GRETNA GREEN.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20290, 24 December 1927, Page 13

GRETNA GREEN.

ROMANCE AND BUSINESS

PROFIT FROM CURIOSITY.

Where the road from Carlisle northwards to Annan and Dumfries forks by the present Gretna Green Station, a large signboard dirccto 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 overhung by the trees of the Gretna Hall Estate, and on the other is fringed with buildings as unsightly as the foliage and meadows facing them arc a ragged aggregation of huts and shanties, cottages, and shacks, built of stone, of wood, or corrugated iron, plastered with signs announcing the provision 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 the dismal business has been cncrdone. The Blacksmith’s Cottage itself, a long, low, one-storeyed building, whitewashed, with a sloping slate roof, stands at what is known in ileadlesscross (commonly so spelt as a single word), being the point where this road joins, without crossing, the old Cariisle-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. We know how they came —sometimes two on a single horse, occasionally in foot, most often in a clattering chaise with sweating horses —those “ fond beings who deserted the warm protection of their home and the 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 the 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 the cottage like bees. The room which the visitor first enters is converted into a small shop for the sale of post cards, books, and kickshaws. Thence you go by a clicking turnstile, at 6d a click, into the marriage room, the actual smithy, 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 the admirable Lctticc, writing in 1792, called “this Paphian retreat” is now dignified with the nam ■ of a museum and half-choked with a clutter of things to give it a becoming appearance of antiquity. The chief exhibits are two armchairs, on which is painted the information that they were the chairs respectively of Peter Dickson and Thomas Johnstone, two of the former blacksmith “ priests.” Heaped around in fine confusion are such irrelevant things as the 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 neighbouring church, an old lamp, a spinning wheel, besides the blacksmith’s bellows and three anvils, one of which bears the legend: “ The famous blacksmith’s anvil where marriages were and still are performed over.”

It is curious that, for the public, the Blacksmith’s Cottage has taken to itself the reputation of being the chief, for it was by no means the earliest, scene of the Gretna marriages. Much the greater number of the ceremonies were “ performed oyer ” elsewhere. Headlesscross has the disadvantage of being 'farther from the border, to couples coming by one wav. than the village of Gretna Green itself, and to those who come by the other, than the village of Suriugfield and the bridge across the Sark. It was in shops in Gretna Green, in Gretna 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 have been much better than their upbringing. W© 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, Erskino, when, as Lord Chancellor, he came hero to bo married, is said to have arrived disguised as an old woman. Pretty romances undoubtedly there were; but most of the associations of the place, from what we know, were squalid and unlovely. Novelist- and oat-lad-makers, however, have thrown a "lamour over it all, and tourists flock daily to pay their sixpences to gaze on the chairs in which sat two men who were doubtless very ordinary blacksmiths. It in estimated that at one time the marriages performed at Gretna Green amounted on 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, ho officiated at 3380 weddings in the course of 30 years. It is possible, as the legend on (ho anvil tells one, to be still married hero, as elsewhere in Scotland, in the same simple way; but the law now provides that at least ono of the narties must have been resident in Scotland for 21 days before the date of the wedding. Meanwhile, without any marriage foes, the blacksmiths cottage should be as profitable a little property as anyone could wish; and one is left "to ponder on (he vagaries of human enrio.-ily in regard to anything that L tinged with a colour of ‘‘romance.