Prior to the Reformation, a loose practice in the relationship of the sexes, called _hand-fasting_, existed in Scotland. At the statutory fairs, young men and women made mutual selection as partners for a year; at the end of the year, they were free to marry, to live singly, or to enter into other partnerships! It was the duty of the itinerant friars to persuade the handfasts to marry, and by the end of the sixteenth century the Reformers had effectually rooted out the custom. At the Dundee Burgh Court on May 21st 1560, “Compearit John Ray, and oblist him to marry his wife on Sunday next. At the same time James Rollock has become surety that Robert Man sall complete the band of matrimony with Jonet Myln, or else incur the danger conteinit in the acts.” Ceasing to be considered a sacrament, marriage in Scotland came to be looked upon as little other than a civil contract, hardly requiring clerical agency, or religious formalities. A man and woman going before a bailie or sheriff, and declaring themselves husband and wife, constituted a legal although an irregular marriage. And the celebrant—if so he could be called, who was really only a witness to the parties having _married themselves_—need not even be a civil official. Gretna Green had no special privilege in lay-marrying over any other portion of Scotland. It appears from Burgh records that in the sixteenth century, a women holding property under a trusteeship, was not at any age free in her choice of a husband. Marrying without the consent of her procurators entailed the forfeiture of her property. A mother would retain her daughter’s tocher unless she married with the mother’s approval. And apprentices were not allowed to marry without the official permission of their craft. We find from the Dundee Burgh records, that in 1534, David Ogilvy, an apprentice baker, did so marry, and he was expelled from his craft, and “tynt his freedom.” But David took the decree fighting! He appealed to the King, James the Fifth, for reinstatement, and the King gave an order, confirmed by the Lords of Council, charging the Provost and Bailies of Dundee to re-admit him to his freedom, and “cause the baxters receive him to their fellowship, notwithstanding that he be marryit within his prenticeship,” and decerning that he will suffer sufficient punishment if his term of apprenticeship be prolonged for the space of one month. A bride was expected—even in such circumstances of life as made her a “tocherless lass”—to have ready against her marriage many articles of domestic economy. In his song “Woo’d and Married and a’,”—written a century and a half ago—Alexander Ross gives a graphic description of a family conference over the ways and means of an “ill-provided” bride:—