The Devil's Bridge
folktales of Aarne-Thompson type 1191
translated and/or edited by
D. L. Ashliman
© 1999-2001
translated and/or edited by
D. L. Ashliman
© 1999-2001
There are two arches in the middle of the Sachsenhäuser Bridge. At the top they are closed partially only with wood which, in time of war, can easily be removed so that the connection can be destroyed without blasting. The following legend is told about this bridge:
The builder had agreed to complete the bridge by a certain date. As the date approached he saw that it would be impossible to meet the deadline. With only two days remaining, in his fear he called upon the devil and asked him for help.
The devil appeared to him and offered to complete the bridge during the last night if the builder would deliver to him the first living being that crossed the bridge. The contract was settled, and during the last night the devil completed the bridge. In the darkness no human eye saw how he did it.
At the break of day the builder came and drove a rooster across the bridge ahead of himself, thus delivering it to the devil. However, the latter had expected a human soul, and when he saw that he had been deceived he angrily grabbed the rooster, ripped it apart, and threw it through the bridge, thus causing the two holes that to the present day cannot be mortared shut. Any repair work that is completed during the day just falls apart the next night.
A golden rooster on an iron bar still stands as the bridge's emblem.
A famous master builder and his journeyman, while building the Bamberg Cathedral's tower and the Bamberg Bridge, entered into a wager which could finish first. When the master was almost finished, the journeyman was still far behind, so the latter made a pact with the devil, that he should quickly build the bridge. In return, the devil would receive the first living being to cross the bridge.
The devil quickly went to work and was finished within a short time. Then the journeyman fetched a rooster and chased it across the bridge. The devil angrily departed with it.
The master builder of the tower was so irritated with the early completion of the bridge that in his dismay he threw himself from the tower.
In Lake Galenbeck (in the vicinity of Friedland) there is a tongue of land, probably artificial, that stretches about to the middle of the lake. It is called the devil's bridge, and is said to be the remains of a bridge started, but never completed, by the devil.
A shepherd had to drive his herd completely around the lake in order to reach his pasture. This annoyed him, and one day he wished with a curse that a bridge went across the lake. He had scarcely uttered this wish when a man appeared before him. The man promised to build a bridge in one night, before the rooster crowed three times, under the condition that the shepherd would then belong to him. The shepherd entered into this agreement.
That evening when he arrived home, he told his wife what had happened. She said nothing, but at midnight she went to the chicken coop and awakened the rooster, who thought that it was already morning, and crowed three times.
The devil heard this. He was not finished with his work, and angrily flew off through the air without completing the bridge.
A Swiss herdsman who often visited his girlfriend had either to make his way across the Reuss River with great difficulty or to take a long detour in order to see her.
It happened that once he was standing on a very high precipice when he spoke out angrily: "I wish that the devil were here to make me a bridge to the other side!"
In an instant the devil was standing beside him, and said: "If you will promise me the first living thing that walks across it, I will build a bridge for you that you can use from now on to go across and back. The herdsman agreed, and in a few moments the bridge was finished. However, the herdsman drove a chamois across the bridge ahead of himself, and he followed along behind.
The deceived devil ripped the animal apart and threw the pieces from precipice.
One day in the olden time, old Megan of Llandunach stood by the side of the river Mynach feeling very sorry for herself.
The Mynach was in flood, and roared down the wooded dingle in five successive falls, tumbling over three hundred feet in less than no time. Just below the place where Megan was standing, there was a great cauldron in which the water whirled, boiled, and hissed as if troubled by some evil spirit. From the cauldron the river rushed and swirled down a narrow, deep ravine, and if the old woman had had an eye for the beauties of nature, the sight of the seething pot and the long shadowy cleft would have made her feel joyous rather than sorrowful.
But Megan at this time cared for none of these things, because her one and only cow was on the wrong side of the ravine, and her thoughts were centered on the horned beast which was cropping the green grass carelessly just as if it made no difference what side of the river it was on. How the wrong-headed animal had got there Megan could not guess, and still less did she know how to get it back.
As there was no one else to talk to, she talked to herself. "Oh dear, what shall I do?" she said.
"What is the matter, Megan?" said a voice behind her.
She turned round and saw a man cowled like a monk and with a rosary at his belt. She had not heard anyone coming, but the noise of the waters boiling over and through the rocks, she reflected, might easily have drowned the sound of any footsteps. And in any case, she was so troubled about her cow that she could not stop to wonder how the stranger had come up.
"I am ruined," said Megan. "There is my one and only cow, the sole support of my old age, on the other side of the river, and I don't know how to get her back again. Oh dear, oh dear, I am ruined."
"Don't you worry about that," said the monk. "I'll get her back for you."
"How can you?" asked Megan, greatly surprised.
"I'll tell you," answered the stranger. "It is one of my amusements to build bridges, and if you like, I'll throw a bridge across this chasm for you."
"Well, indeed," said the old woman, "nothing would please me better. But how am I to pay you? I am sure you will want a great deal for a job like this, and I am so poor that I have no money to spare, look you, no indeed."
"I am very easily satisfied," said the monk. "Just let me have the first living thing that crosses the bridge after I have finished it, and I shall be content."
Megan agreed to this, and the monk told her to go back to her cottage and wait there until he should call for her.
Now, Megan was not half such a fool as she looked, and she had noticed, while talking to the kind and obliging stranger, that there was something rather peculiar about his foot. She had a suspicion, too, that his knees were behind instead of being in front, and while she was waiting for the summons, she thought so hard that it made her head ache.
By the time she was halloed for, she had hit upon a plan. She threw some crusts to her little dog to make him follow her, and took a loaf of bread under her shawl to the riverside.
"There's a bridge for you," said the monk, pointing proudly to a fine span bestriding the yawning chasm. And it really was something to be proud of.
"H'm, yes," said Megan, looking doubtfully at it. "Yes, it is a bridge. But is it strong?"
"Strong?" said the builder, indignantly. "Of course it is strong."
"Will it hold the weight of this loaf?" asked Megan, bringing the bread out for underneath her shawl.
The monk laughed scornfully. "Hold the weight of this loaf? Throw it on and see. Ha, ha!"
So Megan rolled the loaf right across the bridge, and the little black cur scampered after it.
"Yes, it will do," said Megan. "And, kind sir, my little dog is the first live thing to cross the bridge. You are welcome to him, and I thank you very much for all the trouble you have taken."
"Tut, the silly dog is no good to me," said the stranger, very crossly, and with that he vanished into space.
From the smell of brimstone which he had left behind him, Megan knew that, as she had suspected, it was the devil whom she had outwitted.
And this is how the Bad Man's Bridge came to be built.
The highway between Pateley Bridge and Grassington crosses, in the parish of Burnsall, the deep dell in which runs the small river Dibb, or Dibble, by a bridge known in legend as the Devil's Bridge. It might reasonably be supposed that Deep-Dell Bridge, or Dibble Bridge, was the correct and desirable designation, but legend and local tradition will by no means have it so, and account for the less pleasant name in the following manner.
In the days when Fountain's Abbey was in its prime, a shoemaker and small tenant of part of the abbey lands, named Ralph Calvert, resided at Thorp-sub-Montem, and journeyed twice a year along this road to pay his rent to the abbot, dispose of the fruits of his six months' handiwork, and return the shoes entrusted to him on his previous visit for repair, and bring back with him, on his return, a bag well filled with others that needed his attention.
The night before setting out on one of these occasions, he had a fearful dream, in which he struggled with the devil, who, in this wild, rocky ravine, amid unpleasant surroundings, endeavored to thrust Ralph into a bag, similar to the one in which he carried his stock-in-trade. This he and his wife feared boded no good. In the morning, however, he started on his journey, and duly reached the abbey, assisted at the service, did his business with the abbot and brethren, and then started, with his well filled bag, on his return homewards.
When he arrived near home, in the deep ravine, where on previous occasions he had found but a small brook which he could easily ford, he now found a mountain torrent, through which he only with difficulty and some danger made his way. Having accomplished the passage, he sat down to rest and to dry his wetted garments. As he sat and contemplated the place, he could not but recall how exactly it corresponded with the spot seen in his dream, and at which the author of evil had tried to bag him. Dwelling on this brought anything but pleasant thoughts, and to drive them away, and to divert his mind, he struck up a familiar song, in which the name of the enemy finds frequent mention, and the refrain of which was:
Sing luck-a-down, heigh down,
Ho, down derry.
He was unaware of any presence but his own. But, to his alarm, another voice than his added a further line:
Tol lol derol, darel dol, dolde derry.
Ralph thought of his dream. Then he fancied he saw the shadow of a man on the road. Then from a projecting corner of a rock he heard a voice reading over a list of delinquents in the neighborhood, with whom he must remonstrate -- Ralph's own name among the rest. Not to be caught eavesdropping, Ralph feigned sleep. But after a time was aroused by the stranger, and a long conversation ensued, the upshot of which was, after they had entered into a compact of friendship, that Satan informed the shoemaker who he was and inquired of the alarmed man if there was anything that he could do for him.
Ralph looked at the swollen torrent and thought of the danger he had lately incurred in crossing it, and of his future journeys that way to the abbey. And then he said, "I have heard that you are an able architect. I should wish you to build a bridge across this stream. I know you can do it."
At nightfall Ralph reached his home at Thorpe, and related his adventure to his wife, and added, "In spite of all that is said against him, the Evil One is an honest gentleman, and I have made him promise to build a bridge at the Gill Ford on the road to Pateley. If he fulfils his promise, St. Crispin bless him."
The news of Ralph's adventure and of the promise soon spread among the neighbors, and he had no small amount of village chaff and ridicule to meet before the eventful Saturday -- the fourth day -- arrived. At last it came.
Accompanied by thirty or forty of the villagers, Ralph made his way to the dell, where, on arrival, picture their astonishment at the sight! Lo, a beautiful and substantial bridge spanned the abyss! Surveyor, and mason, and priest pronounced it to be perfect. The latter sprinkled it with holy water, caused a cross to be placed at each approach to it, and then declared it to be safe for all Christian people to use. So it remained until the Puritan Minister of Pateley, in the time of the Commonwealth, discerning the story to be a Popish legend, caused the protecting crosses to be removed as idolatrous.
After that time, neither the original builder nor any other person seems to have thought fit to keep the bridge in "good and tenantable" repair, and in time it fell into so disreputable and dangerous a condition, that the liberal and almost magic-working native of the parish -- Sir William Craven, Lord Mayor of London in the reign of the 1st James -- took the matter in hand and built upon the old foundations a more terrestrial, but not less substantial and enduring, structure.
Still men call it the Devil's Bridge.
Regarding the building of this [Kilgrim] bridge is the following curious legend:
Many bridges having been built on this site by the inhabitants, none had been able to withstand the fury of the floods until his "Satanic Majesty" promised to build a bridge which would defy the fury of the elements, on condition that the first living creature who passed over should fall a sacrifice to his "Sable Majesty."
Long did the inhabitants consider, when the bridge was complete, as to who should be the victim. A shepherd, more wise than his neighbors, owned a dog called Grim. This man having first swum the river, whistled for the dog to follow. Poor Grim unwittingly bounded across the bridge and thus fell a victim to his "Sable Majesty."
Tradition says, from this circumstance the spot has ever since been known as Kill Grim Bridge.
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Revised August 24, 2001.