216 THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF MICHAEL SCOT 



Hac, licet obsistant, coguntur amore puellae. 



Ecce idem Scotus qui stando sub arboris umbra 



Ante characteribus design et millibus orbem. 



Quatuor inde vocat magna cum voce diablos. 



Unus ab occasu projjerat, venit alter ab ortu, 



Meridies terzum mandat, septentrio quartum. 



Consecrare facit freno conforme per ipsos 



Cum quo vincit equum nigrum, nuUoque vedutum, 



Quern, quo vult, tanquam Turchesca sagitta, cavalcat, 



Sacrificatque comas eiusdem saepe cavalli. 



En quoque dipingit Magus idem in littore navem 



Quae vogat totum octo remis ducta per orbem. 



Humanae spinae suffimigat inde meduUam. 



En docet ut magicis cappam sacrare susurris 



Quam sacrando fremunt plorantque per aera turbae 



Spiritum quoniam verbis nolendo tiramur. 



Hanc quicumque gerit gradiens ubicumque locorum 



Aspicitur nusquam ; caveat tamen ire per altum 



Solis splendorem, quia tunc sua ceruitur umbra. '^ 



Here the legend is not only considerably enriched, 

 but it has recovered much of its original tone. 

 Michael Scot again appears rather as the mighty 

 mage than as the adroit juggler which Dante had 

 represented him to be. One would say Folengo 

 had read the spell of Cordova, where a circle similar 

 to that described by him is actually proposed. The 

 use of magical images too, on which he insists, is 

 the very art which the Arabian author of the 

 Picatrix professes to teach. 



These then, or such as these, must have been 

 the ' old wives' tales ' spoken of by Dempster, who 

 says that store of them passed current in his day.^ 

 He was, like Michael Scot himself, a Scotsman long 

 resident in Italy, who taught in the universities 

 of Pisa and Bologna at the commencement of the 

 seventeenth century : ^ an origin and situation 



^ Maccheronea, xviii. 



^ ' Innumerabiles fabulae aniles circumferuntur, et jam nunc hodie. 

 Hist. Ecd. p. 494. 3 (jj^m iQ^b. 



