‘Maister Michael Scot’s man
Socht breid and gat nane.’
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.