In May 1692, a Scottish minister walked up a wooded hill outside Aberfoyle and never came home. His body was found on the summit. Local tradition has held for over three hundred years that the fairies took him instead, and that he is still there.
Doon Hill sits in Queen Elizabeth Forest Park, a short walk from the village of Aberfoyle in the Trossachs, the kind of gentle, unremarkable wooded rise you could pass a dozen times without a second look. What happened here to the Reverend Robert Kirk is the reason people still climb it on purpose.
Region: Stirlingshire, Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Best for: A short forest walk with one of Scotland’s strangest folklore stories attached Getting there: By car via the A81 from Glasgow, or M9 then A84/A821 from Stirling and Edinburgh. Free parking at Aberfoyle’s Riverside Car Park. Time needed: 1.5 to 2 hours for the full circular walk
The Minister Who Studied the Fairies Scientifically
Robert Kirk became minister of Aberfoyle in 1685, a scholarly, Gaelic-speaking clergyman with an unusual sideline for a seventeenth-century Presbyterian minister: a serious, sustained interest in fairies, second sight, and the folk beliefs of the Highland communities he served. Kirk did not treat these beliefs as superstition to be preached against. He treated them as a subject worth genuine investigation, a natural phenomenon that could, in his view, sit alongside Christian faith rather than against it.
His research became a manuscript titled The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies, an attempt to systematically document what Highland communities believed about the Sithe, the fairy folk, their society, their habits, and the humans who claimed to move between the two worlds. Kirk concluded that the Sithe lived beneath Doon Hill, known locally as Dun Sithean, close to Aberfoyle, in an underground world he believed was as real and structured as the human one above it.
A Walk That Ended on the Hilltop
On the evening of 14 May 1692, Kirk took what was, by all accounts, one of his regular walks up Doon Hill. He did not return. His body was found on the hilltop the following day. The official record gave the cause as a sudden seizure or apoplexy, a plausible enough explanation for the era, and Kirk was buried in Aberfoyle churchyard shortly afterwards.
The story that grew up around his death did not accept the official version, and it has never really let go since. According to the tradition that took hold in the years that followed, Kirk had not died on the hill at all. He had been taken by the Sithe, drawn into the underground world he had spent years studying, and the body found and buried at Aberfoyle was a changeling left in his place. One version of the legend has Kirk appearing afterwards to a relative, Graham of Duchray, with a message: he was not dead, he was being held in Fairyland, and there was a specific ritual by which he might be released back into the human world. The ritual, in most tellings of the story, was never carried out.
The Tree at the Summit
A solitary Scots pine still stands at the summit of Doon Hill, distinct from the oak woodland around it, and local tradition marks this tree as the place where Kirk’s spirit is said to remain, caught between the fairy world and the human one, three centuries on. Visitors still leave small offerings, ribbons and coins tucked into the bark, a practice that has grown up around the site over recent decades rather than dating back to Kirk’s own time, but one that speaks to how much of a working piece of folklore this still is rather than a dead historical curiosity.
Kirk’s manuscript was not published in his lifetime. The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies did not appear in print until more than a century after his death, and it remains, today, one of the foundational texts of Scottish folklore studies, cited by academics working on Highland belief systems as a genuinely serious piece of seventeenth-century ethnography, whatever you make of the story of its author’s own disappearance.
Walking Doon Hill from Aberfoyle
The Trossachs Beyond the Hill
Doon Hill sits within Queen Elizabeth Forest Park, a much larger managed woodland stretching across the eastern edge of the Trossachs, itself often described as the Highlands in miniature: lochs, forested hills and glens within an hour’s drive of Glasgow. Aberfoyle grew up as a staging point for exactly this kind of country, first as a droving town for cattle brought south from the Highlands, later as a Victorian tourist gateway once Sir Walter Scott’s novels made the Trossachs fashionable with wealthy visitors travelling out from Edinburgh and Glasgow by coach.
That layered history sits comfortably alongside the older fairy folklore rather than replacing it. Kirk was writing about the Sithe here a century and a half before Scott ever set a novel in the Trossachs, and the same landscape that drew Victorian tourists to admire the scenery had already, for generations of local people, been understood as ground with its own separate, older inhabitants.
The route starts at Aberfoyle’s Riverside Car Park, next to the Trossachs Discovery Centre, and is free to use. From the far end of the car park, cross the old bridge over the River Forth, pass a handful of houses and Aberfoyle Cemetery, and follow the waymarked trail up into Queen Elizabeth Forest Park.
The Doon Hill Trail covers roughly 2.25 miles, 3.5 kilometres, and takes around an hour and a half at a comfortable pace. The path is gravel and generally well maintained lower down, becoming narrower, rougher and steeper as it climbs toward the summit, with exposed tree roots and muddy sections in wetter weather. It is not a technical walk, but sturdy footwear is worth having for the upper stretch.
The forest itself shifts character as you climb, native oak woodland giving way gradually to the darker, denser conifer plantation that surrounds the summit, before opening out at the top around the solitary pine and the small clearing that marks the traditional site of Kirk’s disappearance.
Practical Tips
Park for free at Aberfoyle’s Riverside Car Park, postcode FK8 3UQ, next to the Trossachs Discovery Centre and Scottish Wool Centre.
Allow 1.5 to 2 hours for the full circular walk at a relaxed pace, longer if you plan to stop at the summit.
Wear proper walking boots. The lower path is easy gravel, but the final climb to the summit has exposed roots, loose stone and can be muddy after rain.
Use the AllTrails app to follow the Doon Hill and Fairy Knowe circular route from the Riverside Car Park.
Visit the Trossachs Discovery Centre in Aberfoyle before or after the walk for wider information on Queen Elizabeth Forest Park and the surrounding Trossachs.
Responsible Visiting
Stay on the waymarked path, particularly on the steeper upper section, both for your own safety and to protect the forest floor from erosion. If you choose to leave a ribbon or token at the summit tree, use only biodegradable materials; synthetic ribbons and plastic-backed items left at folklore sites across Scotland have become a genuine environmental problem for land managers, and Forestry and Land Scotland actively discourages the practice for this reason.
Reader Q&A
Is Doon Hill a difficult walk? No technical difficulty, but the final approach to the summit is steeper and rougher than the lower path, with exposed roots and loose stone. Allow 1.5 to 2 hours and wear proper footwear.
What actually happened to Robert Kirk? The historical record states he died of a sudden seizure on Doon Hill on 14 May 1692 and was buried at Aberfoyle. Local folklore, dating from soon after his death, holds instead that he was taken by the fairies and a changeling buried in his place.
Can you see the tree where Kirk’s spirit is said to remain? Yes. A solitary Scots pine at the summit, distinct from the surrounding oak woodland, is the traditional site, and it is a short, clearly marked walk from the car park.
Is Kirk’s book about fairies still available to read? Yes. The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies was published more than a century after his death and remains in print in modern editions, along with academic commentary on its significance to Scottish folklore studies.
Is this the same area as Rob Roy country? Yes. Aberfoyle sits at what is often called the gateway to the Trossachs, closely associated with the Rob Roy MacGregor stories as well as its own fairy folklore.
Where to Stay
The Rob Roy Hotel, in the centre of Aberfoyle, sits at what is often described as the gateway to the Trossachs, a short walk from the Riverside Car Park and the start of the Doon Hill trail.
The Macdonald Forest Hills Hotel and Spa, just outside the village, offers a fuller resort stay for those combining Doon Hill with a longer break in the Trossachs.
A Story the Forest Never Quite Lets Go
Three hundred and thirty years on, Doon Hill is still a working piece of Scottish folklore rather than a fenced-off historical footnote. People still climb it specifically for the story, still leave something at the tree, and still find themselves oddly quiet on the final stretch to the summit, whatever they believe about what actually happened to the minister who spent his working life studying a world he may, in the end, never have left.
For more of Britain’s folklore worth seeking out, visit Secret Britain.
