Michael Scot in Walter Scott's 'Lay of the Last Minstrel'

How many people nowadays would read a long narrative poem? Students of literature, compelled by reading lists? Maybe people interested in history? Seems likely such poems are a minority taste nowadays but when Walter Scott published The Lay of the Last Minstrel in 1805 it was an instant best seller. With the further poems that followed it generated wealth and fame on the scale of a bestselling airport novelist nowadays.

We studied some poetry in school, of course. I enjoyed Tam O'Shanter but The Lay of the Last Minstrel is much longer. I don't believe I've ever read such a long story in rhyming form before - quite a new experience for a scientist. However it's the starting point for much of the more modern Michael Scot lore so I felt more or less obligated. A visit to the Old Bank Bookshop in Wigtown yielded a lovely old volume of Scott's poetry and I was set to go. There are digital versions available online but a physical book seems much more ... amenable. And look at that beautiful gothic font!

The Lay of the Last Minstrel tells a story of romance and conflict in the 16th century Scottish Borders, with added supernatural elements. It borrows heavily from real events and characters so Scott provided detailed notes fleshing out the historical underpinnings. I believe these notes have become a Michael Scot starting point for many people. They also include Scot stories and legends of the Border country. Some of these lack any written source. Where exactly Scott knew them from is unclear, at least to me. Perhaps they were stories everybody knew at that time, or that he heard from old people. I guess he may have invented some of them himself. I believe he was eager to see this renowned character as a forbear. Perhaps he wasn't above embroidering the historical tales in a way that suited his purposes.

In James Hogg's novel, Three Perils of Man, Scot is a major character, physically present, malign, powerful in magic, scary. In The Lay of the Last Minstrel, set a couple of centuries later, he's less a character, more of an all-pervading presence. He has two well-defined appearances. The first occurs fairly early when he is more or less dead, lying in 'a secret nook' in Melrose Abbey. We shouldn't open any coffin but his is particularly forbidding:

Within it burns a wondrous light,
To chase the spirits that love the night:
That lamp shall burn unquenchably,
Until the eternal doom shall be.

In the Notes Scott recalls old tales of such 'eternal lamps, pretended to have been found burning in ancient sepulchres.'

Dead for centuries, he is nonetheless remarkably well-preserved:

Before their eyes the Wizard lay,
As if he had not been dead a day.
His hoary beard in silver roll'd,
He seemed some seventy winters old;
A palmer's amice wrapp'd him round,
With a wrought Spanish Baldric bound,
Like a pilgrim from beyond the sea;
His left hand held his Book of Might;
A silver cross was in his right;
The lamp was placed beside his knee:
High and majestic was his look,
At which the fellest fiends had shook,
And all unruffled was his face:
They trusted his soul had gotten grace

Michael Scot - the real Scot, not the 'wizard' - first appears unambiguously in history in Toledo, Spain. He had joined the group of scholars translating works of classical Greece from Arabic into Latin and thus making them accessible to Christendom. Perhaps his garb here makes contact with this historical reality, hinting at years spent acquiring esoteric knowledge on mainland Europe. In the poem he is supposed to have died within living memory, an impossibility that Scott freely admits in the Notes: 'By a poetical anachronism, he is here placed in a later era.'

Why trouble this long-dead mage? His 'Book of Might' has been buried with him to keep it safe from all prying eyes, 'save at his Chief of Branksome's need.' The coffin is opened by the Abbott and the knight Deloraine to retrieve this book, at the request of the Lady of Branksome who believes it will help her divine the outcome of the forthcoming conflict. Here Scott is connecting Michael Scot to his personal family mythology, of the Border Scotts. It seems likely that 'Michael Scot' is just 'Michael the Scot', his origin distinguishing him from other Michael's among the scholars and savants of his time. There is no sound reason to believe he is related to anybody in Scotland with the surname Scott, or indeed that he would have regarded any high Lord or Lady in Branksome tower as his 'Chief'.

Anyway the scenes in Melrose Abbey are spectacular. Nowadays we might suspect Scott of writing with the film adaptation in mind. Deloraine takes the book from the dead wizard - 'He thought, as he took it, the dead man frown'd' - and it is free to play its role in subsequent events.

Michael Scot's second appearance, late in the poem, is equally insubstantial but also accompanied by dramatic scenes, thunder and lightning, apocalyptically dark clouds and blackness - a substantial damper on a happy wedding celebration.

It was not eddying mist or fog,
Drain'd by the sun from fen or bog;
Of no eclipse had sages told;
And yet, as it came on apace,
Each one could scarce his neighbour's face,
Could scarce his own stretch'd hand behold.

Gilpin Horner, the Earl of Cranstoun's mischievous goblin page, has sneakily taken possession of the Book of Might earlier in the tale. He is now zapped by a lightning bolt, heard across the whole of the Border country, and disappears completely. Some wedding guests think they glimpse an insubstantial presence:

Some heard a voice in Branksome Hall,
Some saw a sight, not seen by all;
That dreadful voice was heard by some,
Cry, with loud summons, 'GYLBIN, COME!'
And on the spot where burst the brand,
Just where the page had flung him down,
Some saw an arm, and some a hand
And some the waving of a gown.

The knight Deloraine glimpses beyond doubt the same wizard from whom he had taken the book in Melrose Abbey; a chilling experience. Poor Deloraine, implacable warrior though he is, doesn't have a good poem.

(An aside: I was sure some bored student of Scottish literature would have created a 'Gilpin Horner' internet presence. The malevolent goblin page is amusing, possibly even a role model for some anarchic characters, and I felt sure he would have caught somebody's imagination. But there is no Gilpin Horner on Twitter even although most Harry Potter characters, for instance have accounts; there are several Vanessa Ives; etc. Cthulhu of course is all over the place, a cult no longer. Facebook and Instagram are similarly Horner-free. I think this confirms my feeling that these long narrative poems of Scott's are very little read nowadays.)

There's less to say about Michael Scot than for Three Perils of Man because there is much less of a characterisation. There's no interaction with this Scot; he has more of the character of a feature of the natural world, something bigger than humans and with untameable power. Nonetheless his appearance in this - hugely popular - tale clearly caught many people's imaginations, no doubt contributing to an awareness of this medieval scholar, skewed possibly, that persists to the present day. The Notes certainly underlined this awareness. The folk tales are fun, even if their origins are obscure. They show how famous Scot still was in Scotland hundreds of years after his death. But Scott confounds the astrologer Michael Scot (~1175 - ~1235) with Michael Scot of Balwearie who flourished later in the 13th century and, unlike our Michael Scot, played a significant role in Scottish affairs.

I was wary of this tale but I mostly enjoyed reading it. Some of the most atmospheric scenes gain greatly from the poetic retelling. Again, what we learn about the real Scot is strictly limited, provisional, but I think it would make a great cult movie!

Michael Scot in Hogg's 'Three Perils of Man'

Regular readers - yes, both of you - will have spotted my current Michael Scot obsession. I'm intrigued by this medieval Scotsman who became one of the leading intellectuals of his time, renowned across Europe. Almost as intriguing as the reality of the man are his many appearances in fiction and the folk tales from which these emerged. Do we glimpse in these some of the long-forgotten reality, albeit filtered and refracted by centuries of imagining and recounting?

With such thoughts in mind I'm revisiting James Hogg's 1822 novel Three Perils of Man: War, Women and Witchcraft. I read it many years ago, when I knew nothing about Scot, and had forgotten most of the details. The siege of Roxburgh Castle in 1314 forms the starting point but principal actors are changed, real people turn up at times and in places they didn't, major new themes are added (the knights besieging and defending the castle are competing for their preferred princesses). In case any reader still suspects Hogg of historical realism there is a very large dose of the supernatural, centring particularly on 'the wizard' Michael Scot.

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?"
"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."

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:

Work, Master, work; work we need;
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?"

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:

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.

Scot believes he can stand up to the Devil himself. Unsurprisingly things don't go well for him. The closing sentences link this book to others' Michael Scot stories:

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.