The “blacksmith” is a myth, deriving, no doubt, from the more or less poetic idea of indissoluble bonds being forged. There were no blacksmiths’ forges here then, and despite old prints showing couples being married over the anvil, with post-boy looking on, no blacksmith seems ever to have been known as a “priest.” That term was, of course, absolutely an indefensible assumption; but there is this excuse, perhaps, for the “blacksmith” idea. It seems that, among those who conducted weddings, was one “Tom the Piper,” properly Thomas Little, of the “Maxwell Arms” inn, who, with his son, hit upon the attractive title of the “Gretna Wedding” inn, and hung out a painted sign representing the afterwards famous smithy scene. Paisley, already mentioned as the first “priest,” was nothing more than a drunken Border thief and ne’er-do-well. Colonel Hawker, writing of him in 1812, says: “I should mention that the old man who officiated for nearly forty years, at £40, £50, and sometimes £100 a job, never was a blacksmith. Old Joe Paisley, for that was his name, was by trade a tobacconist. He was a very large, heavy man, and might have died worth a great deal of money; but from being an intolerable drunkard and a very unsteady fellow, his money went as lightly as it came, and after he had solemnised the marriages and dismissed his ‘couple of fools’ they could not possibly be more eager to follow their avocations than his reverence was to trudge off to a whisky-house.” In 1791 Paisley, who up to that time lived in a cottage on the Green, removed to Springfield, a little nearer the Border, where he took the “King’s Head” inn. With his removal his business largely increased. He was long an object of curiosity to travellers. At the time of his death, about 1814, he was an overgrown mass of fat, weighing at least thirty-five stone; and was grossly ignorant in his mind and insufferably coarse in his manner. Although an habitual drunkard, he was seldom or never seen “the worse for” drink, and was accustomed during the last forty years of his life to drink a Scots pint, equal to three English quarts, of brandy a day. [Sidenote: _JOE PAISLEY_] On one occasion a fellow spirit, one “Ned the Turner,” sat down with him on a Monday morning to an anker of strong cognac, and before the evening of the succeeding Saturday they kicked the empty cask out of the door; neither of them having been drunk, nor had the assistance of any one in drinking. Paisley was celebrated for his stentorian lungs and almost incredible muscular powers. He could with ease bend a strong poker over his arm, and had frequently been known to straighten an ordinary horse-shoe in its cold state.