DEVORGILLA BALIOL AND OLD BriIpGE OF DumFrRiEs. 123 
its author, and if we reflect that at this period the country was 
more civilised, prosperous, and peaceful than it was at any after 
medizval time; that building in Scotland had expanded to the 
utmost limit ever attained, not only as regards stately ecclesiasti- 
cal edifices, but in the art of bridge-building also—a fact which 
has not been appreciated, thereby leading to the antiquity of the 
bridge being challenged; that a bridge over the Nith at Dum- 
fries was at the time and for the convenience of the founder 
imperatively needful; and that the characteristics of the fabric 
itself chronologically harmonise with the reputed era of its 
foundation. “The vera wrinkles Gothic in his face,’’ as Burns 
says, prove, we think, that the old bridge of Dumfries, which 
we still have, was reared six hundred and fifty years ago by a 
lady of great bounty and unbounded beneficence. 
How many and varied are the burdens this old bridge has 
borne! It has rung under the hoofs of the First Edward’s 
celebrated white charger, and the horsemen and footmen march- 
ing to and from his Galloway wars; Baliol, Comyn, and Bruce, 
and many high officers known to history trod its pavement. In 
later and evil times of the Civil War the heads of the guilty, 
and frequently of the innocent, were, as at London Bridge, here 
exposed. The heads and right arms of John Grier and William 
Welsh, fugitives from Pentland, in 1666, and in 1685 a quarter 
of Richard Rumbold, alleged to be concerned in the Ryehouse 
plot, of whom in Macaulay’s History there is a vigorous defence. 
It is pleasant to turn from such gruesome associations to 
speak a word of Robert Burns, in whose day the whole traffic of 
the town continued to be borne by the old bridge, the new one 
being opened only a year before his death. If Burns has not 
immortalised our bridge in song he has done so by frequent 
journeyings, sword-cane in hand, to and fro to the house of his 
trusty friend, John Syme of Ryedale, over, as the new bridge 
has it, “ your poor, narrow footpath of a street, where twa wheel- 
barrows tremble when they meet.’’ 
Bailie Lennox, in proposing a vote of thanks to Mr Barbour, 
said it was of great value to have an interesting translation of 
the two old Douglas charters, which bore out the tradition that 
the Old Bridge was built by Devorgilla. They hoped that Mr 
Barbour would long be spared to give similar interesting papers. 
