Chapter Green Howards to Gretna Green Marriages of G by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Gresham and the Grasshopper. There is a vulgar tradition that sir Thomas Gresham was a founding, and that the old beldame who brought him up was attracted to the spot where she found him, by the loud chirping of a grasshopper.

(This tale arose from the grasshopper, which forms the crest of sir Thomas.)

To sup with sir Thomas Gresham, to have no supper. Similarly, “to dine with duke Humphrey” is to have nowhere to dine. The Royal Exchange was at one time a common lounging-place for idlers. (See Dine, p. 281.)

Tho’ little coin thy purseless pockets line,
Yet with great company thou’rt taken up;
For often with duke Humphrey thou dost dine,
And often with sir Thomas Gresham sup.
   —Hayman: Quidlibet (Epigram on a Loafer, 1628).

Gretchen, a German diminutive of Margaret; the heroine of Goethe’s Faust. Faust meets her on her return from church, falls in love with her, and at last seduces her. Overcome with shame, Gretchen destroys the infant to which she gives birth, and is condemned to death. Faust attempts to save her; and, gaining admission to the dungeon, finds her huddled on a bed of straw, singing wild snatches of ballads, quite insane. He tries to induce her to flee with him, but in vain, At daybreak Faust is taken away, and Gretchen, who dies, joins the heavenly choir of penitents.

Gretchen is a perfect union of homeliness and simplicity; though her love is strong as death, yet she is a human woman throughout, and never a mere abstraction. No character ever drawn takes so strong a hold on the heart, and, with all her faults, who does not love and pity her?

Grethel (Gammer), the hypothetical narrator of the tales edited by the brothers Grimm.

(Said to be Frau Viehmänin, wife of a peasant in the suburbs of Hessê Cassel, from whose mouth the brothers transcribed the tales.)

Gretna Green Marriages. Gretna Green is in Dumfriesshire, on the border of England and Scotland. According to Scotch law, any man and woman taking each other for husband and wife before witnesses are legally married, and ordination is not needful in the celebrant, but as a rule one individual assumed the monopoly, married the couples in his own house, using a form of service, and keeping a register of the names. The first known officiating person was named Scott, in the middle of the eighteenth century; and Harry Smith, a Berwick billiard-maker, still officiates, succeeding William Laing (1897), in whose family the “priesthood” had long been. The average number of marriages used to be above seven hundred a year, but since lord Brougham’s Act of 1856, which requires the residence of one of the parties for twenty-one days, Gretna Green marriages have well-nigh died out. Robert Elliott between, 1811 and 1855, celebrated 3782 marriages at Gretna Green.