country at the period of his return from the continent, and the very
small materials which are required by superstition as a groundwork for
her dark and mysterious stories, we shall not wonder at the result. The
Arabic books which he brought along with him, the apparatus of his
laboratory, his mathematical and astronomical instruments, the Oriental
costume generally worn by the astrologers of the times, and the
appearance of the white-haired and venerable sage, as he sat on the roof
of his tower of Balwearie, observing the face of the heavens, and
conversing with the stars, were all amply sufficient to impress the
minds of the vulgar with awe and terror. "Accordingly," says Sir Walter
Scott, in his Notes on the Lay of the Last Minstrel, "the memory of Sir
Michael Scott survives in many a legend, and in the south of Scotland
any work of great labour and antiquity is ascribed either to the agency
of Auld Michael, of Sir William Wallace, or of the devil." Some of the
most current of these traditions are so happily described by the
above-mentioned writer, that we cannot refrain from quoting the passage.
"Michael was chosen," it is said, "to go upon an embassy to obtain from
the King of France satisfaction for certain piracies committed by his
subjects upon those of Scotland. Instead of preparing a new equipage and
splendid retinue, the ambassador retreated to his study, and evoked a
fiend, in the shape of a huge black horse, mounted upon his back, and
forced him to fly through the air towards France. As they crossed the
sea, the devil insidiously asked his rider what it was that the old
women of Scotland muttered at bedtime. A less experienced wizard might
have answered, that it was the Pater Noster, which would have licensed
the devil to precipitate him from his back. But Michael sternly replied,
'What is that to thee? Mount, Diabolus, and fly!' When he arrived at
Paris, he tied his horse to the gate of the palace, entered, and boldly
delivered his message. An ambassador with so little of the pomp and
circumstance of diplomacy, was not received with much respect, and the