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Welcome to the Michael Scot Research Trust: This site is intended to promote research and discussion about the life and works of Michael Scot. All suggestions welcome. |
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The Witch of Oakwood He was then residing at Oakwood Tower, and hearing much talk of this woman's craft, he set forward one day to prove her. The witch was cunning, and denied that she had any skill in the black art, but, when Scot absently laid his staff of power upon the table, she caught it to her and used it upon him with such effect that he became a hare; in which shape he was hotly coursed by his own hounds. Taking refuge in a drain, he had just time to reverse the spell and resume his own form before the hunt reached his hiding-place. Thus Michael returned to Oakwood with a high impression of his neighbours skill and malice, and fully resolved to have his revenge at the first opportunity. This occurred next harvest, when, under pretext of sport, he sent his servant to the witch’s house to beg some bread for his hounds. Met with the refusal that was expected, the man acted upon his master’s instructions by privately fixing to the door a scroll containing, amid magical characters, the following rhyme:‘Maister Michael Scot’s man Socht breid and gat nane.’ Meanwhile the witch-wife had returned to her work; which was that of boiling porridge for the shearers. As soon, however, as Scot’s man had left the door, she began to run round the fire like one crazy, repeating as she ran the words of the spell. In a little the harvesters returned from the field to their dinner, but, as each passed the enchanted door the spell took him, and he joined the dance within. Meanwhile Michael and his men and dogs stood not far off on the hill, whence they could command a full view of what went on. The last to leave the field was the goodman, who, suspecting something more than common from the attention Scot was paying to his house, was too cautious to enter immediately, as the rest had done. He went to the window, and through it beheld the orgy, now become terrible, and in the midst of all his wife, half dead from compulsion and exhaustion, dragged around the house and through the fire by the bewitched servants. Suspecting how matters stood, he went to Scot, who, relating, told him how to remove the spell by entering the house backwards, and then taking the scroll down from the door. This he did, and the unearth dance ceased, but it was long ere those who had taken part in it forgot the power of the magician, or ventured again to provoke his resentment. Sir Walter Scott Ley of the Last Minstrel note Y. Home |