DEVORGILLA BALIOL AND OLD BRIDGE OF DumFriEs. 119 
exhibit high-class workmanship, the ashlar being finely hewn 
and in regular courses eleven inches in height. One other 
characteristic of an early period is revealed in the proportionally 
narrow arches compared with the piers. This may be tested 
by comparison with the old bridge at Ayr, built two centuries 
later. In our bridge the average arch is only one and three- 
quarter times the width of the pier, while the arch of the Ayr 
bridge is three and a half times the width of the pier. The fol- 
lowing considerations likewise enforce acceptnce of the thirteenth 
century origin of the bridge -— 
Of all periods the thirteenth century was the most propitious 
for the accomplishment of such a work. Civilisation was ad- 
vanced, the country was prosperous and at peace, and no 
symptoms manifested themselves of the devastating War of Inde- 
pendence which shortly emerged and which impeded building 
operations in Scotland for a hundred years. 
It was pre-eminently the building age. Gothic architecture 
reached its full development, exhibiting the perfection of art, 
and of engineering feats in securing equibilibrium of the parts of 
light and airy buildings, such as had never before been seen. 
Bridges had become a necessity along the main thorough- 
fares, and there was no more important route than the great road 
leading from England to Galloway, including all the westmost 
parts of Scotland and Ireland; and the water of Nith, on 
account of its width and volume and the frequency and force of 
its floods, specially demanded provision for a dry passage from 
bank to bank; and it is hardly conceivable that a task so vital 
should be left unaccomplished. 
The bridge of Dumfries was closely associated with the 
Friars Minors, and it will be observed that the relative geo- 
graphical situation of the Friary and the Bridge points to the 
fact that the structures were parts of the same building plan. 
The foregoing circumstantial evidence: establishes, I think, 
a highly probable case in favour of the reputed era of the found- 
ing of the bridge, and must weigh in giving support to other 
proofs which it may be possible to adduce. 
I come now to Charter evidence, and as a layman am 
sensible of inability to give it adequate treatment. This, how- 
ever, is of less consequence, as Mr Moir Bryce deals with this 
aspect of the case in his book on the Grey Friars of Scotland, 
