Not very long since, a faithless swain, weary prematurely of vows exchanged at Gretna Green, and doubting somewhat, it may be, of the holiness of the estate inaugurated by rites so maimed, betook himself, in the company of another and, to him, doubtless fairer bride, to a Roman Catholic priest in a southern Scottish burgh, who all unwittingly solemnised a marriage between them, destined to work no small evil to the fickle bridegroom; for mark how well the sequel hangs together. The deceiver, a sadder and perchance wiser man, torn from the arms of his too credulous bride, a Niobe all tears, was hauled before the outraged majesty of law, and compelled to undergo the penalties, not trivial, awarded to crimes of perjury and bigamy. Whatever peculiar popularity as a marriage-resort may have been enjoyed by Gretna Green is doubtless due to the convenience and accessibility of its situation on the Great North Road; for here is no instance of especial virtue residing in local fountains, but merely of such virtue—if, indeed, one may so use the term—as is participated in by every other spot of ground within the whole realm of Scotland; nor, indeed, as a matter of fact, were Coldstream and Lamberton near Berwick without some measure of peculiar advantage, which they offered to those impatient ones who, from the more eastern counties, were minded to avail themselves of the proximity of the Scottish Border. The origin of these marriages has been sought by some in the wild habits of times far distant, when lack of clergy in the district was to some extent supplied by the ministrations of friars from the adjacent abbeys of Melrose and Jedburgh, who in the course of their perambulations performed the rites of baptism and marriage. The Borderer, nowise forgetful, ere setting forth on expeditions of rapine and plunder, to tell his beads right zealously, was yet grossly ignorant about many things; nor had he access to any other source of enlightenment than the ‘Book-a-bosoms,’ as the mass-book was called, from the habit of the wandering ecclesiastics carrying it in their bosoms. Thus it was that stout William of Deloraine seemed, to the astonished eyes of the Goblin Page, so strangely to resemble one of these friars, when As the corselet off he took, The Dwarf espied the mighty Book! Much he marvelled, a knight of pride Like a book-bosomed priest should ride.