Devil's Bridge

“ No bridges more testify to the soul of man than the bridges that leap in one arch from height to height over the gorge of a torrent. Many of these are called the Devil's Bridges with good reason, for they suggest art beyond man's power, and there are two to be crossed and wondered at, one in Wales in the mountains, and another in Switzerland, also in the mountains. There is a third in the mountains at the gate of the Sahara, of the same sort, jumping from rock to rock. But it is not called the Devil's Bridge. ”

“ THE DEVIL'S BRIDGE. PRINCE HENRY and ELSIE crossing, with attendants.
Guide. This bridge is called the Devil's Bridge.
With a single arch, from ridge to ridge,
It leaps across the terrible chasm
Yawning beneath us, black and deep,
As if, in some convulsive spasm,
the summits of the hills had cracked,
and made a road for the cataract,
That raves and rages down the steep!
Lucifer (under the bridge) . Ha! ha! ”

“ Precipices a thousand feet high tower above, and the stream roars and boils in the black depth below. The road is a wonder of art; it winds around the edge of horrible chasms or is carried on lofty arches across, with sometimes a hold apparently so frail that one involuntarily shudders. At a place called the Devil's Bridge, the Reuss leaps about seventy feet in three or four cascades, sending up continually a cloud of spray, while a wind created by the fall, blows and whirls around, with a force that nearly lifts one from his feet. ”

“ Even the sweet light of day departs, and a gloom and darkness as of a brooding tempest falls upon us as the way narrows. Suddenly a mad, foaming torrent, with angry roar, leaps from the rocks above, to toss, and writhe, and moan upon the rocks below the arch upon which we stand. The water rushes over them, and dashes against them. It swirls, and pants, and foams, while high above it all we stand, our faces wet with the spray, our ears deafened by the terrible roar. Truly, this is "The Devil's Bridge." ”

“ The Mynach (in another place he describes) coming down from beneath the Devil’s Bridge, has no equal for height or beauty that I know of; for although a streamlet, to the famous fall of Narni in Italy, yet it rivals it in height, and surpasses it in elegance.
p. 72“After passing deep below the bridge, as through a narrow firth, with noises loud and ruinous, into a confined chasm, the fleet waters pour headlong and impetuous, and leaping from rock to rock, with fury, literally lash the mountain’s sides ”

“ The extent of this impression may probably be contained in the old and widely spread nursery rhyme of "London Bridge is Broken Down," an examination of which has led Mrs. Gomme to conclude that it contains reference to an ancient belief that the building of the bridge was accompanied by human sacrifice. [29] This conclusion is confirmed by the preservation in Wales of a bridge-sacrifice tradition. It relates to the "Devil's Bridge" near Beddgelert. "Many of the ignorant people of the neighbourhood believe that this structure was formed by supernatural agency. ”

“ The habitans rebuilt their bridge of wood upon low stone piers, so far up the river from the cataract that whoever fell from it would yet have many a chance for life; and it would have been perilous to offer to replace the fallen structure, which, in the belief of faithful Christians, clearly belonged to the numerous bridges built by the Devil, in times when the Devil did not call himself a civil engineer. ”

“ The Devil hearing her sobs came to her and said he would build a bridge across the river, on condition that he had the very first living being that crossed the bridge after market time, his Satanic Majesty knowing very well that the old woman was always the first on the journey back. ”

“ The country people had a tradition that it was built in windy weather by the Devil, who, having only one apron full of stones, and the breaking of one of his apron-strings causing him to lose some of them as he flew over Casterton Fell, he had only enough left to build a narrow bridge. ”

“ Nearly over our heads appeared the bridge attributed to the handy-works of the Devil; p. 113but a less cunning workman might have thrown an arch across a fissure of a few feet span; and indeed the native mason who, about 50 years since, built the bridge now used, standing perpendicularly over the old one, has constructed the best arch of the two. The original bridge was built by the Monks of Starflower Abbey near 700 years since. Nor is the singular appearance of these arches devoid of picturesque effect ”

“ The Devil offered to show him how the defect could be remedied, the bridge built and his reputation saved, if he would sign a contract that the first who crossed the bridge should become the Devil’s property. The poor architect at first nobly refused, as most men do when tempted, and then fell, as men occasionally do. ”

“ You may say (I am off hard on the road to Borgo, drooping with the heat, but still going strongly) , you may say that is explicable enough. First a thing is useful, you say, then it has to become routine; then the habit, being a habit, gets a sacred idea attached to it. So with bridges: _e.g._ Pontifex; Dervorguilla, our Ballici saint that built a bridge; the devil that will hinder the building of bridges; _cf. _the Porphyry Bridge in the Malay cosmogony ”

“ Hence the sanctity attributed in mediæval times to the architects of bridges. The Devil, or (in more ancient guise) the elemental spirit of the land, who detests any interference with the solitude he loves, has an especial antipathy to bridges. His repeated and successful attempts to interfere with such a structure, until he is bought off with an offering like that of Iphigenia, are recorded in legends which attach to numerous bridges in Europe. It is on such supernatural opposition that the English form of the game appears to turn. ”

“ But when we imagine the good monk watching the workmen from the brink of the Goldach, which hurries down through St. Gall toward the Boden-See, we can bring to mind the whole picture. The present bridge is one hundred and sixteen feet long and fully one hundred in height from the swift little stream. It is of wood, and was constructed in 1468. Here, dizzily balancing in mid-air, tradition says that a man, even as Notker gazed, lost his footing and plunged into the abyss. The eternities came together! A spark from the infinite kindled within the poet’s soul. ”

“ First, through the dimness of the dusk, I saw a man armed, walking as does a rope-dancer, balancing himself with his spear, across the empty air, for so it seemed, above the broken arch of the bridge. This appeared, in very sooth, to be a miracle; but, gazing longer, I saw that a great beam had been laid by them of Orleans to span the gap, and now other beams were being set, and many men, bearing torches, were following that good knight, Nicole Giresme, who first showed the way over such a bridge of dread. So now were the English in Les Tourelles between two fires. ”

“ The Angel and Her Demon
"T shouldn't be a bit surprized," said Milton. "And a strange bridge, that, truly. It looks like a ruin, a ruin that has not fallen."
It was a ruin indeed. So ruinous was it that I wondered how the mass could possibly remain intact. A short advance, however, and the mystery was solved. The hand of man had not builded that great arch across this dreadful chasm; nature had fashioned it, there in that region of everlasting darkness. It has, Rhodes said, a remarkable semblance to the celebrated Natural Bridge in Virginia. ”

“ The dark river is rushing beneath the foot-bridge at our feet; and on our right the foaming flood is lighted by the fading fires of the still burning wreck of the railway bridge. The whole structure is down, and the huge beams lying like fiery serpents on the river’s surface, now smouldering in red sullen fires, then up-leaping in tiny flickering tongues of blue flame, licking round and feeding upon every remnant that remains of the bridge that only at noon had stood proud and strong against the sky, its iron limbs spanning the dark water. ”

“ For instance, whenever we light a candle or a fire we obey the genius of a Palæolithic savage, who, with sparks beaten from flint into some inflammable grass or moss or fluff from cocoons, brought into the world the earliest missionaries, artificial light and heat. Similarly, whenever we walk across a timber bridge, whether old or new, we are servants to the earliest savage who with a stone axe cut down a tree, causing it to fall from bank to bank of a river or chasm. ”

“ It was the dream of a great bridge over a swiftflowing river; of his own bridge over the Sagalacof that bridge being destroyed by men who crept through the night with dynamite in their hands.
With a hoarse, smothered cry he awoke. His eyes opened wide. His heart was beating like a hammer against his side. Only the terrier at his feet heard the muttered agony. With an instinct all its own, it slipped to the floor. ”

“ The fire of vengeance is swallowing up the devoted city. An arch of the bridge, over which the triumphal procession had before passed, has been battered down, and broken pillars, ruins of war-engines, and the temporary bridge which has been thrown over, indicate that this has been the scene of direst contention. ”

“ Thus men are said to have swooned and even died at the sight of a narrow bridge, over which they had ridden the night before in perfect safety, or at tracing the footmarks along the edge of a precipice which the darkness had concealed from them. ”

“ In a fit of rage it tumbles over a craggy channel, spreading out and dividing into different streams, crossed by the long, ponderous wooden bridge, that, steady and rugged, adds to the wild grandeur of the spectacle.... I recollect one woody eminence far below us, about which we doubted whether the object on its summit was rock or castle, and the point remained undecided until, on our way to Lauterbrunnen, we saw the same above our heads, on its perpendicular steep, a craggy barrier fitted to war with the tempests of ten thousand years. ”

“ There is a bridge spanning a ravine or dingle, about a mile from my own home, which had such an evil reputation for being haunted that until quite recent years no local postboy or fly-driver would take his horses over it after dark, for fear of the bogey that was said to sit on the parapet at night, or that,
"Half seen by fits, by fits half heard,"
would glide tall and menacing across the road just where the hill was steepest, and the gloom of overhanging trees most impenetrable. ”

“ Sometimes a hanging bridge has to be crossed, spanning a horrid chasm, at the bottom of which roars a foaming torrent—the bridge itself, composed of ropes and brambles, all the while swinging like a hammock under the tread of the affrighted traveller! ”

“ I have certainly had, as a dusty tourist, few more charming moments than some—such as any one, I suppose, is free to have—that I passed on a little ruined grey bridge which spans, with its single narrow arch, a trickling stream at the base of the eminence from which those walls and trees look down. The twilight deepened, the ragged battlements and the low, broad oriels glanced duskily from the foliage, the rooks wheeled and clamoured in the glowing sky ”

“ I know not why, but in all mountainous countries they seem fond of attributing some of their bridges to the devil. In Wales, in the Alps, in the Pyrenees, one-half of them derive their name from that black personage, who, I should suppose, had something more serious to think about than building bridges. That which we now passed over had nothing very diabolical in its construction, and having again crossed the stream, our guide pointed out to us the grotto with a stream pouring down from it into the valley. ”

“ The breakwaters jut out too far, and meet the current with angles of even less than forty-five degrees; while the buttresses behind, on the down-stream side, are rectangular and almost without projection. Last of all, there is no ornament to dress the nude spandrils and to set them apart from the parapets. C’est là, en fait, une œuvre barbare....”
Let us conjecture, then, that this barbaric bridge at Albi, with its seven pointed arches, may belong, not to the time of Saint Bénézet, but to the year 1035, or thereabouts. ”

“ Not far from Valhall’s lofty gate, where Heimdal sentry stood,
Starkodder the vast bridge of heaven, the gorgeous Bifrost, view’d:
In its construction precious stones of various hue it blends,
And, rising in one single arch, o’er all the earth extends.
Over this bridge, when they descend to earth, the Asar ride
To sit as judges in the grove, by th’ ash Yggdrassil’s side:
This bridge is dangerous to pass, steep, narrow; but, like bees
Upon a wall, the gods contrive to hold on it with ease. ”

“ The superstitious peasantry were often alarmed, as they passed the bridge after twilight, to their several homes, to hear his unearthly raving mingled with the sound of the cataracts, and to see his ungainly form perched upon the parapet of the bridge, which they often mistook for an evil spirit. ”

“ He crawls along fallen trees over some torrents and chasms; across a flooded river here and there he leaps in a shambling, lopsided fashion, when stepping-stones and boulders rise above water-level; he roams into hilly districts where many a ledge of rock spans a dangerous gap; but he enjoys himself most of all when a suspension bridge of branches enables him to amble from tree to tree across a deep-lying river pent up between high cliffs. ”

“ Tay Bridges and Titanics are like strong acts in a tragic play, whose influence we forget very soon. It is a thousand pities, for the next war may teach us, by frequent disasters, that machine-worship has been a mad gambler everywhere. Bridges suffered much from the priggishness of the Renaissance, but they have suffered infinitely more from the obsessions that ruined Sir Thomas Bouch. Poor Bouch! Not only did he wish to astonish the world by constructing an unparalleled bridge, wonderfully long, curved at both ends, and with a varying gradient. ”