4.8 • 821 Ratings
🗓️ 14 April 2023
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Poets have been writing about the madness of love for thousands of years. We love to be in it; we hate to be without it. But what if this wasn’t just hyperbole, and there is something indeed bigger happening to a brain in love? Where does love and madness meet? And, perhaps, where does one end, and another begin?
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0:00.0 | Richard Renison returned home from a funeral only to find no less than eight anxious young |
0:10.1 | couples waiting to see him. Many had ventured the short mile over a newly constructed toll road |
0:15.9 | between England and Scotland, gunning for the tiny town of Gretna Green as their final destination. |
0:22.4 | They had all heard about him. In fact, Richard was somewhat famous, a gregarious, tall-tail |
0:28.0 | teller and yarn spinner who had been at his post for decades. He moved here to do an important |
0:33.2 | job, and a pretty infamous one at that. Richard came to Gretna Green, Scotland, in 1936, after hearing |
0:40.3 | about a very special job vacancy. A saddler by trade, he took up a post as the town's resident |
0:46.0 | Anvil Priest, a title and distinction entirely specific to this small slice of the world. |
0:52.3 | All of these young couples were here to get married, and Richard was going to be the one |
0:56.6 | to officiate. |
0:57.7 | They had traveled over the border to see him, many of them in secret, and many quickly. |
1:03.3 | This was often the nature of his work. |
1:05.8 | To many, he was a hero. |
1:07.1 | To others, he and those who came before him were a walking-talking loophole that defied the |
1:12.0 | sanctity of marriage and was a thorn in the Church of England's side. The Marriage Duty Act |
1:17.2 | 1695 put a stop to the marriages of small parish churches that were conducted by local clergy |
1:23.1 | without the proper marriage licensing. A legal loophole was found, though, and the clergy, |
1:28.5 | or those who said they were clergy, realized they couldn't be prosecuted for shotgun weddings |
1:33.9 | should they take place on the grounds of fleet prison. And over the years, these amounted to the |
1:39.8 | thousands. A whole cottage industry popped up, and the church became horrified at the potential erosion |
1:46.1 | of personal morals and the country's social fabric. |
1:49.6 | These marriages often were without licenses or public announcements, performed under the |
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