The Gretna Green Marriage Register.

Cromwell Argus, Volume VII, Issue 316, 1 December 1875, Page 1 (Supplement)

The Gretna Green Marriage Register.

The original register of marriages at Gretna Green is announced (says a London correspondent) for.sale bv tender, by a Carlisle firm of solicitors. What a history, or rathei biography in brief, of romantic runaway couples ! Of what curious revelations is this register the custodian ! Should it ever come to be published to the world, it will, nr

doubt, make lots of people blush, and a good many more will enjoy a hearty laugh. Simon Lang the last of the Gretna priests, drove a brisk trade in weddings, as everybody knows, almost down to the day of his death in 1872. Very shortly before that event, 1 have been told he went through the marriage ceremony in complete dishabille, having nothing on but his shirt and drawers ! The reason for this unwonted exhibition was that the parties reached Gretna from Dumfries by the midnight train, and like all fond lovers could brook no delay, so the old priest was roused from his slumbers to do duty at a moment's notice. Simon was then upwards of eighty years of ago. As a'place for tying the nuptial knot for romantic couples its great popularity commenced immediately alter the infamous Fleet marriages in London were suppressed at the middle of the last century. In the early days the average marriages at the Green was about sixty a year ; in later times they reached four and five hundred annually. The fees ranged from five shillings to fifty pounds, according to the rank of the couple. But it is said that Joseph Paisley received from Lord Westmoreland, Lord Deerhurst, and Lord Erskitte as much as one hundred guineas for his few minutes work. His successor, David Lang, the father of Simon, also joined a few scions of noble English families, such as the Villiers, the Beauclercs, and the Coventrys. How Lord Dundonald piratically carried oil' the lady of his love to the famous village is graphically recorded in the autobiography of that gallant seaman, and it was here, too, that the poet Shelley contracted the unfortunate marriage with his wife Harriet Westbrook.