Charles Scribner, Jr.

When their bridge collapses during a terrible storm, the residents of a small French village are dismayed. Living in almost complete isolation, on the edge of a steep gorge, the bridge is their only contact with the outside world. When a well-dressed stranger offers to build a new bridge, in return for the soul of the first person to cross, the mayor and villagers reluctantly agree. But who will that first person be? Luckily, old Pierre the stone-mason has a few tricks up his sleeve, in this legend about outwitting the devil...

Legends featuring the Devil seem to be quite common in the French tradition, whether, as in The Devil's Bridge, they warn against making deals, or, like The Devil's Tail, they caution against accepting wishes. Charles Scribner's narrative, apparently based upon a number of different tales, is engaging and reads well. Evaline Ness, who won a Caldecott Medal for Sam, Bangs & Moonshine, contributes illustrations in her signature style, with black ink drawings, awash in a few repeating colors: wine-red, mustard, and a rather rosy pink.

Although The Devil's Bridge - originally published in 1978 - strikes me as being a little dated, with a different aesthetic style than is currently in vogue, I found both narrative and artwork appealing, and think that young folklore enthusiasts who are not wedded to the idea of "pretty" pictures, will feel the same. I was also struck by Scribner's afterword, in which he mentions the fact that many bridges in use in early medieval France would have been built in Roman times, their method of construction long forgotten, and therefore invested with supernatural significance. This seems like a likely explanation for the evolution of such tales, and is not so uncommon a story.

The classical Greeks, for instance, believed that the Bronze-Age Mycenaean palaces must have been built by giant Cyclopes, because they were made with such humongous stones. Hence the term, "Cyclopean architecture." As someone with a particular interest in the historical and anthropological interpretation of folklore, I find this sort of speculation about the possible antecedents of a given tale quite appealing, and I thank my friend Krista, for putting me on to this retelling!… (mais)