Trial of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald for the Murder of Arthur Davis, Sergeant in General Guise's Regiment of Foot — Text and Context

The Voice of the Witnesses

The depositions are rendered in a distinctive first-person style, with witnesses speaking in long, unbroken sentences that mimic oral testimony. Donald Farquharson, for instance, recounts a conversation about buying shoes for the sergeant, then shifts to the prisoner's reputation as a cattle dealer. The phrase 'Causa scientiæ patet'—a legal formula meaning 'the reason for his knowledge is clear'—punctuates his statement, reminding readers of the formal constraints on what a witness may assert. Alexander M'Pherson's testimony is even more striking: he describes finding 'a human body, at least the bones of a human body,' with 'a bit of blue cloth upon it pretty entire' and hair 'tied about with a black ribbon.' These concrete details ground the narrative in physical evidence, even as the account veers into the supernatural.

A Vision in the Night

M'Pherson's testimony introduces a ghostly encounter that sets this trial apart. He claims that while in bed, 'a vision appeared to him as of a man clad in blue, who told the deponent, "I am Serjeant Davies."' The vision directs him to the corpse and instructs him to seek Donald Farquharson's help for burial. M'Pherson initially mistakes the apparition for a living man—'a brother of Donald Farquharson's'—before realizing its spectral nature. This episode is presented without editorial comment, leaving the reader to weigh its credibility against the mundane details of brogues with cut-away buckles and the fear of being reported to John Shaw of Daldownie. The trial thus becomes a document of how Highland communities integrated supernatural testimony into legal proceedings.

The Landscape of Suspicion

The setting is as much a character as the witnesses. The Hill of Christie, the Water of Benow, and the moss bank where the body lay are named with precision, anchoring the crime in a specific geography. The deponent's fear that the discovery 'might hurt the country, being under the suspicion of being a rebel country' after the 1745 Jacobite rising adds a political dimension. The body is found 'about half a mile's distance from the place where the patrolling parties used to meet,' hinting at military surveillance. Scott's decision to preserve these place names and the witnesses' dialect—'brogues,' 'kirk unkent'—gives the text an ethnographic texture, showing how local knowledge and communal pressure shaped the investigation.

Scott's Editorial Frame

Scott's contribution is confined to the title page, the list of Bannatyne Club members, and a brief dedication noting the trial 'involv[es] a curious point of evidence.' He does not analyze the ghost story or the legal arguments, leaving the depositions to stand as historical artifacts. The volume's structure—a single trial, with no introduction or commentary—reflects the club's mission to preserve rare documents. Readers must infer the 'curious point' from the text itself: the admissibility of spectral evidence in a murder case. Scott's restraint is itself an authorial choice, directing attention to the raw material of the trial rather than his own interpretation.

This trial record rewards attention to its linguistic and procedural details. The witnesses' voices, the interplay of physical and supernatural evidence, and the unspoken tensions of a post-rebellion Highland society are all embedded in the depositions. Scott's edition offers no guide, leaving readers to navigate the testimony as a jury might—weighing each statement against the next. For those interested in Scottish legal history, folk belief, or the documentary practices of the nineteenth century, this is a compact and revealing source.

There’s something oddly tender about a ghost stepping into a courtroom, trying to speak for a dead man—justice fumbling toward the unseen. It reminded me of how we piece together truth from fragments, much like old maritime claims, where the sea keeps its own testimony. I keep thinking of my own margins in The law of the sea — Reading Notes, those quiet annotations, half-finished, like a witness I never fully heard.