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Devil's Footsteps

Burrow Head, Wigtownshire.

Not sure if there is a cave at this location. The name Devil's Bridge actually applies not to a cave but to a natural arch just offshore. The Devil's Footsteps are hollows in the flat rock supposed to resemble cloven hoofs.

Alternative Names: Devil's Bridge?

Notes: Galloway ghost story. 'There is one story in particular of this class which Mr. Harper might safely have put in, for there is "monumental evidence" of its truth. On a flat rock beneath Burrow Head the cloven footprints of the Devil are plainly to be seen, and beside them are the footprints of a man; and stretching out into the sea from the flat rock are two or three rocky arches of a bridge. It was here that the Devil and Michael Scott danced together to celebrate the beginning of a bridge which the Devil was ging to build for Michael Scott across to the Isle of Man; but they quarrelled, and the bridge never got beyond the third arch. Mr. Harper makes no mention of the "Devil's Footsteps" in his account of the Burrow Head. It would surely have been good for the traveller, conducted by Mr. Harper to the edge of the great cliff with which Scotland ends, to know , or of Mr. Harper, in spite of the "monumental evidence" objects to the word - to believe, at least for a little while, that the Great Magician was here too, whose "words cleft Eildon hills in three," who Dante saw in Hwll: "Michele Scotto ... che veramente Delle magiche frode seppe il giuoco."

About 25 Chains S.W [South West] by W [West] of the Sheriff.

This name applies to a flat rock at the bottom of a precipice & near the high water mark having on its surface several impressions resembling the prints of a persons left foot and are of different sizes some of these have been quarried & sent to London as a natural curiosity. [Scotland's Places]