SCOTT, Sir MICHAEL, a medizeval scholar and philosopher of the 13th c., whose real history is not only obsenre hut positively unknown. Bone identifies him with a 'Michael Scott of Bid weary, in the parish of Kirkealilv, in Fifesliire, who, along with sir Michael de ‘Vemyss, was sent to Norway in 1290:1;y the Scottish estates, to bring home the " Maiden of Norway," and his death is fixed in the following year Bunt sir Robert Sibbald, in his Victory of Fife and Kinross (published in the reign of Charles II.), speaks of a certain indenture, dated 1294, to which Scott's name was affixed, and in another part of the same hook states that he went on a second embassy to Norway in 1310, to demand the cession of the Orkneys. If we may rely on sir Robert's statement, it is hardly possible that the Scotch wizard " of European renown could have beet' the same person as Michael Scott of Balweary, because (as the story goes) after studying at Oxford or Paris, he went to the court of Frederic If., and wrote there some books In the request of that monarch. Now Frederic died in 1250, and supposing the wizard " not more than 30 years old at that time, this would make him 70 when he went to Nor way the first time to. bring home the " Maiden," and 90 on his second visit to demand the cession of the Orkneys, neither of which things is likely. Hector Bocce, it should be observed, is our sole authority for the identification of Michael Scott of Balweary with the wizard, while, on the other hand, Dempster, in his Historia Ecclisiustica Geniis Seo torum (Bologna, 1027), distinctly avers that the name Scotus, borne by the latter, was teat of his nation and not of his family—Michael, " the Scot." It has been suggested that the ambassador may have been the son of the wizard, and that Bocce may have confounded the two—a supposition probable enough in itself, but for which, in the absence of evidence, nothing can be said. The legend is further complicated by the
fact that it appears to be English as well as Scottish. Cumberland claims tl;e tragic hero for herself. Camden, in his Britannia (1386), asserts that he was a monk of Ellie or Holme Cultram in that country, about 1290, "who applied himself so closely to the mathematics, and other abstract parts of learning, that he was generally looked on as a conjurer; and at ynin credulous humor has funded down I know nut what miracles done by him." He likewise states that Scott's " magic hooks" were preserved there, hut adds that they were then moldering into dust; and Satchel's (see his rhyming History of the Right honorable icante of Scott) declares that he examined a huge tome which was held to be the wizard's, at Burgh-under-Bowness in 1629. According to the Scottish legend, Ire was buried in the abbey of Melrose, and the larder was the scene of many of his most wonderful exploits, such as the cleaving of the Eildon hills into three separate cones, and his bridling of the river Tweed! Dante mentions hint in his Inferno (some years before 1321), in a way that shows that already his fame as a magician had spread over the continent, and suggests the suspicion that he must have died sooner than is commonly believed. All, however, that any one who rationally looks at the legend can believe is that a certain Itlichael Scott, or Michael the Scot, flourish«I in the 13th, c., and was mistaken by the common pt ople of his country for a wizard or magician, probably on account of his skill as an experimentalist in natural philosophy. The writ ings attributed to him indicate that his studies lay in this direction.