Transactions. 47 



must have taken his view-point at a considerable distance on the 

 Dumfries side, from which the precise number of arches would not 

 be seen very distinctly ; and, not believing, like Rory o' More, 

 that there's luck in odd numbers, he has given the even figures of 

 ten to his picture of the Bridge. However this may be, I produce 

 another picture taken about thirty or forty years before, which, I 

 think, gives the Bridge its due allowance of arches, neither more 

 nor less. When I state that the engraving now under notice is 

 by Francis Grose, the distinguished antiquarian author and artist 

 (at whose instance, as you all know, his admiring friend Burns 

 wrote Tam o' Shanter), you will admit, I think, that when he 

 limits the arches to nine, any evidence to the contrary, deduced 

 from an anonymous engraving, is completely neutralised. But to 

 put the matter beyond all reasonable doubt Grose measured the 

 Bridge so as to ascertain its size as a whole, and in detail, with 

 this result : " Dumfries Bridge (he says) is of stone, and consists 

 of nine arches : its measui'es are four hundred feet in length ; 

 breadth within the parapets thii'teen feet six inches ; mean width, 

 the parapets included, sixteen feet two inches ; height from the 

 top of the parapet to the water, twenty -six feet." Grose adds, 

 with reference to the picture, "This view was drawn a.d. 1747." 

 Another author who traversed the district about the same period 

 published "A Tour thro' the whole Island of Great Britain;" and 

 in the sixth edition of his work, dated 1761, he says at page 115, 

 " Dumfries was always a good town, with large streets. 

 Over the river Nith is a very tine stone bridge at this place, with 

 nine arches"; this author concurring with Grose to confute alike 

 the Baron-Munchausen-story told by Pemberton thirty years or so 

 before, and the less unreasonable but equally unreliable pictorial 

 sketch supplied by Mr Riddell. It has been conjectured by some 

 that even though the Bridge may not have had more than six 

 arches to the east of its key-stone or port, it may have had one, 

 two, or three more extending into the base of Corbelly Hill, 

 Maxwelltown ; but as I have already said, the high bank on the 

 west side rendered the further extension of the Bridge in that 

 direction unnecessary. I know that so far back as 1660 the 

 Bridge on the Maxwelltown bank was just as it now appears 

 (except any little change caused by wear and tear), and also as it 

 is depicted both by Captain Grose and Mr Riddell. You will see 

 from the two engravings that there is a two-storey tenement lean- 



