(Vol. v., p. 320.)
I had hoped that the inquiry of R. S. F. would have drawn out some of your
Edinburgh correspondents; but, as they are silent upon a subject they might
have invested with interest, allow me to say a word upon these Canongate
marriages. I need not, I think, tell R. S. F. how loosely our countrymen,
at the period alluded to, and long subsequent thereto, looked upon the
marriage tie; as almost every one who has had occasion to touch upon our
_domestic_ manners and customs has pointed at, what appeared to them, and
what really was, an anomaly in the character of a nation somewhat boastful
of their better order and greater sense of propriety and decorum.
Besides the incidental notices of travellers, the legal records of Scotland
are rife with examples of litigation arising out of these irregular
marriages; and upon a review of the whole history of such in the north, it
cannot be denied that, among our staid forefathers, "matrimony was more a
matter of merriment"[2] than a solemn and religious engagement.
The Courts in Scotland usually _frowned_ upon cases submitted to them where
there was a strong presumption that either party had been victimised by the
other; but, unfortunately, the requirements were so simple, and the
facility of procuring witnesses so great, that many a poor frolicksome
fellow paid dearly for his joke by finding himself suddenly transformed,
from a bachelor, to a spick and span Benedict; and that too upon evidences
which would not in these days have sent a fortune-telling impostor to the
tread-mill: the lords of the justiciary being content that some one had
heard him use the endearing term of wife to the pursuer, or had witnessed a
mock form at an obscure public-house, or that the parties were by habit and
repute man and wife. How truly then may it have been said, that a man in
the Northern Capital, so open to imposition, scarcely knew whether he was
married or not.
In cases where the ceremony was performed, it {68} did not follow that the
priest of Hymen should be of the clerical profession:
"To tie the knot," says John Hope, "there needed none;
He'd find a clown, in brown, or gray,
Booted and spurr'd, should preach and pray;
And, without stir, grimace, or docket,
Lug out a pray'r-book from his pocket;
And tho' he blest in wond'rous haste,
Should tie them most securely fast."
_Thoughts_, 1780.
In Chambers's _Traditions of Edinburgh_, there is a slight allusion to
these Canongate marriages:
"The White Horse Inn," says he, "in a close in the Canongate, is an
exceedingly interesting old house of entertainment. It was also
remarkable for the runaway couples from England, who were married in
its large room."
The White Hart, in the Grass-market, appears to have been another of these
Gretna Green houses.
A curious fellow, well known in Edinburgh at the period referred to, was
the high priest of the Canongate hymeneal altar. I need hardly say this was
the famous "Claudero, the son of Nimrod the Mighty Hunter," as he
grandiloquently styled himself: otherwise James Wilson, a disgraced
schoolmaster, and poet-laureate to the Edinburgh _canaille_. In the large
rooms of the above inns, this comical fellow usually presided, and
administered relief to gallant swains and love-sick damsels, and a most
lucrative trade he is said to have made of it:--
"Claudero's skull is ever dull,
Without the sterling shilling:"
in allusion to their being called half-merk or shilling marriages.
Chambers gives an illustrative anecdote of our subjects' matrimonial
practices in that of a soldier and a countryman seeking from Wilson a cast
of his office: from the first Claudero took his shilling, but demanded from
the last a fee of five, observing--
"I'll hae this sodger ance a week a' the times he's in Edinburgh, and
you (the countryman) I winna see again."
The Scottish poetical antiquary is familiar with this eccentric character;
but it may not be uninteresting to your general readers to add, that when
public excitement in Edinburgh ran high against the Kirk, the lawyers,
meal-mongers, or other _rogues_ in _grain_, Claudero was the vehicle
through which the democratic voice found vent in squibs and broadsides
fired at the offending party or obnoxious measure from his lair in the
Canongate.
In his _Miscellanies_, Edin. 1766, now before me, Claudero's cotemporary,
Geordie Boick, in a poetical welcome to London, thus compliments Wilson,
and bewails the condition of the modern Athens under its bereavement of the
poet:
"The ballad-singers and the printers,
Must surely now have starving winters;
Their press they may break a' in splinters,
I'm told they swear,
Claudero's Muse, alas! we've tint her
For ever mair."
For want of Claudero's _lash_, his eulogist goes on to say:
"Now Vice may rear her hydra head,
And strike defenceless Virtue dead;
Religion's heart may melt and bleed,
With grief and sorrow,
Since Satire from your streets is fled,
Poor Edenburrow!"
Claudero was, notwithstanding, a sorry poet, a lax moralist, and a sordid
parson; but peace to the manes of the man, or his successor in the latter
office, who gave me in that same long room of the White Horse in the
Canongate of Edinburgh the best parents son was ever blest with!