“At the foot of this bridge I found the local Agha, Yussuf Pasha, superintending the collection of the sheep-tax, in which as a large landowner he has an interest.” Try to visualise in all their details these pictures, passing from to-day’s tax-gatherer, a Pasha Lloyd George, into the drama of a very terrible superstition. The workmen can be fitted with fairly good primitive characters, for they do not suggest the sacrifice of a life until the bridge has fallen thrice. As to their master, he is a fiend, since he acts upon their suggestion at once, unmoved by the girl’s beauty and the frisking springtime that accompanies her. A little dead hand--and a gleaming bracelet--and the masons chanting at their work, as bridge-builders chant now in Persia: so the drama ends, or so it would end if we could not unite it with a similar legend known almost everywhere in Europe. Why in the Turkish story the workmen say, “The _bridge_ needs a life,” I do not know. Their superstition goes away from the river and its evil spirits, and from those other demons, which in olden times made winds so variable. Are we then to suppose that men have defiled the charity of bridges with bad spirits other than those that live in wilted conventions and in modern engineers? I prefer to believe that a bridge that fell three times would muddle the superstition of any workman. In fact, there are many bridges which superstition--not modesty in men--has given to the Devil, and as a rule they have been connected with the same legend, or bogie tale. Mr. Baring-Gould takes a great interest in the bridges ascribed to the Devil, and writes about them as follows in his “Book of South Wales”:-- [Illustration: PONT DU DIABLE, ST. GOTTHARD PASS] “The Devil’s Bridge is twelve miles from Aberystwyth; it is over the Afon Mynach just before its junction with the Rheidol[17].... The original bridge was constructed by the monks of Strata Florida, at what time is unknown, but legend says it was built by the Devil. Old Megan Llandunach, of Pont-y-Mynach, Had lost her only cow; Across the ravine the cow was seen, But to get it she could not tell how. “In this dilemma the Evil One appeared to her cowled as a monk, and with a rosary at his belt, and offered to cast a bridge across the chasm if she would promise him the first living being that should pass over it when complete. To this she gladly consented. The bridge was thrown across the ravine, and the Evil One stood bowing and beckoning to the old woman to come over and try it. But she was too clever to do that. She had noticed his left leg as he was engaged on the construction, and saw that the knee was behind in place of in front, and for a foot he had a hoof.