Meanwhile the witch-wife had returned to her work; which was that of
boiling porridge for the shearers. As soon, however, as Scot’s man had
left the door, she began to run round the fire like one crazy, repeating
as she ran the words of the spell. In a little the harvesters returned
from the field to their dinner, but, as each passed the enchanted door,
the spell took him, and he joined the dance within. Meanwhile Michael
and his men and dogs stood not far off on the hill, whence they could
command a full view of what went on. The last to leave the field was the
goodman, who, suspecting something more than common from the attention
Scot was paying to his house, was too cautious to enter immediately,
as the rest had done. He went to the window, and through it beheld the
orgy, now become terrible, and in the midst of all his wife, half dead
from compulsion and exhaustion, dragged around the house and through the
fire by the bewitched servants. Suspecting how matters stood, he went to
Scot, who, relenting, told him how to remove the spell by entering the
house backwards, and then taking the scroll down from the door. This he
did, and the unearthly dance ceased, but it was long ere those who had
taken part in it forgot the power of the magician, or ventured again to
provoke his resentment.
The northern tales had much to say of Michael’s _Book of Might_,
from which he learned his art, and of his burial-place, where it lay
interred with him. Dempster tells us that, in his boyhood, it used to
be said in Scotland that Scot’s magical works were still extant, but
might not be touched for fear of the powerful demons that waited on
their opening.[317] This form of the legend belongs then to the latter
part of the sixteenth century. In the beginning of the next age, and
precisely in the year 1629, occurred the traditional visit of Satchells
to Burgh-under-Bowness.[318] This author declares that one named Lancelot
Scot showed him in that place something taken from the works of the
mighty magician:
‘He said the book which he gave me
Was of Sir Michael Scot’s Historie;
Which Historie was never yet read through,
Nor never will, for no man dare it do.
Young scholars have pick’d out some thing
From the contents, that dare not read within.
He carried me along the castle then,
And shew’d his written Book hanging on an iron pin.
His writing pen did seem to me to be
Of harden’d metal, like steel or accumie,
The volume of it did seem so large to me
As the Book of Martyrs and Turks Historie.
Then in the church he let me see
A stone where Mr. Michael Scot did lie.
I ask’d at him how that could appear:
Mr. Michael had been dead above five hundred year?
He shew’d me none durst bury under that stone
More than he had been dead a few years agone,
For Mr. Michael’s name does terrifie each one.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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