CANONGATE MARRIAGES.
(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
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!
J. O.
Footnote 2:[(return)]
Letters from Edinburgh, London, 1776. See also, Letters from a Gentleman in Scotland to his Friend in England (commonly called Burt's Letters): London, 1754.