button to main menu  Otley's Guide 1823 (8th edn 1849)

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Page 178:-

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KIRKBY LONSDALE BRIDGE.- NORTH VIEW.

  Devil's Bridge, Kirkby Lonsdale
A drive of two miles brings us to KIRKBY LONSDALE BRIDGE. The date of this noble structure is lost in obscurity. Its erection has been attributed to supernatural agency. By a native poet, writing in Bentley's Miscellany, the honour is assigned to the famed Magician, Michael Scott. We shall be contented with a humbler version of its origin, extracted from the Lonsdale Magazine:
Still grand, and beautiful, and good,
Has LONSDALE BRIDGE unshaken stood,
And scorned the swollen raging flood,
For many ages;
Though antiquarians, who have tried
Some date to find, in vain have pried
In ancient pages.
Then hear what old traditions says:-
Close by the Lune in former days
Lived an old maid, queer in all her ways,
In Yorkshire bred;
Though now forgot what she was named,
For cheating she was always famed,
'Tis truly said.
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