DEVORGILLA BALIOL AND OLD BRIDGE OF DumrRiES. 115 
three with their piers and east abutment, except what remains 
of them under the street, have been razed and levelled, as was 
also an arched culvert which passed through the abutment in 
continuation of the lead or water-gang to the water wheel of 
the adjoining Sandbed mill. The bridge as it now exists, not- 
withstanding the repairs it has undergone and the rebuilding or 
partial rebuilding of two or three arches, is still in form and 
mainly in substance the original structure. Its strength is not 
greatly impaired by age, and the piers remaining, being founded 
on rock, if suitably cared for, may yet survive many generations 
of men. 
It is a structure which for several reasons is most worthy of 
being guarded from further dilapidation. Its usefulness as a 
footway over the river is to be considered ; the enhanced artistic 
display it lends to the town; its antiquity and association with 
historic events; and specially the keeping in remembrance of 
the great and good lady, its reputed founder—“ A better lady,’’ 
says an old poet, “than scho was nane, In all the yle of Mare 
Bretane.’’ 
Antiquaries and historians as Grose, Pennant, Chalmers, 
M‘Dowall, Sir Herbert Maxwell (the eminent author of the 
“History of Dumfriesshire and Galloway’’), and the latest 
historian of Scotland, Dr Andrew Lang, unanimously attribute 
the foundation to Devorgilla Baliol, Lady of Galloway, in the 
thirteenth century, and it seems desirable, in order to promote 
_ intelligent belief and induce interest in the preservation of the 
structure, to broaden the grounds on which this conclusion 
Tests. 
With this object in view, I have put together the following 
Suggestive considerations, largely from an engineering point of 
view, which seem to me to have a bearing on the subject. 
A brief notice of early bridge-building in this country will 
tend to make more clear the position of the bridge of Dumfries. 
I am indebted for information chiefly to Smiles’s “Lives of 
Engineers’? and Cosmo Innes’s “Sketches of Early Scotch 
History.’’ 
Fords and ferries, which originally served for crossing the 
Tivers, were frequently impracticable during winter, and nearly 
always unsafe; from the inconvenience attending them much 
difficulty in travelling arose and many lives were lost ; apprehen- 
