GRETNA GREEN

Evening Star, Issue 19745, 21 December 1927, Page 12

GRETNA GREEN

ROMANCE AND BUSINESS PROFIT FROM CURIOSITY Whore the road irom Carlisle northwards to Annan and Dumfries forks by the present Gretna Green Station, a largo sign board directs the passer-by to the Blacksmith’s Cottage. The way thither, perhaps a quarter of a mile, is by a road which on one side is pleasantly overh ig by the trees of the Gretna Hall Estate, and on the other h fringed with buildings as unsightly as the foliage and meadows facing them are charming; a ragged, aggregation of huts and shanties, cottages and shacks, built of stone, of woodj or corrugated iron, pjaslereci with signs announcing the prevision of teas and refreshments, and with windows full of gaudy trumperies to catch the eyes of visitors. The fact that some are vacant seems, happily, to imply that tho dismal business has been overdone. The Blacksmith’s Cottage itself, a long, low, one-storied building, whitewashed, with a sloping roof, stands at what is known as Headlesscross (commonly so spelt as a single word), being the point where tips, road joins, without crossing, the old Carlisle-Glasgow highway, along which it was that in former days the runaway couples mostly came, having crossed the little river Sark, the boundary between England and Scotland, by the bridge about half a mile back. Wo know how they came —sometimes two on a single horse, occasionally on foot, most often in a clattering chaise, with sweating horses—those “ fond beings who deserted the warm protection of their homes and tho wise counsels of parental foresight, to make their hasty sacrifice at Hymen’s Caledonian altar.” The cottage at Headlesscross was a lonely spot then. Now tho hedge around the corner of an adjoining field has been stubbed up and a space is .wired in to serve as a motor park; and it is a dull moment in the day during the holiday season when half a dozen cars are not waiting there and tourists swarm round tiro cottage like bees.

The room which tho visitor first enters is converted into a small shop for tho sale of post cards, books, and kickshaws. Thence you go by a clicking turnstile, at sixpence a click, into tho Marriage Room, tho actual sipithy, the place where ‘‘ Vulcan forged the hymeneal chains ”; and the association of the goddess of love with a smithy has, after all, good precedent. What tho admirable Lettice, writing in 1792, called “ this Paphian retreat ” is now dignified with the name of a museum and half-choked with a clutter of things to give it a becoming appearance of antiquity. Tho chief exhibits are two arm chairs, on which is painted the information that they wore tho chairs respectively of Peter Dickson and Thomas Johnstone, two of the former blacksmith “ priests.” Heaped around in fine confusion are such irrelevant things as tho frame of an old high bicycle, a coach in which Queen Caroline is said to have driven, the wreckage of an old-fashioned plough, two “ stools of repentance ” from a neighboring church, an old lamp, a spinning wheel, besides the blacksmith’s bellows and three anvils, one of which boars the legend: “The famous blacksmith’s anvil, where marriages were and still arc performed over.” It is curious that, for tho public, tho Blacksmith’s Cottage has taken to itself the reputation of being the chief, for it was by no means the earliest, scene of tho Gretna marriages. Much the greater number of tho ceremonies were “performed over” elsewhere. Headlesscross has the disadvantage of being farther from tho border, to couples coming by one way, than the village of Gretna Green itself, and to those who come by the other, than the village of Springfield and the bridge across the Sark. It was in shops in Gretna Green Hall itself then an inn, in other inns in Springfield, and at the toll-bar on the bridge that most of the queer business was done; and the old “ priests ” were a miscellaneous lot. .

Joseph Paisley, who seems to have invented the novel calling, and is said to have weighed 25st, had a grocer’s shop in Gretna Green. David Lang, his chief competitor, carried a pack as a youth, and then was turned by the press gang into a sailor. His son and successor, Simon, was a weaver by trade. Elliot, who did a roaring business in a shop in Springfield, started life as an ostler. Other of the “priests” wore respectively a valet, a potboy, keeper of the toll-bar on the Sark, and a mason in the railway works. And their morality does not seem in every case to havo been much better than their upbringing. Wo read of the “ priest*” being too drunk to stand upright or to say the names of the contracting parties, and of daughters, in their father’s absence, masquerading in his clothes, and conducting the ceremony as the “ priest ” himself, On the other hand, Erskine, when, as Lord Chancellor, he came here to be married, is said to have arrived disguised as an old woman. Pretty romances undoubtedly thero were; but most of the'associations of the place, from what we know, were squalid and unlovely. Novelists and ballad-makers, however, have thrown a glamor over it all, and tourists flock daily to pay their sixpences to gaze on the chairs in whch sat two men who were doubtless very ordinary blacksmiths. It is estimated that at one time the marriages performed at Gretna Green amounted oh the average to approximately one a day—certainly more than 300 a year. The records of one man, Elliot, show that, with a good deal of keen competition, he officiated at 3,880 weddings in the course of thirty years. It is possible, as the legend on the anvil tells one, still to be married here, as elsewhere in Scotland, in the same simple way; but the law now provides that at least one of the parties must have been resident in Scotland for twenty-one days before the date of the wedding. Meanwhile, without any marriage fees, the Blacksmith’s Cottage should be as profitable a little property as anyone could wish; and one is left to ponder on the vagaries of human curiosity in regard to anything that is tinged with a color of “ romance.”