** AS couple of points arising from the various contributions recently. 1. An "irregular" marriage was defined as any marriage not conducted by a minister of the established church(i.e. Church of Scotland). There were literally thousands of these, ranging from "common law" marriage (no ceremony at all) to marriages conducted in a whole range of church denominations - Roman Catholic, Episcopal church of Scotland, Quaker, Baptist, Congregational, Free Church of Scotland, and so on). Legally the banns had to be called in the parish church of Scotland, but even here some Roman Catholics and others refused to do this, and only occasionally are these marriages noted in C. of S registers, usually where the minister wrote that such a marriage had occurred. Other denominations were more willing to obey the law, and in those cases you find a mariage, but no children (because they are baptised in their own denomination). Remember that the IGI, and scotlandspeople are primarily an index to the Church of Scotland registers. Second, people did not register anything, either marriage or baptisms. It was the task of the minister and his session clerk to enter items in the registers, as instructed by the General Assembly (and they had to be reminded several times over the centuries). There was no official requirement for a death register, so often a parish has no deaths recorded. They DID have a need to account for the church's cash, so the accounts often have records of money paid for a funeral, or a coffin being made, or hire of the mortcloth, and in these cases where names are stated, you can reckon that he or she is dead if they are getting the mortcloth to cover the coffin! That gives you an approximate date of death. A general point to add: The OPRs are the registers, available on microfilm and online, but the kirk session minutes; book of discipline; poors minutes; and heritors' minutes; are all still at the national archives, currently being digitised. We should see them available online in a few years time. Gordon Johnson.