It has, however, been improved and made infinitely more picturesque by several generations of narrators.

As we try to be faithful to the best sources, the contemporary manuscript version is here reprinted from The Scottish Standard-Bearer, an organ of the Scotch Episcopalians (October and November, 1894).
THE DOG O' MAUSE Account of an apparition that appeared to William Soutar, {145a} in the Mause, 1730.
[This is a copy from that in the handwriting of Bishop Rattray, preserved at Craighall, and which was found at Meikleour a few years ago, to the proprietor of which, Mr.Mercer, it was probably sent by the Bishop .-- W.

W.H., 3rd August, 1846.] "I have sent you an account of an apparition as remarkable, perhaps, as anything you ever heard of, and which, considered in all its circumstances, leaves, I think, no ground of doubt to any man of common-sense.

The person to whom it appeared is one William Soutar, a tenant of Balgowan's, who lives in Middle Mause, within about half a mile from this place on the other side of the river, and in view from our windows of Craighall House.

He is about thirty-seven years of age, as he says, and has a wife and bairns.
"The following is an account from his own mouth; and because there are some circumstances fit to be taken in as you go along, I have given them with reference at the end, {145b} that I may not interrupt the sense of the account, or add anything to it.