The Bridal Path 1959

Ewan McEwan, a laid-back sheep and corn farmer on Beigg, a fictional Scottish island where nearly everyone is related, longs to marry his childhood sweetheart Katie. But his hell-raising preacher uncle’s opposition to consanguinity blocks the match, and the islanders’ tangled family ties make it clear that marriage across bloodlines would be unconventional.

When Katie travels to Glasgow to train as a nurse, the pressure to find a wife on the mainland—an place he has never visited—mounts. He saves up and withdraws £400 from the £800 he has tucked away in an Oban bank, then sets out to meet local girls who might become his wife.

Local whispers tell him what to look for: strong legs, wide hips, knowledge of cows and sheep, and, crucially, not a “candle burning Catholic” or a Campbell.

His naive, earnest surveying of women unsettles the town. The first applicant, absorbed in a lurid paperback, misreads his intentions as that of a white slaver and reports him to the police.

Before long, a harmless misstep lands him on the wrong side of the law: he “borrows” a policeman’s bicycle and becomes a wanted fugitive. Then a misunderstanding pins him as the leader of a gang of salmon poachers who use dynamite. The police arrest him on a wide range of charges, though they don’t believe his story. He is held overnight at the local sergeant’s home—since there is no jail—and, in a quiet escape, slips away to continue his search.

Continuing his quest, he encounters trouble after two sisters who take him in come to blows over him. He ends up taking their boat, leaving the money behind, and boards a fishing vessel. The boat is seized by fishermen from a neighboring island who think they are trespassing on their grounds, and Ewan is locked in a shed. A local girl eventually rescues him, and they row back to his home island.

Now exhausted and hungry, with no real meals on the run, he decides to marry anyway and, despite the ban on consanguinity, he and Katie seal their plans.