The genii of bridges cannot properly, I suppose, be distinguished from the genii of those rivers or ravines which the bridges span. They are usually depicted as dragons or other formidable monsters, and they are best known for the cruel toll which they exact when the bridge is a-building. The original conception is doubtless that of the river-god demanding a sacrifice, even of human life, in compensation for men’s encroachment upon his domain. The most famous of the folk-songs which celebrate such a theme is associated with ‘the Bridge of Arta,’ but many versions[693] of it have been published from different districts, and in some the names of other bridges are substituted; in Crete the story is attached to the ‘shaking bridge’ over a mountain torrent near Canea[694]; in the Peloponnese to ‘the Lady’s bridge’ over the river Ladon[695]; in the neighbourhood of Thermopylae to a bridge over the river Helláda[696]; in the island of Cos to the old bridge of Antimachia[697]. The song, in the version[698] which I select, runs thus:
‘Apprentices three-score there were, and craftsmen five and forty,
For three long years they laboured sore to build the bridge of Arta;
All the day long they builded it, each night it fell in ruin.
The craftsmen fall to loud lament, th’ apprentices to weeping:
“Alas, alas for all our toil, alack for all our labour,
That all day long we’re building it, at night it falls in ruin.”
Then from the rightmost arch thereof the demon gave them answer:
“An ye devote not human life, no wall hath sure foundation;
And now devote not orphan-child, nor wayfarer, nor stranger,