If you want to see a friend again, the full version goes, then don’t ever say goodbye to them on a bridge. As with many old-fashioned superstitions, this one confers symbolic meaning on the physical world. Rivers divide bodies of land and the bridges that spanned them were seen as a kind of no-man’s-land, belonging to neither bank and representative of separation. To part company from a friend on a bridge and each to set off for opposite banks of a river was therefore to risk being parted for ever, just as the land had been. The motives for adhering to this custom weren’t simply the mirroring of nature; what really drove their reluctance to part ways over water was their fear of the Devil fuelled by folk tales.
In the legend of the Devil’s Bridge in Cardiganshire, an old woman had become separated from her cow by a deep ravine and the Devil took advantage of her distress by offering to throw a bridge across in return for the soul of the first living creature to cross it. The old woman agreed and the Devil rubbed his hands with glee, delighted that in her panicked state of mind she’d been willing to sacrifice herself, but instead she took a crust of bread from her pocket and threw it across and her dog ran after it, angering the Devil. Similar stories are told in different parts of Europe; on the river Main in Frankfurt it’s a bridge builder who drives a rooster across ahead of him; in Switzerland, the St Gotthard Pass is spanned by ‘The Devil’s Bridge’, named after a legend about the Devil waiting to catch anyone crossing after dark.
These tales have travelled down to us in more and more diluted forms until the accepted wisdom became that crossing any bridge after dark, or being the first to cross a bridge at any time of day, meant running a gauntlet of evil sprites, trolls (incorporating the Norwegian fairytale of the Three Billy Goats Gruff) or the Devil himself. In Marie Trevelyan’s Folk Lore of Wales published in 1909 she writes: ‘Very old people always spat thrice on the ground before crossing water after dark, to avert the evil influences of spirits and witches.’ It became tradition to send an animal over a new bridge before the first human crossed and bridge builders would often leave placatory gifts of money bricked into the stonework. Even today it is still common for a new bridge to be officially ‘opened’ by an important figure in the community and for a bottle of wine to be smashed against its side to ‘bless’ all those who cross it.