ost
denounced the prisoners. Macpherson gave other evidence, not
spectral, which implicated Clerk. But, when asked what language the
ghost spoke in, he answered, 'as good Gaelic as he had ever heard in
Lochaber'. 'Pretty well,' said his counsel, Scott's informant,
McIntosh, 'for the ghost of an English serjeant.' This was probably
conclusive with the jury, for they acquitted the prisoners, in the
face of the other incriminating evidence. This was illogical.
Modern students of ghosts, of course, would not have been staggered
by the ghost's command of Gaelic: they would explain it as a
convenient hallucinatory impression made by the ghost on the mind of
the 'percipient'. The old theologians would have declared that a
good spirit took Davies's form, and talked in the tongue best known
to Macpherson. Scott's remark is, that McIntosh's was 'no sound
jest, for there was nothing more ridiculous in a ghost speaking a
language which he did not understand when in the body, than there
was in his appearing at all'. But jurymen are not logicians.
Macpherson added that he told his tale to none of the people with
him in the sheiling, but that Isobel McHardie assured him she 'saw
such a vision'. Isobel, in whose service Macpherson had been,
deponed that, while she lay at one end of the sheiling and
Macpherson at the other, 'she saw something naked come in at the
door, which frighted her so much that she drew the clothes over her
head'. Next day she asked Macpherson what it was, and he replied
'she might be easy, for that it would not trouble them any more'.

The rest of the evidence went very strongly against the accused, but
the jury unanimously found them 'Not Guilty'.

Scott conjectures that Macpherson knew of the murder (as indeed he
had good reason, if his non-spectral evidence is true), but that he
invented the ghost, whose commands must be obeyed, that he might
escape the prejudice entertained by the Celtic race against citizens
who do their duty. Davies, poor fellow, was a civil good-humoured
man, and dealt leniently (as evidence showed) with Highlanders who
wore the tartan. Their national costume was abolished, as we all
know, by English law, after the plaid had liberally displayed
itself, six miles south of Derby, in 1745.

So far it is plain that 'what the ghost said is not evidence,' and
may even ruin a very fair case, for there can be little doubt as to
who killed Serjeant Davies. But examples which Scott