A/N: You get a twofer today, as I'm recovering from my jetlag. Still not doing the big reveal, but feel free to guess the antagonist in the reviews.
Gretna Green was quite an interesting town. Like most places, the industry of the area was defined mostly by geography. In this particular case, the geography meant that it was the most convenient place for the wealthy of London to elope for clandestine marriages. The laws of Scotland allowed blacksmiths to perform marriage ceremonies over the anvil, and over time the blacksmiths of Gretna Green found that it was easier and more profitable to marry rich, gullible English gentry, then to spend all day beating on a piece of hot iron with a hammer. Occasionally penniless English beggars would come along to be married, but they were always good for a laugh and their stories returning home were good for business, so they were given every consideration as well.
Over time, the blacksmiths did less and less blacksmithing, and more and more marrying. Eventually, most of the blacksmiths got to the point where they didn't even know how to light a forge or fix a horseshoe. None of this is necessary for the marrying business, and it was especially convenient in Scotland because they didn't have to be clergymen, meaning they didn't have to go to seminary, read any of the holy books or read anything at all for that matter to perform the job. All they had to do was look like a blacksmith, and really, how hard was that? A leather apron, a bit of strategic grease on your face, a bad haircut and you were all set. It was the easiest job in the world. You could even make up the vows on the fly.
"Dearly beloved or at least endured. We are gathered here today in the sight of Shaumus MacDougal to join together this English chucklehead with this smarter than she looks and likely to rule the roost lass in the bonds of tolerable matrimony. If any man can show just cause why these two should deprive me of my marriage fee, let him speak now to Raibert McCollum down the street for about the next quarter hour, by which time it will be too late, or forever hold his peace. Amen"
You could even tell them completely ridiculous requirements and they would go along.
"You have to have iron wedding bands. They cost 10 pounds."
"Iron wedding bands for us"
"You have to have a special wedding haircut and wear a Scottish wedding hat. That will be 25 pounds."
"Bring on the hat and haircut"
"You will have to wear a kilt to be married properly under Scottish law"
"Bring out the skirt"
See, so easy!
The town eventually got to the point where any hapless Englishmen who happened to lose a horseshoe, would be quickly hustled off and married to one of the bonnie lasses who are kept at hand just for that purpose. No one actually knew how many people lived in the town because they liked it, and how many lived there just because their horse had a mishap on the way through. However, since the lasses were in fact quite nice, and Scotland maintained a very good supply of whiskey, nobody really had any reason to repine.
A small group of runners would take care of any actual blacksmithing that had to be done. If you had a lame horse, they would take them up to Gretna Black, where they had actual farriers, blacksmiths and all the other craftsmen of a normal town whose economy was not based on elopements. If you needed a wagon wheel repaired, then Gretna Red was your town of choice. Nobody actually went to Gretna Orange. It was rumored that their bonny lasses were actually rich English heiresses who dressed in the latest fashions, spoke with a voice that would frighten the dead, and were likely to latch on to you and suck the life out of you like a vampire (and in this case, we are talking actual-real vampires, not Annie's figurative vampires representing her cousin Darcy). Worst of all, the latest fashions from London, as defined by the inhabitants of this town, would usually scare all but the fiercest of horses, so if you brought a horse in to have a shoe fixed, you are more likely to lose the horse entirely than to get the shoe repaired. No, Gretna Orange was not the place for you.
The other major industry for the town was wagering. The Scotsman of the town would wager on anything. For the next lame horse, which shoe would be thrown? For the next broken down wagon, would anybody be killed or maimed? For the next wedding, would the groom get cold feet at the last minute and run away leaving one more convenient bonny lass for the next unfortunate horsemen (after all, there was a limited supply of locals that they were willing to marry off to Englishmen who couldn't even keep their horse afoot)? Would the bride get cold feet at the last moment? If so, would she run off screaming, or simply pick up a convenient piece of iron and bash in her intended? Granted the last one was fairly long odds, and didn't happen more than once or twice a year, so one could make a boatload of money they played it with a small amount for a long time.
Between wagering, and hauling things hither and yon to get the actual blacksmithing done, the youth of the town was occupied and quite happy. After all, they had their own lovely lasses at home, plenty of whiskey, plenty of wagering, and the occasional brouhaha of elopement. Yes, life was good in Gretna Green.
Things proceeded in this fashion for many years until one fine day the unthinkable happened. It was unprecedented, amazingly, astonishing and unbelievable. An real blacksmith moved to Gretna Green. This was not a wedding performing blacksmith, but an actual real genuine blacksmith. He had a forge. He had an anvil. He had a boy to man the bellows. He had bar stock and horseshoes. He had a bucket of water to douse the hot iron, and another bucket of oil. He had hammers and tongs (the latter of which would be handy should he ever get stuck in Gretna Orange). He heated iron in the forge, beat it over the anvil, doused it and it came out a different shape! The locals stood around in amazement at this piece of trickery.
This paragon of smithing carried the odd name of Seamus O'Toole. He was an Irish Scottish who carried all the attributes of both. He was a giant of a man and quite frightening looking. He looked like a cross between a mountain and Ragnar Lodbrok. The great loves of his life included drinking, smithing, fighting and kittens. Smithing he got plenty of, since he was the only functional smith in town although he still had to compete with Gretna Black and Red. He took care of the things too difficult to carry off to the other Gretnas, and let them have the easy things. The drinking was easy enough to organize in Scotland.
The fighting on the other hand was much more difficult. He had joined the English army thinking that would give lots of fighting since they were currently at war with both France and America at the same time, and likely to lose both based on what he'd seen of their leadership. Unfortunately, this only afforded him a tiny bit of actual fighting, and that was with Frenchmen who were hardly even worth the trouble. The rest of the time was spent in marching, cleaning, cooking, digging latrines and worst of all, staff meetings. The endless torture of staff meetings would be the end of the empire. He once had to sit through a one-hour staff meeting lead by some milksop son of an English Earl named Fitz-something-or-other and it was the longest week of his life. No, life in the English army was nowhere near as much fun as he expected, even with the king being batshit crazy.
Eventually, Seamus left the English Temple of Boredom and settled in Gretna Green to take his frustrations out on his hammer and anvil. For excitement, he had to resort to wagering on his fights at long odds through an intermediary to get any five men to fight him.
Since fighting was so sporadic (I had to use that word as its one of my daughter's vocabulary words and she's teasing me about it), he took to making the craziest of wagers to add some excitement to his life. Want to bet a blacksmith shop against a puppy that the next bride would be blonde… Seamus O'Toole was your man. Want to bet a particular nail would come off a horseshoe, or a particular dog would start howling first. Look up Seamus. There was nothing too ridiculous for him to bet on, nothing too farfetched, nothing too unlikely. One day he was approached by the local baker.
"Say Seamus, remember last month you bet that fifty or sixty armed men would drag some rich English chucklehead to town, and make him marry one of the denizens of Gretna Orange?"
"Aye"
"You win. Here's your kitten."