The historical Michael Scot lived from about 1175 to about 1232, worked as a mathematician and scholar at Frederick II's court and was already being talked of as a magician in the generation after his death. Dante placed him among the sorcerers. In the Scottish Borders the reputation grew local roots.
In The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) Walter Scott credits him with overcoming a demon that had split the Eildon Hill into its three cones, by setting it to twist ropes from sea sand. In his notes to the Minstrelsy Scott gives the related tradition that Michael Scot handed the endless task of sand ropes to a crowd of spirits, and that the ridged sands of the shore are the untwisted ropes they left. Reference works add that in the Borders any work of great labour or age was ascribed either to Auld Michael, to William Wallace or to the Devil.
The Eildon story is best attested through Scott's poem. I have not found an older oral record that puts the splitting of the hill on Michael Scot, so treat the Eildon version as literary tradition that has since become local lore.
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