TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 13910, 8 December 1910, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Inexorable parents, run"Married away couples, and in Haste." Gretna Green, are terms which in old Jove tales occur with rather painful -frequency. It is interesting to note tho law has uow r come to the aid of sentiment, and declared that marriages contracted in the Scottish town are true and binding. In the London Probate Court some weeks ago a Newcastle butcher, who had become heir-at-law to somo property left by his aunt, wished to have it proved that tho marriage of his grandparents at Gretna Green in 1851 was a legal one. Tho Judge ruled in the affirmative. Somo interesting evidence came out during the hearing of the case. Ono witness stated that the marriages at Allison's toll-houso were performed by members of a family named Murray, one of whom, somo ten years ago, sold the registers in which between seven and eight thousand weddings wero entered. Tho Murrays, however, were not the only people who were ready to oblige runaway couples. More often the officiating priest or blacksmith was a man of the name of Lang. But whoever presided at the ceremony, and it did not much matter who did, the fee ranged from half a guinea to £100. A certain Mr Eliott wrote to the papers sixty years ago to say that between 1811 and 1830 # ho had joined over 2000 couples in the bonds of matrimony. In 1856 an Act was passed making a residence of twentyone days in Scotland, previous to marriage, compulsory, and with this Gretna Green's thriving industry came to an end. It is interesting to recall the name of some famous people who were married at tho Green. Ono of these was the great Admiral Thomas Cochrane, Lord Dundonald. His uncle was bent on his marrying an heiress; "instead of which" ho prevailed on Miss Barnes, an unendowed beauty, to fly with him to tho border. Tho gallant officer lost his uncle's fortune, but vowed that his wife waa a rich equivalent. Then Mr Edgeworth, the father of the gifted Maria, married his first wife, Maria's mother, at the Green. One of the last sensations in the way of elopments to the famous spot, concerned the daughter of Lady Jersey, the acknowledged leader of fashion at the time. She and her lover took train from Brighton, thence hurried to Scotland, and were married at Gretna Green just a few hours before the young lady's brother, who had pursued them, arrived on the scene.

A quaint survival of ancient The custom is the annual payKing's ment to the King of a Rents, hatchet, a bill-hook, and

half-a-dozen huge horse-shoes and sixty-one nails, by the City of London. These articles are paid as "quit rent" for two parcels of land, one in Shropshire, and the other in London —part of the Temple. On the latter ground stood, in the time of Henry 111., a blacksmith's forge, and the story goes that the blacksmith shod so well the horses used in a tourney, that the land was given to him by the King. How it passed into the hands of the Corporation is not stated. An interesting description of the ceremony of paying these dues appears in the "Westminster Gazette." "We havo a way in this country of guarding carefully our ancient ceremonial, and, at tho same time, treating its elements as something to which no importance whatever need be attached. Thus it was, perhaps, that an officer of the Court carried in the horseshoes, swinging in a very new strap, and the nails in a canvas bag, and dumped them down en the solicitors' table, where a brown-paper parcel, containing the bill-hooks, the hatchet, and the faggots, was placed beside them." The King's Remembrancer, after removing a threecornered hat from his wig, and offering a white-gloved hand to the Lord Mayor and tho Lady Mayoress, described the origin of tho ceremony. The City Secondary read the warrants, and then it fell to the City Solicitor to see that the payment was in order. Tho billhook must be used to cut two faggots, presumably to show that it is made of true metal, so the dignified City Solicitor had gravely to lay two bundles of twigs on tho blotter before him and cleave them with the implement. Then the horseshoes and the sixty-one nails were counted out, the King's Remembrancer announced "Good number," and the ceremony was over. The horseshoes are always remitted, and it is said that the shoes used this year have been used every year for five centuries. Apparently the hatchet and the bill-hook are nearly always returned, but as the coremony this year was the first, since his accession, King George expressed a desire to have them presented to him.

The extraordinary preThe , judice, ignorance, and Depths superstition of the

of Russian peasant on the Superstition, subject of cholera were

described in these, columns some time ago. A St. Peters-

burg correspondent now furnishes information even more amazing that that on which the article was haecd. One doctor states that some peasants refuse i.) be treated for cholera, on the prouuds that it is "b-od's scourge," and assign as a reason for this divine visitation an old proverb—"lf the people did nor die tho heavens would fall." Not

that passive resistance is by any means universal. On the contrary, many districts take measures to get rid of tho plague. A very popular one is to take infected articles, such as furniture, and Firow them near more fortunate districts, where tho cholera has not yet

appeared, the supposition being that the neighbours will tako away the disen.se aloni' with the furniture. Howover, most neighbours have been bitten too often, and they usually ignore thc«* dentli-traps. An equally popular method in the case of individual patients is the suspension ••cure,'' by which, as the name implies, the affected person is hung up by the heels. As they do not exorciwi much care as to whom they "string up," it sometimes happens that a perfectly healthy person is "treated." Perhaps a doctor arrives and pronounces him healthy. Then the fame of the "euro" spreads, nnd more people aro hung up—to die. One man naturally got sick of this

"cure," and to avoid being "treated" by tho villagers ran off and hid in a forest. The peasants suspected witchcraft, and declared he had turned into a hen. An unsuspecting fowl was immediately seized, burned and buried. None of these villagers died of cholera, and tho fame of the hen-treatment caused a universal sacrifice of the poultry. By-nnd-by the "cholera-patient" came back from the, forest, but tho faith of the villagers remained unshaken. Recently the Teheremess Village Communal Council issued a decree stating that the first woman who died of cholera was a witch, and was now hying by night in the shape of a pillar of fire. They directed that her body should be disinterred, turned faco downwards, and that iron spikes should bo driven into the back. Prefect Tolmatcheff does not believe in sanitary inspectors. When bubonic plague broke out he offered a reward of ten roubles for every case reported, with the result that hands of hooligans raided tho city and carried off scores of healthy persons to the sanitation barracks.