was to help old Klas, the cowherd, graze the cows on the Nine Hills. As they worked together, Klas entertained him with tales. Thus did Hans learn about the dwarfs who dwelt beneath the hills.
And he yearned to visit their subterranean home. Klas had even revealed the means of doing so: the cap of a dwarf.
Donning such a cap, one could see the dwarfs, descend safely into their realm, and even master them.
Finally, Hans could restrain himself no longer. During the night he slipped away from the farm; made his way to the hill where, according to Klas, the dwarfs held their noc-turnal revels; and lay there, pretending to be asleep.
A distant church bell tolled midnight. And soon there-after, a medley of sounds arose: humming and drumming,