And the thing did not come off, so that bigamy is not to be reckoned among the poet’s sins. They were rather sordid affairs in the end, those Gretna Green marriages. So, at least, the Reverend James Roddick, minister of the parish, writing of the place in 1834 in the _New Statistical Account_, would have us believe. There were three or four hundred marriages annually: “the parties are chiefly from the sister kingdom and from the lowest rank of the population.” A number came from Carlisle at fair-time, got married, spent a few days together, and then divorced themselves. Competition had brought down the priest’s fee to half-a-crown, and every tippling-house had its own official. Nay, the very roadman on the highway that joined the kingdoms pressed his services on all and sundry! And then the railway came to Gretna, and you had the spectacle of “priests” touting on the platform. Alas for those shores of old Romance! In 1856, Lord Brougham’s Act (19 & 20 Vict. cap. 96), made well-nigh as summary an end of Gretna as Lord Hardwicke’s had of the Fleet unions. It provided that at least one of the parties to an irregular Scots marriage must be domiciled in Scotland, or have resided there during the twenty-one days immediately preceding the espousals; else were they altogether void. What an enemy your modern law-giver is to the picturesque! And what an entertaining place this world must once have been! The Border Law The Border Country--Its Lays and Legends--The Wardens and Other Officers--Johnie Armstrong--Merrie Carlisle--Blackmail--The Border Chieftain and His Home--A Raid--“Hot-trod”--“To-names”--A Bill of Complaint--The Day of Truce--Business and Pleasure--“Double and Salffye”--Border Faith--Deadly Feud--The Story of Kinmont Willie--The Debateable Land--The Union of the Crowns and the End of Border Law. _Leges marchiarum_, to wit, the Laws of the Marches; so statesmen and lawyers named the codes which said, though oft in vain, how English and Scots Borderers should comport themselves, and how each kingdom should guard against the other’s deadly unceasing enmity. I propose to outline these laws, and the officials by whom and courts wherein they were enforced.