Hogg makes Michael Scot a feared presence in the Scottish Borders, a household name among the farmers and shepherds, invoked whenever something slightly uncanny happens. We learn (p.323) that the hardy Borderers are used to the ways of fairies and the several sorts of supernatural being that go by night, but 'these were the natural residenters in the wilds of the woodland, the aboriginal inhabitants of the country.' Appropriate precautions for warding off these gude neyboris were understood and practiced.
But ever since Master Michael Scot came from the colleges abroad to reside at the castle of Aikwood, the nature of demonology in the forest glades was altogether changed, and a full torrent of necromancy ... deluged the country all over - an art of the most appalling and malignant kind, against which no fence yet discovered could yet prevail.'the colleges abroad' is a rare point of contact with the real Michael Scot. He certainly spent time in Toledo, Bologna, Palermo, possibly Paris, but there is no solid evidence he ever came back to Scotland. At the very end of the book we learn that 'he has not only kept the world in awe, but in dreadful agitation for the space of thirty years'. He died about 1235 and the siege of Roxburgh was in 1314 so 'thirty years' doesn't make much sense but there is little point agonising over chronology - Hogg's treatment of history is 'permissibly cavalier' says Douglas Gifford, in the excellent notes to this edition.
Aikwood Tower is his stronghold, a 'great gousty castle', a 'douth and an awsome looking bigging'. Aikwood certainly belonged to the Scott family (who probably weren't really connected to Michael but never mind) but it didn't exist until 1535.
Master Michael Scot the 'renowned magician' is a forbidding character, cold and cruel. When he first appears in person we have already met his few companions, the seneschal Gourlay and the imps Prim, Prig and Pricker, and seen with what malice they meet peaceably intended visitors. The Master's very first appearance etablishes what sort of person he is:
"Gourlay, what is the meaning of all this uproar?"The imps have great magical power but are barely controllable. They do Scot's bidding but only under certain rules; overuse may, and probably does, have terrible consequences. They are extremely mischievous and love chaos, even when it involves their master. If he summons them they must be given tasks, at risk of a heavy price:
"It is only Prim, Prig and Pricker," said he, "making sport with a mendicant friar and his ass."
"Are they killing him?" enquired his Master, with the greatest composure, and without lifting his eyes from a great book that lay in front of him.
"I wot not, sire," said Gourlay, with the same indifference.
"Ay, it is no matter," returned the Master; "It will keep them in employment a little while."
Work, Master, work; work we need;They're great fun, they could have a book to themselves but it would be a bit full-on, just unrelenting gleeful malice, chaos, torment. Back to Michael Scot. We're told of his most essential, nocturnal pursuits:
Work for the living, or for the dead:
Since we are called, work we will have,
For the master, or for the slave.
Work, Master, work. What work now?"
At such hours as these his capacious mind was abstracted from all worldy concerns, such as other mortals busy themselves about. If any thing sublunary engaged his studies and calculations, it was how to make the living die and the dead to live - how to remove mountains out of their places, to turn the sea into dry land, and the fields into a billowy and briny ocean, - or in any way counteract nature in her goings on.There is a physical description:
He was a boardly muscular man, somewhat emaciated in his appearance, with a strong bushy beard that flowed to his girdle, of a hue that had once been jet black, but was now slightly tinted with grey. His eyes were uncommonly bright and piercing but they had some resemblance to the eyes of a serpent. He wore on his head a turban of crimson velvet, ornamented with mystic figures in gold, and on the front of it was a star of many dazzling colours. The rest of his body was wrapped in a mantle or gown, striped with all the hues of the rainbow, and many more.(That's not a typo, by the way. The handy Scots glossary in this edition tells us 'boardly' means 'stalwart'.)
Generic cartoon wizard, really, isn't he? At least to our modern eyes.
Scot is opposed with an itinerant monk, the 'gospel friar', a mysterious figure who is gradually revealed to be Roger Bacon. In their magical contest Bacon uses scientific means to spectacular ends while Scot despatches Prim, Prig and Pricker to reshape the Eidon Hills, an action that (I think) leads the devil himself to take an active part in events, to Scot's ultimate detriment.
Born about 1214, Bacon's life barely overlaps with Scot's; more duff chronology. He seems to have been a pretty curmudgeonly character, commenting waspishly on many of his predecessors. He notes Scot as a translator of Aristotle and of Averroes' commentaries on him, but also considers him superficial, a pretender to knowledge, a plagiarist possibly, maybe even ignorant of Latin. None of this is in Three Pillars of Man but it does make him an interesting figure for Hogg to have woven in.
The friar is devoutly Christian while Scot has given himself over to the devil. A debate between the two (p.197) offers some origin story for the dark, wizardly Michael Scot met here:
(the friar) considered the Christian Revelation as the source of all that is good, wise or great among men. The other (Scot) had disbelieved it from his youth upward; and, not being able to come to any conclusion from ought he could learn among men, he had sought communion with the potent spirits of the elements; and, after seven years of unparalleled suffering, such as cannot be named, had attained what he sought. He had entered into a league with them, renouncing, for ever and ever, all right in a Redeemer, and signing the covenant with his own blood.Exactly nothing is known about Scott's early life, where in Scotland he was born, what sort of people he lived among, how he was educated. All of this is Hogg's imagining, writing, after all, six centuries after Scot passed away.
They went, and found him lying as stated, only that his eyes were shut, some of his attendant elves having closed them over night. His book was in his bosom, and his wand in his hand, from either of which no force of man could separate them, although when they lifted the body and these together, there was no difference in weight from the body of another man. The King then caused these dangerous relics to be deposited along with the body in an iron chest, which they buried in a vaulted aisle of the Abbey of Melrose; and the castle of Aikwood has never more been inhabited by mortal man.This brings us to Walter Scott and The Lay of the Last Minstrel; probably a much more substantial source for Hogg than any historical fact but that will be another story.
I enjoyed reading this book years ago and I equally enjoyed revisiting it. It's an unusual blend of couthy tales of Borders country folk, medieval battles, and wizardry and the supernatural. It's occasionally slightly garrulous for modern readers, as are the voices of the unsophisticated Borderers, and the archaic Scots words they use might be a further obstacle, but I feel it's entertaining and unjustly neglected. It should have an audience of beanied young people with purple hair, the sort of people who devour Harry Potter and ther Lord of the Rings. I'd love to see an illustrated edition. It tells us pretty much nothing about Michael Scot, except for how large he has loomed, over the centuries, in the imaginations of Scottish writers.
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