According to the folk ballad, the Head Builder sacrificed his wife, but another local tradition contains valuable information on who paid for the bridge. Once upon a time, a pirate ship arrived in Arta with its cargo hold full of olive oil. The people for the surrounding countryside flocked to the pirates to buy oil. Among them was a grocer from Arta, who was widely known as the Cat-Eater. The pirates sold him numerous containers full of oil. They had stolen them from another merchant but they were unaware that their hapless victim had hidden many gold coins in the oil. The lucky Cat-Eater found the coins and financed the bridge of Arta.