She explained the ceremony as being a very simple one, and
performed expeditiously: often in the road, almost in sight of the
pursuers of the runaway pair. All sorts and conditions of men and women
were united there, some of them from far-off lands, black people amongst
the rest, and she added with a sigh, "There's been many an unhappy job
here," which we quite believed. There were other people beside the
gentleman at the hall who made great profit by marrying people, both at
Springfield and Gretna, and a list of operators, dated from the year
1720, included a soldier, shoemaker, weaver, poacher, innkeeper,
toll-keeper, fisherman, pedlar, and other tradesmen. But the only
blacksmith who acted in that capacity was a man named Joe Paisley, who
died in 1811 aged seventy-nine years. His motto was, "Strike while the
iron's hot," and he boasted that he could weld the parties together as
firmly as he could one piece of iron to another.
[Illustration: JOSEPH PAISLEY, The Celebrated Gretna-Green Parson Dec'd
January 9, 1811, aged 79. The first great "priest" of Gretna Green.]
Joe was a man of prodigious strength; he could bend a strong iron poker
over his arm, and had frequently straightened an ordinary horse-shoe in
its cold state with his hands.
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