An Enquiry into the Life and Legend of Michael Scot

by J. Wood Brown

[312] ‘Chiose anonime alla prima Cantica della Divina Commedia’; Torino, Salmi, 1865, p. 114.

[313] Lay of the Last Minstrel, Note W.

[314] Ibid. Note Z.

[315] Lay of the Last Minstrel, Note Y.

[316] Lay of the Last Minstrel, Note Y.

[317] ‘Et, ut puto, in Scotia libri ipsius dicebantur, me puero, extare, sed sine horrore quodam non posse attingi ob malorum daemonum praestigias quae, illis apertis, fiebant.’—Hist. Eccl. p. 495.

[318] Lay of the Last Minstrel, Note W.

[319] Apologie des Grands Hommes accusez de Magie, Paris, 1669.

[320] De Michaele Scoto, Veneficii injuste damnato, 1739.

[321] My readers owe these tales to the kindness of Mr. C. G. Leland, who procured them for me from an old Florentine woman. She is familiar to Mr. Leland’s friends as ‘Maddalena,’ and is the depository of that traditional lore on which he has so happily drawn in his Legends of Florence. Her stories are interesting if only as an example of folklore up to date, and of the way in which an Italian mind deals with the legend of Michael Scot, while some points they offer are certainly original and highly curious.