Robert Kirk (folklorist)
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Robert Kirk was a minister, Gaelic scholar and folklorist, best known for The Secret Commonwealth, a treatise on fairy folklore, witchcraft, ghosts, and second sight, a type of extrasensory perception
Kirk was minister at Balquhidder until 1685.
Secret Commonwealth Manuscript Title Page
Robert Kirk's grave stone in Aberfoyle, Scotland
Epitaph on Robert Kirk tombstone, Aberfoyle Old Burial Ground, Scotland
Dietrich von Bern
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Dietrich von Bern is the name of a character in Germanic heroic legend who originated as a legendary version of the Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great. In the legends, Dietrich is a king ruling from
Robert Kirk (folklorist)
…then at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, noted the similarity between the legend of Kirk's death and the Germanic legend of Dietrich von Bern, who in one tale was taken away by a dwarf when he died. According to Sayce, both share a theme common to ancestral spirit cults—the departed are taken…
Scene from the poem Virginal: Dietrich von Bern and Hildebrand fight against dragons. Note that Dietrich is breathing fire. UBH Cod.Pal.germ. 324 fol. 43r
Theodoric's fight against Odoacer imagined as a joust, 1181 from Verona. Vatican Library Cpl 927
Carving in the church portal of San Zeno Maggiore in Verona that may depict Theodoric, marked as regem stultum (stupid king), being carried to Hell by an infernal horse (c. 1140).
The Rök stone, one of the earliest mentions of Theodoric in Germanic legend