HEBDEN500 at THE BOOK CASE

BRIDGES IN BOOKS QUIZ

Where are these extracts from, who’s the author and where are the bridges located?

1. In yon strait path a thousand
May well be stopped by three.
Now who will stand on either hand
And keep the bridge with me?

• “Horatius” from The Lays of Ancient Rome by Thomas Babington Macaulay (Lord Macaulay).
• Rome.

2. Then Philip ... would go round on the shady sides of streets, and, quickly glancing about him, cross the bridge, looking on the quiet, rippling stream, the gray shimmer foretelling the coming dawn over the sea, the black masts and rigging of the still vessels against the sky.

• Sylvia’s Lovers by Elizabeth Gaskell.
• Whitby (called Monkshaven in the book)

3. They followed from the snowy bank
Those footmarks, one by one,
Into the middle of the plank;
And further there were none!

• “Lucy Gray” by William Wordsworth.
• A mill near Halifax, possibly Sowerby Bridge. Near Sterne’s Mill, says one source.

4. That could only have been a brick from the ceiling!
The bridge was starting to collapse!
But the canal swallowed its scare.
The heavy mirror reglassed itself,
And the black arch gazed up at the black arch.

• “The Long Tunnel Ceiling” from Remains of Elmet and Elmet by Ted Hughes.
• The bridge east of Mytholmroyd that carries the A646 over the canal.

5. Oh, ill-fated Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses

• “The Tay Bridge Disaster” by William McGonagall.
• Rail bridge over the Tay between Dundee city and suburb of Wormit.