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ROAMIN' IN THE GLOAMIN' 69
it by heart) we were married in the Vallance home in The Bent, Hamilton, on the eighteenth day of June, 1890. Nance looked a picture in a new white dress I had given her as my marriage gift. She also wore a wee poke bonnet with red ribbons tied beneath her chin. My ! but she was bonnie. I don't know how I looked, but I know that I had on my Sunday suit with a stiff white shirt — the first I ever possessed— a standing-up peaked collar and a very loud tie with green spots on a yellow background. On my feet was a pair of gutta percha shoes, half leather and half canvas. The whole outfit, barring the suit, which I had had for some months, cost me less than ten shillings at Harry Wilson's, the local outfitter.
Doubtless I was in the height of fashion for a miner's wedding at that time, but my own opinion is that a minister of today would refuse to marry a man accoutred as I was at the "altar" — my father-in-law's plush-covered parlour table! When the time came for me to produce the ring I was so excited and nervous that I could not get it out of my waistcoat pocket for quite a long time. Ultimately I unearthed it from among a mixture of odds and ends such as a knife, a plug of tobacco, a broken pipe and a piece of string! The incident, accompanied as it was by the tittering of my brothers and sisters, almost brought me to a state of collapse. Long years afterwards I made good use of it as a bit of stage-play in my song "Roamin' in the Gloamin,.,,
After the ceremony was all over we adjourned to the Lesser Victoria Hall where the marriage "spree" took place. Our marriage was what is known in Scotland as a "paywaddin' " — all the outside guests paid for their tickets. Most marriages in the Black Country forty years ago were conducted on these highly sensible lines. Men with marriageable daughters had no money wherewith to give fancy wedding parties. If you wanted to attend a friend's marriage you cheerfully "paid your whack." In our case, the price was