“Michael Scott, the Magician,” says Benvenuto da Imola, “practised divination at the court of Frederick II , and dedicated to him a book on natural history, which I have seen, and in which among other things he treats of Astrology, then deemed infallible.⁠ ⁠… It is said, moreover, that he foresaw his own death, but could not escape it. He had prognosticated that he should be killed by the falling of a small stone upon his head, and always wore an iron skullcap under his hood, to prevent this disaster. But entering a church on the festival of Corpus Domini, he lowered his hood in sign of veneration, not of Christ, in whom he did not believe, but to deceive the common people, and a small stone fell from aloft on his bare head.”

The reader will recall the midnight scene of the monk of St. Mary’s and William of Deloraine in Scott’s “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” Canto II :⁠—