The Devil's Bridge
The pass can be reached by crossing the Schöllenenschlucht and several bridges have been built across the River Reuss in order to facilitate this. According to the oral histories of the nearby villages, seasonal deaths resulting from drowning reached a peak in April–May of most years and thus a safer crossing was required. The original bridge (the Teufelsbrücke) built under these challenging conditions was one of so many "devil's bridges" that the legends about them form a category in the Aarne-Thompson classification system for folktales (number 1191).
The legend of this particular bridge states that the Reuss was so difficult to ford that a Swiss herdsman wished the devil would make a bridge. The Devil appeared, but required that the soul of the first to cross would be given to him. The mountaineer agreed, but drove a goat across ahead of him, fooling his adversary. Angered by this sham, the devil fetched a rock with the intention of smashing the bridge, but an old woman drew a cross on the rock so the devil couldn't lift it anymore. The rock is still there and, in 1977, 300,000 Swiss francs were spent to move the 220 ton rock by 127 m in order to make room for the new Gotthard road tunnel.
The bridge permitted traffic to follow the Reuss to its headwaters and over the saddle at the top—a continental divide between the Rhine, which flows into the North Sea and the Ticino River towards Milan, which after leaving Switzerland flows into the Po River and ultimately into the Mediterranean Sea. It carried only foot traffic and pack animals until 1775, when the first carriage made the journey on an improved road.
Read more about this topic: Gotthard Pass
Famous quotes containing the words devil and/or bridge:
“Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality,—that it never secures any moral right, but considers merely what is expedient? chooses the available candidate,—who is invariably the devil,—and what right have his constituents to be surprised, because the devil does not behave like an angel of light? What is wanted is men, not of policy, but of probity,—who recognize a higher law than the Constitution, or the decision of the majority.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What need the bridge much broader than the flood?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)