The Michael Scot trail: Melrose

Did Michael Scot ever actually visit Melrose? Nobody knows for sure. There is a tradition that he lived at Aikwood Castle, only twelve miles away by modern roads, but there is no telling where it came from. There is a tomb in Melrose Abbey but it was certainly erected centuries later and it is doubtful if his remains actually lie there. Nonetheless many old tales connect him with this corner of the Scottish Borders and they've been renewed and enlarged by Walter Scott, James Hogg, even the makers of Shoebox Zoo. He definitely spent time in Toledo, Bologna and Palermo; alluring destinations all but Melrose is a MUCH easier trip. So we'll start there. It's a very famous place but I had never visited before.

The Abbey was of course our first port of call. Stonework repairs make the interior inaccessible for now and temporary fencing additionally keeps you away from some sections; half-price entry fee in consequence. "There's a stone here for Michael Scot, is that right?" I asked the lady on the desk. "Is that the wizard?" she replied, adding that his tomb was inside the church, out of bounds for now. The lady from the back office joined in, producing an old picture of the tomb. She told us that the stone head from that tomb, supposedly a representation of Master Michael Scot himself, can still be seen in the upstairs floor of the Abbey museum.

The back office lady was at first quite definite that Scot himself was buried in the tomb inside the church but as we discussed this she added a note of scepticism - "maybe an invention of Walter Scott". The Abbey church seen now dates from after 1384, when the original church was sacked by the English. Scot had already been dead for 150 years by then. I doubt very much that he is buried in Melrose Abbey. There is no convincing evidence that he came back to Scotland. A person of so very long ago, many details of his life long forgotten, becomes fair game for all sorts of imaginings, fancies, fantastic literature. Personally I would like to work toward as much sense of the real person as we can manage, at this enormous remove, but that doesn't mean we can't also enjoy the stories. Just don't believe them.

We spent a lot of time enjoying the Abbey church. We were very lucky to have such beautiful, sunny weather for our visit, even if it was pretty raw and cold. The south side is elaborately decorated with all sorts of gargoyles, heads, creatures - quite a medieval bestiary. The church is now a ruin, of course, having fallen into greater disrepair after the Reformation, but an extremely beautiful one. We have to deal with the building we find now, with all the extra layers of meaning it has acquired since its time centuries ago as a working church. Even if the connections to Michael Scot are nebulous it serves as a bridge to his time.

The Abbey museum is housed in the Commendator's House, a building originally constructed in the 1400s. It contains a wonderful collection of artefacts from domestic life in the Abbey and several architectural fragments.

Sure enough, on the first floor there are a couple of stone heads removed from the church building, one of which looks exactly like the pictures online of the 'wizard's tomb'. Did Michael Scot look anything like this? Dante, placing him in the eighth circle of hell, provides the only words anywhere that come close to a physical description, calling him 'spare in the flanks' - skinny. Dante probably didn't mean these words literally but as a comment on Scot's character (see J Kay, 1985, Dante Studies no. 103, pp 1 - 14). So, even in the unlikely event we consider this a plausible likeness of Michael Scot we shouldn't worry if it seems inconsistent with these words of Dante's. Perhaps we can be proud of our countryman, the only Scot to have attained the necessary level of infamy to merit a mention.

For those in pursuit of Michael Scot, Melrose offers only phantoms. But they're entertaining phantoms so let's continue to chase them.

The Eildon Hills are not big mountains, even by Scottish standards, but they tower over Melrose. There are three summits. Eildon Hill Mid is the highest, 422 m above sea level. It's the rightmost summit in this picture which looks over the Tweed from just north of the town. Eildon Hill North is at left. From the town itself you only ever see two at most but the three-peaked range is a famously pretty sight from spots not far away. In the notes to his epic poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Walter Scott recounts a tale. Michael Scot was trying to keep a troublesome demon occupied by setting it tasks. One of these was to cleave the single conical summit of the Eildon Hills into three. Sadly this occupied the demon for only a single night so Scot had to find further tasks for it but the Eildons were left as we see them now.

The day after visiting Melrose Abbey we enjoyed a walk over the Eildon Hills in brilliant, sunny, but still very cold weather. I've spurned most of the lovely views to include this photo, taken from the summit of Eildon Hill Mid. It shows Eildon Hill West, the third summit, the one invisible from the town below.

From the Mid hill we retraced our steps for a bit then climbed to the top of Eildon Hill North. Continuing on downhill we were met by these vistas looking north and east. Note the cultivated fields between the village of Newstead and the viaduct, to the upper left. These are the site of the Roman camp which was occupied here from about 80 - 180 AD, a major outpost at the far northwest edge of the Roman Empire.

The Romans named their fort here 'Trimontium' from the form of the Eildon Hills. 1,000 years before Michael Scot they already had their triple-peaked appearance. After all I guess he played no role in shaping them.

Trimontium was one of the locations listed by Ptolemy in his book Geographia, a compilation of the geographical knowledge of the 2nd century Roman Empire. Ptolemy was certainly one of the greatest scholars of his time. His books on astronomy and geography remained influential for centuries. However the great works of antiquity, of e.g. Aristotle, Ptolemy, Galen and the knowledge and thinking they represented lived on through the Middle Ages not in Europe but in the world of Islam.

Standing by Trimontium, known to Ptolemy, I thought of Michael Scot. More than 1,000 years after Ptolemy, in a time when his brilliance had been forgotten, young Michael set out to mainland Europe, possibly from this very part of Scotland. By 1217 he had joined the Toledo translators, a group of scholars translating the great texts of antiquity, Ptolemy's among them, from Arabic into Latin, reintroducing them to European thinking. What potent historical resonance there is in this landscape, even once we discard the tales of wizardry.

We were in Melrose for just three days. We'll certainly be back - still so much to enjoy. But on the Michael Scot trail, it's next stop: Toledo!