Summer Love

(Judge Albert C. Barnes, of Chicago, classes summer engagements and summertime marriage as “summer dangers”, and advises against them.)

The staid old judge advises us

     Of summer love beware;

Of seashore spoons and mountain moons

     To have especial care.

He says that summer love is fraught

     With dangers unforeseen;

That ardor tires and love expires

     Beyond the Gretna Green.

O, ye who linger at the shore

     Or in the mountain pass,

What is to hap if this bleak chap

     Should carry weight? Alas!

Who’d want to stroll along the strand,

     Or seek the newer hotels,

If love were sent, in discontent,

     From ocean sides, and dells?

Ah no, kind judge, forbid them not!

     What would vacations be?

Would you destroy the county joy?

     Would you desert the sea?

Without the joy of summer love

     Resorts would ne’er have been;

Spare seaside “spoon” and mountain “moon”,

     And save the Gretna Green!

Aug. 3, 09

Gretna Green is a village in the south of Scotland famous for runaway weddings. It is in Dumfries and Galloway, near the mouth of the River Esk and was historically the first village in Scotland, following the old coaching route from London to Edinburgh. Gretna Green has a railway station serving both Gretna Green and Gretna. The Quintinshill rail crash, with 227 deaths the worst rail crash in Britain, occurred near Gretna Green in 1915.

Gretna Green sits alongside the main town of Gretna. Both are accessed from the A74(M) motorway and are situated near to the border of Scotland with England.

Gretna Green is one of the world's most popular wedding destinations; hosting over 5000 weddings each year, and one of every six Scottish weddings.

Gretna's famous "runaway marriages" began in 1753 when Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act, was passed in England; it stated that if both parties to a marriage were not at least 21 years old, then parents had to consent to the marriage. This Act did not apply in Scotland, where it was possible for boys to marry at 14 and girls at 12 years old with or without parental consent (see Marriage in Scotland). Many elopers fled England, and the first Scottish village they encountered was Gretna Green. The Old Blacksmith's Shop, built around 1712, and Gretna Hall Blacksmith's Shop (1710) became, in popular folklore at least, the focal tourist points for the marriage trade. The Old Blacksmith's opened to the public as a visitor attraction as early as 1887.

The local blacksmith and his anvil have become the lasting symbols of Gretna Green weddings. Scottish law allowed for "irregular marriages", meaning that if a declaration was made before two witnesses, almost anybody had the authority to conduct the marriage ceremony. The blacksmiths in Gretna became known as "anvil priests".

Since 1929 both parties in Scotland have had to be at least 16 years old, but they still may marry without parental consent. In England and Wales, the age for marriage is now 16 with consent and 18 without.

Gretna's two blacksmiths' shops and countless inns and smallholding became the backdrops for hundreds of thousands of weddings. Today there are several wedding venues in and around Gretna Green, from former churches to purpose-built chapels. The services at all the venues are always performed over an iconic blacksmith's anvil. Gretna Green endures as one of the world's most popular wedding venues, and thousands of couples come from around the world to be married 'over the anvil' at Gretna Green.

In common law, a "Gretna Green marriage" came to mean, in general, a marriage transacted in a jurisdiction that was not the residence of the parties being married, to avoid restrictions or procedures imposed by the parties' home jurisdiction.  A notable "Gretna" marriage was the second marriage in 1826 of Edward Gibbon Wakefield to the young heiress Ellen Turner, called the Shrigley abduction (his first marriage was also to an heiress, but the parents wanted to avoid a public scandal). Other towns in which quick, often surreptitious marriages could be obtained came to be known as "Gretna Greens". In the United States, these have included Elkton, Maryland, Reno and, later, Las Vegas, Nevada.

In 1856 Scottish law was changed to require 21 days' residence for marriage, and a further law change was made in 1940. The residential requirement was lifted in 1977. Other Scottish border villages used for such marriages were Coldstream Bridge, Lamberton, Mordington and Paxton Toll.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretna_Green