| Notes |
- WESTERN MORNING NEWS, Thursday 28 December 1922
ROMANTIC WEDDINGS. FACTS ABOUT GRETNA GREEN MARRIAGES.
The announcement that the once-famous smithy at Gretna Green has been condemned as a danger to motorists, and is to be removed, is, it seems, not altogether accurate. The buildings made historic by the runaway marriages of former times were converted into a curio shop a number of years ago, when the blacksmith removed his residence to a house across the road. It this house, and not the older one, which is now sought to remove.
As the scene many hundreds of runaway marriages, among them those of many titled persons and others who late in life, rose to fame, Gretna Green will go down to history as a rather romantic spot. References crop up from time to time. It is only few years ago that a batch of the original marriage certificates of between the years 1825 and 1854 was sold by auction in London. That batch contained some illustrious names, and must have been of high interest to not a few noted families.
In the early decades of last century, and no doubt prior to that, runaway marriages seem to have been common enough. The couples always sought the border as the only place where they could be married with some show of legality without the necessity of publication of banns. But all of them did not go to Gretna Green for that purpose. There were obliging “priests” at other places, such Paxton, Lamberton Toll, and Coldstream. It must not be supposed that all these marriages were of a clandestine kind. They were not. The stern Nonconformist type of religion practised for generations in these wild moorland districts made marriage for certain couples impossible at their own parish church. Others disliked publicity given to a local wedding. Many attempts were made by such bodies as the General Assembly to suppress the whole system which made runaway marriages possible, but without success. It was not until 1856, when Lord Brougham (who himself was married at Gretna) carried an Act through Parliament making such marriages illegal unless the persons concerned had resided in Scotland 21 days, that a stop was put the proceedings.
At the beginning of last century David Long, "the Gretna blacksmith," was the man to whom fugitive lovers went to be married. He joined hundreds.
When the railway was carried to Gretna business in the matrimonial line, seems to have been brisk, and at times fifty marriage ceremonies would be gone through by a single "priest," so-called, whom there were no fewer than four competing for business. They actually had touts at the station.
The most famous of the last who held sway until the passing of the Act was John Murray, of Sark Toll Bar. The toll bar is gone, just as the smithy may disappear. Marriages, however, did not take place at the smithy. They did either at the toll bar or at one other of the inns, one of which had for its sign a man and woman clasping hands over an anvil.
As to fees, there was, of course, no fixed sum. Those who tied the nuptial knot would take a shilling or less from poor people. A half-crown was accounted a satisfactory sum, and a seven-shilling fee was looked upon as a stroke of luck. But the fees did not cover the whole of the expenditure. The man who performed the ceremony, if it can be so styled, kept an inn, where the newly-wedded couples, when they could afford it, spent a good deal of money in the entertainment of the “company,'' and in the main for the benefit of the landlord.
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