Joseph Paisley, writer of this, was originally a weaver, at some other time a tobacconist. He was the so-called "Blacksmith," though there is no record that he, his predecessors, or successors were real blacksmiths. He removed from Gretna to the village of Springfield, half a mile distant, in 1791, and attended to his lucrative employment till his death in 1814. He was tall in person, and in prime of life well-proportioned; but before he died had grown enormously corpulent, weighing upwards of 25 stone. By his natural enemies--the parish clergymen--he was said to be grossly ignorant and coarse in his manners, drinking a Scotch pint of whisky in various shapes of toddy and raw drams in a day. On one occasion he and a companion, named Ned the Turner, sat down on a Monday morning to an anker of strong cognac, and before the evening of Saturday they kicked the empty cask out at the door! He was also celebrated for his stentorian lungs and almost incredible muscular strength. He could with one hand bend a strong poker over his arm, and was frequently known to straighten an ordinary horse-shoe with his hands. But he could not break asunder the bands of matrimony which he so easily rivetted. Law stamped his handiwork with the title of sanctity. The Gretna and Sark Toll marriages greatly increased in number through the facilities of railway conveyance. The fugitives, when obtaining a start by an express train, could not be overtaken by another, while the ordinary third-class carried away so many customers for cheap marriages from their English parish clergy, that the Legislature was invoked, and enacted that on and after the 1st January, 1857, no marriage should be valid in Scotland unless the parties had both resided in Scotland for the last six weeks next preceding the wedding-day. In the evidence upon this Bill, one of the _marriers_, Murray, of Gretna, admitted that he had married between 700 and 800 couples in a year; and as there were two or three other of these marriers in good practice, the number of couples married at Sark Toll Bar and at Gretna may be safely estimated at upwards of 1,000 in a year. The alteration in the law was effected through the happy effort of a magistrate of Cumberland, immediately and ably supported by the magistrates of the county, who signed a petition committed to the charge of Lord Brougham. His Lordship forthwith introduced a Bill, after Easter, 1856, which Bill passed through Parliament without opposition.[9] [9] For the details of the measure, see "Irregular Marriages," _Knowledge for the Time_, 1864, pp. 120-123. The Agapemone, or Abode of Love.