{193}
CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
GRETNA GREEN AND ITS MARRIAGES.
IN ALL SHADES.
CANAL NAVIGATIONS.
AN IRISH TRAVELLING THEATRE.
INDIAN SERVANTS.
THE MONTH: SCIENCE AND ARTS.
OCCASIONAL NOTES.
PARTED.
No. 117.—Vol. III.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, MARCH 27, 1886.
GRETNA GREEN AND ITS MARRIAGES.
A few miles beyond the walls of ‘merrie Carlisle,’and only just across the Border on the Scottishside, is a lonely old-world little village, whither,in days not yet remote, frequent couples, in life’sbright golden time, hurriedly resorted; no lesseager to cross the bridge spanning the river Sark,which here forms the boundary of the two kingdoms,than, with blind trust in the future, toundertake the all-untried responsibilities of forbiddenwedlock. The village itself consists of along straight street of cleanly whitewashed houses,beyond which stretches the solitary tract of Solwaymoss, scene of many a Border foray, and ofone miserable ‘rout’ in the days of the ScottishJameses; while, towards England, the landscapeis bounded by the ‘skyey heads’ of the Cumberlandmountains, clad in such hues of grayishgreen as nature uses to modify her distant tints.Curious to view a spot so far renowned, albeitwithout design of invoking aid from any chancesurvivor of the ‘high-priests of Gretna Green,’we alighted on the platform of its roadsidestation on the Glasgow and South-Western Railwayone summer afternoon, and pursuing ourway towards the village in company with a notuncommunicative policeman, quickly found manyillusions dispelled, by no means least the widespreadlegend as to the officiating blacksmith.Our attention was ere long called to the figureof a middle-aged, by no means clerical-lookingman, at the time engaged in filling his pipe bythe wayside, with whom we entered into conversation.Nowise anxious to magnify his apostleship,our new friend somewhat deprecatinglyacknowledged that the priestly mantle had descendedupon his too unworthy shoulders, andthat, indeed, but a few days prior to our visit,he had been called on to exercise the weightyfunctions of his office.
This man, by trade a mason, spoke, not withoutregret, of the good old days when fugitive loverscrowded to the Border village, the poorer sortbeing most often united at the tollhouse justacross the bridge, while the more well-to-dobetook themselves to the hotel, which, though