Whatever about the talk at Monday's launch of the new tourist image of Ireland, the picture in this newspaper will wow prospective visitors as nothing else. And it is said to be one of the images to be used in wide promotion. It was a picture, in colour of course, of a bride standing in the middle of the famous, precarious, Carrick a Rede bridge in North Ant rim, her white veil streaming out behind at head level for about 15 feet, while the bridegroom looks on safely from the end where there is rock under him, and the bridal party even farther back.
You can see a credulous Central European, perhaps, wondering if this is a relic of some pagan Celtic culture; the testing of the bride. No doubt, the captions on the voice overs will mention that under the bridge, at about 80 feet, is what Richard Hay ward calls "the mighty Atlantic, which now sleeps, not tumbles noisily according to its moods." Even today, with rails to hold on to, the old rope bridge weaves and sways. Not for the queasy. So you could see your German friend wondering if this was a test of the bride's nerve, or maybe an indication of where she might end up if she proved unsatisfactory in any way.
All a cod, of course; the bridge has an entirely prosaic function. It is for the commercial salmon netting fishermen. Salmon come along this coast from east to west, and a few miles along towards the west is Portbraddan, from a height above which a watch is kept in season, and the lookout men can see the salmon in squadrons as they approach; the boats are ready. One snag about the mythical bride theory is that, anyway, the bridge at Carrick a Rede is taken down in autumn, when the season is over.
How long it is since the bridge was set up, Cathal Daltat is one man who would know, if anyone does. Certainly the Ordnance Survey memoirs of the 1830s wrote about it. The island, to which the bridge gives access, is "a bluff basaltic rock" of one acre, three roods and 16 perches. It had a little rich pasture on top, and a cave going into the western side 370 feet long. In good weather you could get into it by boat. In a striking phrase, the commentator says it "is one of the lions of the coast". Three feet wide and, he too, says it's 80 feet about the water. But, according to him, also used by locals for gathering seaweed going down to the north side. All levity aside, it's one, and only one, of the fascinating features of that North Antrim coast.
The first rush should be from this side of the Border.