The huge three-coned hill which can be seen from below Kelso, and remains in sight for many miles, although it is constantly shifting from left to right, from front to rear, so mazy is the way of the stream, is, of course, the famous Eildon. Tradition says that it was split into three by the magician Scott, not Sir Walter of that ilk, but "the wondrous Michael," more formally, Sir Michael Scott of Balwearie. Indeed, most of the more striking phenomena in these parts are ascribed to "Auld Michael" when they are not credited to "Auld Nickie" or Sir William Wallace. The theory is that he was under the constant necessity of finding employment for a spirit with an enormous appetite for work. On one occasion he bade him "bridle the Tweed with a curb of stone;" and the dam-head at Kelso, constructed in a single night, was the result. The division of Eildon into three was another night's task; and it was not till he had set the industrious demon making ropes out of sea-sand that he himself could find any rest. If these incidents have a legendary look about them, it is certain that Sir Michael himself was no myth. He was profoundly versed in all the learning of the Dark Age; and it is probable that he was one of the ambassadors who sailed "to Noroway o'er the faem" to bring about the return of Alexander's fair daughter. If he was less of a magician than his distant descendant, it was through no fault of his own. He was a diligent student of all the abstruse sciences, and wrote freely about them; and he was credited with uncanny attributes by the learned as well as by the vulgar of his day. While Sir Walter was in Italy he was complaining that the great Florentine had thought none but Italians worthy of being sent to hell. He was reminded that he of all men had no right to grumble, since his ancestor figures among the magicians and soothsayers of the "Inferno."