puzzling "Instance of the Ridiculous" from Christmas Frolick

[toff]

"An Instance of the Ridiculous" from The Christmas Frolick; Or, Mirth for the Holidays. London, G. Allen, 1775., also earlier included in: The Midwife, or, The Old Woman's Magazine [London] 2(2). 1751. 53-54.  Later included in, among other things, the 1939 book The Gothic Fiction in the American Magazines (1765-1800).

A baffling short ostensibly about ghosts.  People once found it funny enough to also make a poem/song about it: collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/15813996

I think it might be mainly goofing on stingy serving sizes offered by innkeepers? "Ghost" here being a nearly immaterial bit of a "scrag" (scrap of neck meat, among other meanings) of mutton, but also manifesting as a spirit.  Or is something more going on with it?

Not sure what "Jackson's State of the Defunct" might be. The phrase seems to be an old term of law referring to something like the execution of the estate of the deceased. Perhaps in that sense, it's not an actual text but merely further having fun with words having to do with ghosts and the dead.

Among the many people who have had Courage and Learning to lay Ghosts, G. W. Salomine, may be reckoned and esteemed the most considerable and knowing; for he made a Fortune and raised an Estate by this very Trade; and is said to have laid 1379 Souls in Red Sea: A Place which I know by Experience, and by Examination have found all Ghosts and Spirits are most afraid of; and this I think proves Salomine’s Power to be very great, as it is a Place they would not but by force have went into.

It is to be remarked that Salomine was the seventh Son of his Father and Mother, who was a virtuous Woman; and he had also a wonderful faculty of curing all diseases with a touch. Such surprising Power is there in some People. Yet this Gentleman was not more to be thought of than an Acquaintance of mine, an Oxford Scholar, who to my certain knowledge and belief had cured many Disorders and allayed the Ghosts of many disturbed People, when no other Person could do them.

In a Village where I lived, I do know there was a great House, a Mansion-house, haunted by a spirit that turned itself into a thousand Shapes and Forms; but generally came in the figure of a boiled Scragg of Mutton, and had baffled and defied the learned Men of both Universities; but this being told to my Friend, who was a descendant of Friar Bacon, he undertook to lay it, and that even without his Books; and ’twas done in this Manner: He ordered some Water to be put into a clean Skellet that was new, and had never been on the Fire. When the Water boiled, he himself pulled off his Hat, and Shoes and then took seven Turnips, which he pared with a small Penknife, that had been rubbed and whetted on a Loadstone, and put them into the Water. When they were boiled, he ordered some Butter to be melted in a new glazed earthen Pipkin, and then mashed the Turnips in it. Just as this was finished I myself saw the Ghost, in the form of a boiled Scragg of Mutton, peep in at the Window, which I gave him notice of, and he stuck his Fork into him, and sowsed both him and the Turnips into a Pewter Dish, and eat both up; and the House was ever afterward quiet and still. Now this I should not have believed, or thought true, but I stood by and saw all the whole Ceremony performed.

The above monstrous Absurdity, which will serve very well for a Holiday Laugh, is copied from JACKSON’S State of the Defunct. Page 97.
research.colonialwilliamsburg.org/Foundation/journal/Autumn09/frolick.cfm