TO GRETNA GREEN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13307, 13 October 1906, Page 5 (Supplement)

TO GRETNA GREEN.

W' A NEW ZEALAND STATESMAN'S Iff* ' ESCAPADE. fc. SOME ROMANTIC RUNAWAY gV 'MATCHES. Possibly no unimportant village in the British Lies may be said to surpass in romantic interest the little border hamlet of Gretna Green. How many young hearts, in days •;gone by, have looked upon it as a wonderful gate into an earthly paradise! How ftf many jaded steeds have been flogged over i, the. last few miles of road that lay between tho runaways and their goal! Adventurers 'snatching their prey from watchful guardians, boys and girls heedless of the • parental wrath, romantic maidens Hying from the bondage of the marriage market —to such, in their thousands, tho blacksmith of Gretna must have seemed like an angel disguised, and lie must have done them many a good turn, or a bad one, according to after events. For there :s certainly a dark side to the engaging picture which writers of romance love to portray. A great many of the ill-considered matches made at Gretna must have turned out the reverse of idyllic, and the duped brides have found out all too late the wisdom of their worldly-wise counsellors. I'or no doubt plenty such as Mr. Jingle took advantage in those days of .the very easy na% of matrimony which a Scotch marriage afforded. REAL BORDER WEDDINGS. The majority of people have a very hazy idea of what really constituted a Gretna Green marriage, and they may be surprised to learn that a modified form of the ceremony still takes place a!i the historic village* from time to time. The difference is that, whereas in the old days a declaration before witnesses was all that was required, now one of the parties must have resided for three weeks in Scotland. Prior to the passing of the law of 1856 many hundreds of marriages used to take place every year at the toll-house (for the toll-house keeper has grown somewhat into a blacksmith for purposes of romance). A great many of the couples were lads and lasses, from' the Carlisle hirings at Martinmas and Whitsuntide, the Gretna form of marriage being highly popular as a cheaper and also less lengthy ceremony. WELL-KNOWN" RUNAWAYS. Plenty of well-known names, however, are to bo found on the registers of Gretna. Among these is no less a one than Lord j Erskine, Lord High Chancellor of England, who in 1818 espoused his second wife,.a Maryleboue heiress, and left his name scratched oil the window of the "Queens Head." where it may be seen to this day. Lord George* Coventry was married there to Lady Mary Beauclerk in 1811, and sprigs of nobility without number figure on the Gretua "parson's" records. From these the " parson" used to feather his nest very successfully. Lord Erskine, it is said, having paid as much as eighty guineas for the Tee on the occasion of his celebrated runa- . way match, the average fee being about fifteen guineas. ABDUCTION OR ABOLITION. " Perhaps the moat renowned •of all the Gretna marriages was the celebrated Wakefield abduction case. The; hero of this remarkable escapade was the afterwards distinguished Edward Gibbon Wakefield, one, of New Zealand's most famous statesmen. [This is said to be the reason why Wakefield came to New Zealand.] This -gentleman actually did not take the trouble to discern the young lady's wisius in the matter, which is the point which ■renders the case-especially noteworthy. The object of his attentions, Miss Ellen J Turner, was at school near Liverpool, and j Wakefield had the temerity to send a coach | to the school with a message bidding Mis." j Turner hasten at once to the sick-bed of her father. The ruse was successful, and Wakefield bore his prize away to Gretna, ■ where he persuaded her to go through with j the brief ceremony, : His triumph, however, j was a brief one," for her relatives, coming j to her aid, removed her from his custody, i and after a prolonged legal tussle the mar- | riage was annulled by special Act of Parlia- j ment. Great popular indignation had been aroused in Lancashire by the abduction, Miss Turner's family being well known in the county, and the* annulment of the mar- i riage was the signal for much rejoicing. The. Act of 1856, compelling one of the parties to have been three weeks resident in Scotland, dealt a severe blow at the- thriving business which the amateur parsons plied on the banks of the Hark, and one of * these gentry had the nerve to petition Parliament for the sum of £500, in consideration of their having ruined his trade! * THE FATE OF THE REGISTERS. It was suggested at the time of the abolition of the old Gretna marriages that some effort ought to be made to collect and put. under the charge of an official custodian the registers of marriage which were kept in cottages and inns'about the Border in danger of being destroyed either by wantonness or by neglect. The suggestion /was far from being an idle one. Cases are otj record when great estates have been in dispute and their ultimate fate has-been decided by an entry in one or other of the rough anil ready Gretna, registers. The ! , danger of what may at any time prove valuable legal evidence being at the mercy of any unscrupulous person with ail interest in its'destruction may be readily conceived, and in the old days there have been manyoccasions when the officiating " parson" has been persuaded by some repenting swain to blot out of existence the only record of his rash plunge into matrimony. There have been also cases when the lover has had comfortably easy ideas as to the binding nature of a Gretna union, and has off gaily with another "winsome marrow" t-o be. as lie fondly imagined, " properly married." But a Gretna knot takes, or rather took, just as much untying as a more elaborate affair, and a prosecution for bigamy is the probable consequence of such a freak. Even to-day it has been proved that the ■romantic possibilities of a Scottish marriage are far from being quite exhausted. Not very long ago a young lady having satisfied "the legal demand of three weeks' residence by an innocent seeming stay with Iter friends at a Scotch pleasure resort met her lover, a young infantry officer, at the fetation. at Gretna, and there they were mads man and wife in the time-honoured fashion. Not quite so picturesque, pethaps, as the foaming horses, the jingle of harness, the cracking of postboys' whips, on the Great North Road. But the principle is pretty much the same when, as Kipling has it, Romance briugs up the nine-fifteen." AS ENGLISH GRETNA. It is perhaps not generally known that there is a village in England whose privilege was if anything more remarkable than that of the far-famed Border hamlet. The ineumOent of the -chapel of King Charles the Martyr, in Peak Forest, Derbyshire, used to have the right of marrying people exactly as lie liked. He was a veritable priest of Hymen. No watchful parents' wayward child was safe within reach of this obliging cleric. A right good thing, too, lie used to make out of his remarkable privilege, until an. Act of Parliament in 1804 swept it into the limbo of forgotten things. There will not he found many to question the necessity of a strict observance of the laws of marriage. Hasty clandestine matches, although in isolated cases right and just, as in the case of Robert Brownfl -ing and his wife, are as a rule far from de-~ sirable, and the cumbrous machinery which has to be set in motion must have done ' ■ many a good deed iii stopping capricious y - unions of which all concerned would asfsuredly have repented at leisure.