Quick as light all the heather within sight was coiled up into ropes. Again they cried, "Work, work!" The servant despatched them to the Bay of Tongue, and bade them turn its sand into ropes. With an angry scream at finding the task impossible they plunged into the sea, and Donald-Duival lost his servitors among the little men, though he still remained able at any time to draw rain or snow from the skies by a wave of his hand.—(From J. McLeod.)
[There is a mixture here of the genii in a cask, which is oriental, with a legend about Fingal, and with the book of Michael Scott. Dempster in his Historia Ecclesiasiica says that he had heard in his youth of the existence of such books, which could not be opened without danger.— (Lib. xii. p. 495, 1827.]
A cavern at Salamanca where magic was taught was walled up by Queen Isabella the Catholic.
A celebrated professor in the chair of magic was Maugis d'Aggremont, but all the seven arts of enchantment, as taught by such masters to such scholars as Donald-Duival Mackay, are derived from Hercules. Michael Scott and Heron de Bourdeaux were able like Donald to fly through the air, and there was once a magician named Wade who in his boat Guingelot made fabulous journeys.
A certain Virgilius, whose adventures, as recorded by J. Doesborcke, of Antwerp, are now very rare, had twenty-four unearthly assistants, whose iron flails did great execution, and he had an adventure with the devil in a very small hole, by means of which the "fynde" is imprisoned to this day.—(Montfaucon.) Donald-Duival Mackay is by some persons declared to have been really the first Baron Reay (1628). Part of the legend about the fiendish visitor who ate the iron girdle is to be found in the MSS. of the Highland Society of Scotland.]
iii.—The Rotterdam.
Once upon a time a wicked sea captain built a ship in which he sailed the high seas, and hoped to conquer the world. When she was launched and manned he called her "the Rotterdam," and he said, "I now fear nor God nor man." His ship was so large that on her deck there was a garden of fruits and flowers, besides sheep, and milch kine,
