title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: Many scholars, including Lonsdale, believe that the poem's message is too universal to require a specific event or place for inspiration, but Gray's letters suggest that there were historical influences in its composition. In particular, it is possible that Gray was interested in debates over the treatment of the poor, and that he supported the political structure of his day, which was to support the poor who worked but look down on those that refused to. However, Gray's message is incomplete, because he ignored the poor's past rebellions and struggles. The poem ignores politics to focus on various comparisons between a rural and urban life in a psychological manner. The argument between living a rural life or urban life lets Gray discuss questions that answer how he should live his own life, but the conclusion of the poem does not resolve the debate as the narrator is able to recreate himself in a manner that reconciles both types of life while arguing that poetry is capable of preserving those who have died. It is probable that Gray wanted to promote the hard work of the poor but to do nothing to change their social position. Instead of making claims of economic injustice, Gray accommodates differing political views. This is furthered by the ambiguity in many of the poem's lines, including the statement "Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood" that could be read either as Oliver Cromwell being guiltless for violence during the English Civil War or merely as villagers being compared to the guilty Cromwell. The poem's primary message is to promote the idea of "Englishness", and the pastoral English countryside. The earlier version lacks many of the later version's English aspects, especially as Gray replaced many classical figures with English ones: Cato the Younger by Hampden, Tully by Milton, and Julius Caesar by Cromwell.


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: The "Elegy" gained wide popularity almost immediately on its first publication and by the mid-twentieth century was still considered one of the best known English poems, although its status in this respect has probably declined since then. It has had several kinds of influence.


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: In choosing an "English" over a Classical setting, Gray provided a model for later poets wishing to describe England and the English countryside during the second half of the 18th century. Once Gray had set the example, any occasion would do to give a sense of the effects of time in a landscape, as for instance in the passage of the seasons as described in John Scott’s "Four Elegies, descriptive and moral" (1757). Other imitations, though avoiding overt verbal parallels, chose similar backgrounds to signal their parentage. One favourite theme was a meditation among ruins, such as John Langhorne's "Written among the ruins of Pontefract Castle" (1756), Edward Moore's “An elegy, written among the ruins of a nobleman's seat in Cornwall" (1756) and John Cunningham's "An elegy on a pile of ruins" (1761). Gray's friend William Mason chose an actual churchyard in south Wales for his "Elegy VI" (1787), adding a reference to the poet in the text. He also provided a final note explaining that the poem was written "to make it appear a day scene, and as such to contrast it with the twilight scene of my excellent Friend's Elegy".


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: A kinship between Gray's Elegy and Oliver Goldsmith's "The Deserted Village" has been recognised, although the latter was more openly political in its treatment of the rural poor and used heroic couplets, where the elegist poets kept to cross-rhymed quatrains. At first it was collected in various editions along with Gray's poem and other topographical works, but from 1873 a number of editions appeared which contained just the "Elegy" and "The Deserted Village", though sometimes with the inclusion of Goldsmith's "The Traveller" or some other single work as well. At that period an anonymous review in "The Academy" (12 December 1896) claimed that "Gray's 'Elegy' and Goldsmith's 'The Deserted Village' shine forth as the two human poems in a century of artifice."


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: The Elegy's continued influence in the 19th century provoked a response from the Romantic poets, who often attempted to define their own beliefs in reaction to Gray's. Percy Bysshe Shelley, for example, who as a schoolboy was given the exercise of translating part of the Elegy into Latin, eventually wrote his own meditation among the graves in 1815. His "A Summer Evening Churchyard, Lechlade, Gloucestershire" is metrically more inventive and written in a six-line stanza that terminates Gray's cross-rhymed quatrain with a couplet. In theme and tendency Shelley's poem closely resembles the setting of the Elegy but concludes that there is something appealing in death that frees it of terror.


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: In the Victorian period, Alfred, Lord Tennyson adopted many features of the Elegy in his own extended meditation on death, "In Memoriam". He established a ceremonial, almost religious, tone by reusing the idea of the "knell" that "tolls" to mark the coming night. This is followed with the poet narrator looking through letters of his deceased friend, echoing Gray's narrator reading the tombstones to connect to the dead. Robert Browning relied on a similar setting to the Elegy in his pastoral poem "Love Among the Ruins" which describes the desire for glory and how everything ends in death. Unlike Gray, Browning adds a female figure and argues that nothing but love matters. Thomas Hardy, who had memorised Gray's poem, took the title of his fourth novel, "Far from the Madding Crowd", from a line in it. In addition, many in his "Wessex Poems and Other Verses" (1898) contain a graveyard theme and take a similar stance to Gray, and its frontispiece depicts a graveyard.


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: It is also possible that parts of T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets" are derived from the Elegy, although Eliot believed that Gray's diction, along with 18th-century poetic diction in general, was restrictive and limited. But the "Four Quartets" cover many of the same views, and Eliot's village is similar to Gray's hamlet. There are many echoes of Gray's language throughout the "Four Quartets"; both poems rely on the yew tree as an image and use the word "twittering", which was uncommon at the time. Each of Eliot's four poems has parallels to Gray's poem, but "Little Gidding" is deeply indebted to the Elegy's meditation on a "neglected spot". Of the similarities between the poems, it is Eliot's reuse of Gray's image of "stillness" that forms the strongest parallel, an image that is essential to the poem's arguments on mortality and society.


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: On the basis of some 2000 examples, one commentator has argued that "Gray's Elegy has probably inspired more adaptations than any other poem in the language". It has also been suggested that parody acts as a kind of translation into the same tongue as the original, something that the printing history of some examples seems to confirm. One of the earliest, John Duncombe’s “An evening contemplation in a college” (1753), frequently reprinted to the end of the 18th century, was included alongside translations of the Elegy into Latin and Italian in the 1768 and 1775 Dublin editions and 1768 Cork edition of Gray's works. In the case of the American "The Political Passing Bell: An Elegy. Written in a Country Meeting House, April 1789; Parodized from Gray for the Entertainment of Those Who Laugh at All Parties" by George Richards (d.1804) and published from Boston MA, the parody was printed opposite Gray's original page by page, making the translation to the political context more obvious.


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: A shift in context was the obvious starting point in many of these works and, where sufficiently original, contributed to the author's own literary fortunes. This was the case with Edward Jerningham's "The Nunnery: an elegy in imitation of the Elegy in a Churchyard", published in 1762. Profiting by its success, Jerningham followed it up in successive years with other poems on the theme of nuns, in which the connection with Gray's work, though less close, was maintained in theme, form and emotional tone: "The Magdalens: An Elegy" (1763); "The Nun: an elegy" (1764); and “An Elegy Written Among the Ruins of an Abbey” (1765), which is derivative of the earlier poems on ruins by Moore and Cunningham. At the opposite extreme, Gray's poem provided a format for a surprising number that purport to be personal descriptions of life in gaol, starting with "An elegy in imitation of Gray, written in the King's Bench Prison by a minor" (London 1790), which is close in title to William Thomas Moncrieff’s later "Prison Thoughts: An elegy, written in the King's Bench Prison", dating from 1816 and printed in 1821. In 1809, H. P. Houghton wrote "An evening's contemplation in a French prison, being a humble imitation of Gray's Elegy" while he was a prisoner at Arras during the Napoleonic wars (London 1809). It was followed next year by the bitter "Elegy in Newgate", published in "The Satirist" in the character of the recently imprisoned William Cobbett.


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: An obvious distinction can be made between imitations meant to stand as independent works within the elegiac genre, not all of which followed Gray's wording closely, and those with a humorous or satirical purpose. The latter filled the columns in newspapers and comic magazines for the next century and a half. In 1884 some eighty of them were quoted in full or in part in Walter Hamilton's "Parodies of the works of English and American authors" (London 1884), more than those of any other work and further evidence of the poem's abiding influence. One example uncollected there was the ingenious double parody of J. C. Squire, "If Gray had had to write his Elegy in the Cemetery of Spoon River instead of in that of Stoke Poges". This was an example of how later parodies shifted their critical aim, in this case "explicitly calling attention to the formal and thematic ties which connected the 18th century work with its 20th century derivation" in Edgar Lee Masters' work. Ambrose Bierce used parody of the poem for the same critical purpose in his definition of "Elegy" in "The Devil's Dictionary", ending with the dismissive lines


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: While parody sometimes served as a special kind of translation, some translations returned the compliment by providing a parodic version of the Elegy in their endeavour to accord to the current poetic style in the host language. An extreme example was provided by the classicised French imitation by the Latin scholar John Roberts in 1875. In place of the plain English of Gray's “And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave”, he substituted the Parnassian "Tous les dons de Plutus, tous les dons de Cythère" (All the gifts of Plutus and of Cytherea) and kept this up throughout the poem in a performance that its English reviewer noted as bearing only the thinnest relation to the original.


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: The latest database of translations of the Elegy, amongst which the above version figures, records over 260 in some forty languages. As well as the principal European languages and some of the minor such as Welsh, Breton and Icelandic, they include several in Asian languages as well. Through the medium of these, Romanticism was brought to the host literatures in Europe. In Asia they provided an alternative to tradition-bound native approaches and were identified as an avenue to modernism. Study of the translations, and especially those produced soon after the poem was written, has highlighted some of the difficulties that the text presents. These include ambiguities of word order and the fact that certain languages do not allow the understated way in which Gray indicates that the poem is a personalised statement in the final line of the first stanza, “And leaves the world to darkness and to me”.


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: Some of these problems disappeared when that translation was into Classical Latin, only to be replaced by others that Gray himself raised in correspondence with Christopher Anstey, one of the first of his translators into Latin.


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: One other point, already mentioned, was how to deal with the problem of rendering the poem's fourth line. Gray remarked to Anstey, “’That leaves the world to darkness and to me’ is good English, but has not the turn of a Latin phrase, and therefore, I believe, you were in the right to drop it.” In fact, all that Anstey had dropped was reproducing an example of zeugma with a respectable Classical history, but only in favour of replicating the same understated introduction of the narrator into the scene: "et solus sub nocte relinqor" (and I alone am left under the night). Some other translators, with other priorities, found elegant means to render the original turn of speech exactly.


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: In the same year that Anstey (and his friend William Hayward Roberts) were working on their "Elegia Scripta in Coemeterio Rustico, Latine reddita" (1762), another Latin version was published by Robert Lloyd with the title "Carmen Elegiacum". Both were subsequently included in Irish collections of Gray’s poems, accompanied not only by John Duncombe’s “Evening Contemplation”, as noted earlier, but in the 1775 Dublin edition by translations from Italian sources as well. These included another Latin translation by Giovanni Costa and two into Italian by Abbate Crocci and Giuseppe Gennari. The pattern of including translations and imitations together continued into the 19th century with an 1806 bilingual edition in which a translation into French verse, signed simply L.D., appeared facing the English original page by page. However, the bulk of the book was made up of four English parodies. Duncombe's “Evening contemplation” was preceded by a parody of itself, “Nocturnal contemplations in Barham Down’s Camp”, which is filled, like Duncombe's poem, with drunken roisterers disturbing the silence. Also included were Jerningham's “The Nunnery” and J.T.R's “Nightly thoughts in the Temple”, the latter set in the gated lawyer's quarter in London.


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: Trilingual editions without such imitations were also appearing both in Britain and abroad. "Gray’s Elegy in English, French and Latin" was published from Croydon in 1788. The French author there was Pierre Guédon de Berchère and the Latin translator (like Gray and Anstey, a Cambridge graduate) was Gilbert Wakefield. In 1793 there was an Italian edition of Giuseppe Torelli's translation in rhymed quatrains which had first appeared in 1776. This was printed facing Gray's original and was succeeded by Melchiorre Cesarotti’s translation in blank verse and Giovanni Costa's Latin version, both of which dated from 1772. A French publication ingeniously followed suit by including the Elegy in an 1816 guide to the Père Lachaise Cemetery, accompanied by Torelli's Italian translation and Pierre-Joseph Charrin’s free "Le Cimetière de village".


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: Such publications were followed by multilingual collections, of which the most ambitious was Alessandro Torri's "L'elegia di Tommaso Gray sopra un cimitero di campagna tradotta dall'inglese in più lingue con varie cose finora inedite" (Verona 1819). This included four translations into Latin, of which one was Christopher Anstey's and another was Costa's; eight into Italian, where versions in prose and terza rima accompanied those already mentioned by Torelli and Cesarotti; two in French, two in German and one each in Greek and Hebrew. Even more translations were eventually added in the new edition of 1843. By that time, too, John Martin's illustrated edition of 1839 had appeared with translations into Latin, Greek, German, Italian and French, of which only the Torelli version had appeared in previous collections. What we learn from all this activity is that, as the centenary of its first publication approached, interest in Gray's Elegy continued unabated in Europe and new translations of it continued to be made.


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: Many editions of the Elegy have contained illustrations, some of considerable merit, such as those among the "Designs by Mr. Bentley, for Six Poems by Mr. T. Gray" (1753). But the work of two leading artists is particularly noteworthy. Between 1777 and 1778 William Blake was commissioned by John Flaxman to produce an illustrated set of Gray's poems as a birthday gift to his wife. These were in watercolour and included twelve for the Elegy, which appeared at the end of the volume. Another individual book was created in 1910 by the illuminator Sidney Farnsworth, hand written in italic script with a mediaeval decorative surround and more modern-looking inset illustrations.


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: Another notable illuminated edition had been created in 1846 by Owen Jones in a legible blackletter script with one decorative initial per page. Produced by chromolithography, each of its 35 pages was individually designed with two half stanzas in a box surrounded by coloured foliar and floral borders. An additional feature was the cover of deeply embossed brown leather made to imitate carved wood. A little earlier there had been a compositely illustrated work for which the librarian John Martin had been responsible. Having approached John Constable and other major artists for designs to illustrate the Elegy, these were then engraved on wood for the first edition in 1834. Some were reused in later editions, including the multilingual anthology of 1839 mentioned above. Constable's charcoal and wash study of the "ivy-mantled tower" in stanza 3 is held by the Victoria and Albert Museum, as is his watercolour study of Stoke Poges church, while the watercolour for stanza 5, in which the narrator leans on a gravestone to survey the cemetery, is held at the British Museum (see below).


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: While not an illustration in itself, Christopher Nevinson’s statement against the slaughter of World War I in his painting "Paths of Glory" (1917) takes its title from another line in the Elegy, “The paths of glory lead but to the grave”. The title had already been used two years before by Irvin S. Cobb in an account of his journalistic experiences at the start of that war. It was then taken up in the unrelated Humphrey Cobb's 1935 anti-war novel, although in this case the name was suggested for the untitled manuscript in a competition held by the publisher. His book also served in its turn as the basis for Stanley Kubrick’s film Paths of Glory, released in 1957. This example is just one more among many illustrating the imaginative currency that certain lines of the poem continue to have, over and above their original significance.


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: Since the poem is long, there have been few musical settings. Musicians during the 1780s adopted the solution of selecting only a part. W.Tindal's musical setting for voices was of the "Epitaph" (1785), which was perhaps the item performed as a trio after a recitation of the poem at the newly opened Royalty Theatre in London in 1787. At about that time too, Stephen Storace set the first two stanzas in his “The curfew tolls” for voice and keyboard, with a reprise of the first stanza at the end. At the period there were guides for the dramatic performance of such pieces involving expressive hand gestures, and they included directions for this piece. There is also an item described as "Gray's Elegy set to music" in various settings for voice accompanied by harpsichord or harp by Thomas Billington (1754–1832), although this too may have only been an excerpt. A member of the theatrical world, Billington was noted as "fond of setting the more serious and gloomier passages in English verse”


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: In 1830, a well known composer of glees, George Hargreaves, set "Full many a gem", the Elegy's fourteenth stanza, for four voices. And finally, at the other end of the century, Alfred Cellier did set the whole work in a "cantata composed expressly for the Leeds Festival, 1883". The work was “dedicated to Mrs Coleman of Stoke Park, in memory of some pleasant hours at the very spot where the scene of the elegy is supposed to be laid.” A nearly contemporary cantata was also composed by Gertrude E. Quinton as "Musa elegeia: being a setting to music of Gray's Elegy" (London, 1885).


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: The only other example yet discovered of a translation of the Elegy set to music was the few lines rendered into German by Ella Backus Behr (1897–1928) in America.


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: The immediate response to the final draft version of the poem was positive and Walpole was very pleased with the work. During the summer of 1750, Gray received so much positive support regarding the poem that he was in dismay, but did not mention it in his letters until an 18 December 1750 letter to Wharton. In the letter, Gray said,


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: The poem was praised for its universal aspects, and Gray became one of the most famous English poets of his era. Despite this, after his death only his elegy remained popular until 20th-century critics began to re-evaluate his poetry. The 18th-century writer James Beattie was said by Sir William Forbes, 6th Baronet to have written a letter to him claiming, "Of all the English poets of this age, Mr. Gray is most admired, and I think with justice; yet there are comparatively speaking but a few who know of anything of his, but his 'Church-yard Elegy,' which is by no means the best of his works."


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: There is a story that the British General James Wolfe read the poem before his troops arrived at the Plains of Abraham in September 1759 as part of the Seven Years' War. After reading the poem, he is reported to have said: "Gentlemen, I would rather have written those lines than take Quebec tomorrow." Adam Smith, in his 21st lecture on rhetoric in 1763, argued that poetry should deal with "A temper of mind that differs very little from the common tranquillity of mind is what we can best enter into, by the perusal of a small piece of a small length ... an Ode or Elegy in which there is no odds but in the measure which differ little from the common state of mind are what most please us. Such is that on the Church yard, or Eton College by Mr Grey. The Best of Horaces (tho inferior to Mr Greys) are all of this sort." Even Samuel Johnson, who knew Gray but did not like his poetry, later praised the poem when he wrote in his "Life of Gray" (1779) that it "abounds with images which find a mirror in every breast; and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo. The four stanzas beginning "Yet even these bones", are to me original: I have never seen the notions in any other place; yet he that reads them here, persuades himself that he has always felt them."


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: Johnson's general criticism prompted many others to join in the debate. Some reviewers of his "Lives of the Poets", and many of Gray's editors, thought that he was too harsh. An article in the "Annual Register" for 1782 recognised, with relation to the Elegy, "That the doctor was not over zealous to allow [Gray] the degree of praise that the public voice had universally assigned him, is, we think, sufficiently apparent"; but it went on to qualify this with the opinion that "partiality to [Gray's] beautiful elegy had perhaps allotted him a rank above his general merits." Debate over Gray's work continued into the 19th century, and Victorian critics remained unconvinced by the rest of it. At the end of the century, Matthew Arnold, in his 1881 collection of critical writings, summed up the general response: "The "Elegy" pleased; it could not but please: but Gray's poetry, on the whole, astonished his contemporaries at first more than it pleased them; it was so unfamiliar, so unlike the sort of poetry in vogue."


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: In 1882, Edmund Gosse analyzed the reception of Gray's poem: "It is curious to reflect upon the modest and careless mode in which that poem was first circulated which was destined to enjoy and to retain a higher reputation in literature than any other English poem perhaps than any other poem of the world written between Milton and Wordsworth." He continued by stressing the poem's wide acceptance: "The fame of the Elegy has spread to all countries and has exercised an influence on all the poetry of Europe, from Denmark to Italy, from France to Russia. With the exception of certain works of Byron and Shakespeare, no English poem has been so widely admired and imitated abroad and after more than a century of existence we find it as fresh as ever, when its copies, even the most popular of all those of Lamartine, are faded and tarnished." He concluded with a reinforcing claim on the poem's place in English poetry: "It possesses the charm of incomparable felicity, of a melody that is not too subtle to charm every ear, of a moral persuasiveness that appeals to every generation, and of metrical skill that in each line proclaims the master. The Elegy may almost be looked upon as the typical piece of English verse, our poem of poems; not that it is the most brilliant or original or profound lyric in our language, but because it combines in more balanced perfection than any other all the qualities that go to the production of a fine poetical effect."


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: Critics at the beginning of the 20th century believed that the poem's use of sound and tone made it great. The French critic Louis Cazamian claimed in 1927 that Gray "discovered rhythms, utilised the power of sounds, and even created evocations. The triumph of this sensibility allied to so much art is to be seen in the famous "Elegy", which from a somewhat reasoning and moralizing emotion has educed a grave, full, melodiously monotonous song, in which a century weaned from the music of the soul tasted all the sadness of eventide, of death, and of the tender musing upon self." I. A. Richards, following in 1929, declared that the merits of the poem come from its tone: "poetry, which has no other very remarkable qualities, may sometimes take very high rank simply because the poet's attitude to his listenersin view of what he has to sayis so perfect. Gray and Dryden are notable examples. Gray's "Elegy", indeed, might stand as a supreme instance to show how powerful an exquisitely adjusted tone may be. It would be difficult to maintain that the thought in this poem is either striking or original, or that its feeling is exceptional." He continued: "the "Elegy" may usefully remind us that boldness and originality are not necessities for great poetry. But these thoughts and feelings, in part because of their significance and their nearness to us, are peculiarly difficult to express without faults ... Gray, however, without overstressing any point composes a long address, perfectly accommodating his familiar feelings towards the subject and his awareness of the inevitable triteness of the only possible reflections, to the discriminating attention of his audience. And this is the source of his triumph."


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: In the 1930s and 1940s, critics emphasised the content of the poem, and some felt that it fell short of what was necessary to make it truly great. In 1930, William Empson, while praising the form of the poem as universal, argued against its merits because of its potential political message. He claimed that the poem "as the context makes clear", means that "18th-century England had no scholarship system of "carriere ouverte aux talents". This is stated as pathetic, but the reader is put into a mood in which one would not try to alter it ... By comparing the social arrangement to Nature he makes it seem inevitable, which it was not, and gives it a dignity which was undeserved. Furthermore, a gem does not mind being in a cave and a flower prefers not to be picked; we feel that man is like the flower, as short-lived, natural, and valuable, and this tricks us into feeling that he is better off without opportunities." He continued: "the truism of the reflection in the churchyard, the universality and impersonality this gives to the style, claim as if by comparison that we ought to accept the injustice of society as we do the inevitability of death." T. S. Eliot’s 1932 collection of essays contained a comparison of the elegy to the sentiment found in metaphysical poetry: "The feeling, the sensibility, expressed in the "Country Churchyard" (to say nothing of Tennyson and Browning) is cruder than that in the "Coy Mistress"." Later, in 1947, Cleanth Brooks pointed out that "In Gray's poem, the imagery does seem to be intrinsically poetic; the theme, true; the 'statement', free from ambiguity, and free from irony." After describing various aspects and complexities within the poem, Brooks provided his view on the poem's conclusion: "the reader may not be altogether convinced, as I am not altogether convinced, that the epitaph with which the poem closes is adequate. But surely its intended function is clear, and it is a necessary function if the poem is to have a structure and is not to be considered merely a loose collection of poetic passages."


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: Critics during the 1950s and 1960s generally regarded the "Elegy" as powerful, and emphasised its place as one of the great English poems. In 1955, R. W. Ketton-Cremer argued, "At the close of his greatest poem Gray was led to describe, simply and movingly, what sort of man he believed himself to be, how he had fared in his passage through the world, and what he hoped for from eternity." Regarding the status of the poem, Graham Hough in 1953 explained, "no one has ever doubted, but many have been hard put to it to explain in what its greatness consists. It is easy to point out that its thought is commonplace, that its diction and imagery are correct, noble but unoriginal, and to wonder where the immediately recognizable greatness has slipped in." Following in 1963, Martin Day argued that the poem was "perhaps the most frequently quoted short poem in English." Frank Brady, in 1965, declared, "Few English poems have been so universally admired as Gray's "Elegy", and few interpreted in such widely divergent ways." Patricia Spacks, in 1967, focused on the psychological questions in the poem and claimed that "For these implicit questions the final epitaph provides no adequate answer; perhaps this is one reason why it seems not entirely a satisfactory conclusion to the poem." She continued by praising the poem: "Gray's power as a poet derives largely from his ability to convey the inevitability and inexorability of conflict, conflict by its nature unresolvable." In 1968, Herbert Starr pointed out that the poem was "frequently referred to, with some truth, as the best known poem in the English language."


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: During the 1970s, some critics pointed out how the lines of the poems were memorable and popular while others emphasised the poem's place in the greater tradition of English poetry. W. K. Wimsatt, in 1970, suggested, "Perhaps we shall be tempted to say only that Gray transcends and outdoes Hammond and Shenstone simply because he writes a more poetic line, richer, fuller, more resonant and memorable in all the ways in which we are accustomed to analyze the poetic quality." In 1971, Charles Cudworth declared that the elegy was "a work which probably contains more famous quotations per linear inch of text than any other in the English language, not even excepting "Hamlet"." When describing how Gray's "Elegy" is not a conventional elegy, Eric Smith added in 1977, "Yet, if the poem at so many points fails to follow the conventions, why are we considering it here? the answer is partly that no study of major English elegies could well omit it. But it is also, and more importantly, that in its essentials Gray's "Elegy" touches this tradition at many points, and consideration of them is of interest to both to appreciation of the poem and to seeing how [...] they become in the later tradition essential points of reference." Also in 1977, Thomas Carper noted, "While Gray was a schoolboy at Eton, his poetry began to show a concern with parental relationships, and with his position among the great and lowly in the world [...] But in the "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" these longstanding and very human concerns have their most affecting expression." In 1978, Howard Weinbrot noted, "With all its long tradition of professional examination the poem remains distant for many readers, as if the criticism could not explain why Johnson thought that "The "Church-yard" abounds with images that find a mirrour in every mind". He continued by arguing that it is the poem's discussion of morality and death that is the source of its "enduring popularity".


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: By the 1980s, critics emphasised the power of the poem's message and technique, and it was seen as an important English poem. After analyzing the language of the poem, W. Hutchings declared in 1984, "The epitaph, then, is still making us think, still disturbing us, even as it uses the language of conventional Christianity and conventional epitaphs. Gray does not want to round his poem off neatly, because death is an experience of which we cannot be certain, but also because the logic of his syntax demands continuity rather than completion." Also in 1984, Anne Williams claimed, "ever since publication it has been both popular and universally admired. Few readers then or now would dispute Dr. Johnson's appraisal ... In the twentieth century we have remained eager to praise, yet praise has proved difficult; although tradition and general human experience affirm that the poem is a masterpiece, and although one could hardly wish a single word changed, it seems surprisingly resistant to analysis. It is lucid, and at first appears as seamless and smooth as monumental alabaster." Harold Bloom, in 1987, claimed, "What moves me most about the superb "Elegy" is the quality that, following Milton, it shares with so many of the major elegies down to Walt Whitman's ... Call this quality the pathos of a poetic death-in-life, the fear that one either has lost one's gift before life has ebbed, or that one may lose life before the poetic gift has expressed itself fully. This strong pathos of Gray's "Elegy" achieves a central position as the antithetical tradition that truly mourns primarily a loss of the self." In 1988, Morris Golden, after describing Gray as a "poet's poet" and places him "within the pantheon of those poets with whom familiarity is inescapable for anyone educated in the English language" declared that in "the 'Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard,' mankind has felt itself to be directly addressed by a very sympathetic, human voice." He later pointed out: "Gray's 'Elegy' was universally admired in his lifetime and has remained continuously the most popular of mid-eighteenth-century English poems; it is, as Gosse has called it, the standard English poem. The reason for this extraordinary unanimity of praise are as varied as the ways in which poetry can appeal. The 'Elegy' is a beautiful technical accomplishment, as can be seen even in such details as the variation of the vowel sounds or the poet's rare discretion in the choice of adjectives and adverbs. Its phrasing is both elegant and memorable, as is evident from the incorporation of much of it into the living language."


title: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

text: Modern critics emphasised the poem's use of language as a reason for its importance and popularity. In 1995, Lorna Clymer argued, "The dizzying series of displacements and substitutions of subjects, always considered a crux in Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (1751), results from a complex manipulation of epitaphic rhetoric." Later, Robert Mack, in 2000, explained that "Gray's "Elegy" is numbered high among the very greatest poems in the English tradition precisely because of its simultaneous accessibility and inscrutability." He went on to claim that the poem "was very soon to transform his life – and to transform or at least profoundly affect the development of lyric poetry in English". While analyzing the use of "death" in 18th-century poetry, David Morris, in 2001, declared the poem as "a monument in this ongoing transformation of death" and that "the poem in its quiet portraits of rural life succeeds in drawing the forgotten dead back into the community of the living."


title: Frank Capone

text: Salvatore "Frank" Capone (, ; July 16, 1895 – April 1, 1924) was an Italian-American mobster who participated in the attempted takeover of Cicero, Illinois by the Chicago Outfit. He worked in the businesses with his brothers Al Capone and Ralph Capone.


title: Frank Capone

text: Capone was born in 1895 in Brooklyn, and he was the third son of the Italian immigrants Gabriele Capone (1865–1920) and Teresa Raiola (1867-1952). He was the brother of Vincenzo, Ralph, Al, Ermina, John, Albert, Matthew and Mafalda Capone. Frank and his brothers Al and Ralph became mobsters. Growing up in New York, both Frank and Al became involved in the Five Points Gang with mobster John Torrio. By 1918, Torrio had moved to Chicago to help a relative defend his rackets, and Torrio soon asked Al and later Frank to join him there.


title: Frank Capone

text: By 1920, Torrio had taken charge of the South Side Gang and the Prohibition era had started. As the gang increased in power and wealth, so did Al and Frank.


title: Frank Capone

text: In 1923, Chicago voters elected a new mayor, William Dever, who proceeded to crack down on Torrio, the Capone brothers, and their South Side Gang. In response, Torrio tasked Al with creating speakeasies, brothels, and illegal gambling dens in Cicero, a Chicago suburb. Within a year, Capone had placed the Cicero city manager Joseph Z. Klenha and the town committeemen on the gang payroll. Frank Capone's job was to represent the gang in its dealings with the Cicero town council. Frank was mild-mannered compared to his brother Al, projecting the image of a respectable businessman, and always dressed in a neat suit.


title: Frank Capone

text: In the April 1, 1924 Cicero municipal election, Democratic Party politicians mounted a serious election challenge to Republican Klenha and his associates. To protect the gang's political control of Cicero, Frank unleashed a wave of terror on the city. He sent South Side gang members to the polling booths with submachine guns and sawed-off shotguns to make sure that local residents "voted right". Uncooperative voters were assaulted and blocked from voting. Frank led an attack on an opponent's campaign headquarters, ransacking his office and assaulting several campaign workers. One campaign worker was shot in both legs and detained with eight other campaign workers, to be released when Election Day was over.


title: Frank Capone

text: As the election day turmoil progressed, outraged Cicero citizens petitioned Cook County Judge Edmund J. Jareki for help. The Chicago Police Department (CPD) sent 70 plainclothes officers to Cicero to maintain order at the polls and Jareki swore them in as deputy sheriffs. The CPD officers did not arrive on the streets of Cicero until late afternoon, at which point they had little effect on the election-related violence.


title: Frank Capone

text: Around dusk, a detective squad led by Sergeant William Cusack pulled up to the polling station at Cicero Avenue and Twenty-second Street after spotting Frank Capone, Charlie Fischetti, and a short, heavyset man they didn't recognize. The detectives exited their car and began walking over when gunfire inexplicably erupted. Several witnesses later claimed that the gangsters never opened fire. At the later inquest, the police claimed that Frank Capone shot first; they produced a pistol with three missing rounds that they swore he used. Frank allegedly thought these officers in civilian clothing were rival gangsters. In either event, Capone was fatally shot many times by Sergeant Phillip J. McGlynn in the ensuing melee. Fischetti sprinted across a nearby vacant lot, only to toss down his weapon and surrender once the police caught up with him. The third gangster ran south, firing a gun in each hand, and managed to escape. An urban myth later grew that this man was none other than Al Capone. In fact, the third gunman was later positively identified as David Hedlin; the police had wounded him, as well.


title: Frank Capone

text: After Frank's death, the Chicago newspapers were full of articles either praising or condemning the CPD. A coroner's inquest later determined that Frank's killing was a justifiable shooting since Frank had been resisting arrest.


title: Frank Capone

text: On April 4, 1924, Frank Capone received an extravagant funeral, with $20,000 worth of flowers placed around the silver-plated casket and over 150 cars in the motorcade. Al purchased the flowers from a shop belonging to his North Side Gang rival, Dean O'Banion. Frank was interred at Mount Carmel Cemetery outside Chicago. The "Chicago Tribune" reported that the event was appropriate for "a fitting gentleman". Out of respect for his dead brother, Al Capone closed the gambling dens and speakeasies of Cicero for two hours during the funeral.


title: Frank Capone

text: Morgan Spector portrayed Frank Capone in the fourth season of the HBO television show "Boardwalk Empire". In the show, Frank is portrayed as charismatic and level-headed, often attempting to cool Al's temper.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: Partick Thistle Football Club are a professional football club from Glasgow, Scotland. Despite their name, the club are based at Firhill Stadium in the Maryhill area of the city, and have not played in Partick since 1908. The club have been members of the Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL) since its formation in 2013. In the 2020–21 season, Thistle won Scottish League One, the third tier of the SPFL structure, and returned to the Scottish Championship, having been relegated from there in 2019–20.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: Since 1936, Thistle have played in their distinctive red-and-yellow jerseys of varying designs, with hoops, stripes and predominantly yellow tops with red trims having been used, although in 2009 a centenary kit was launched in the original navy-blue style to commemorate 100 years at Firhill. Since 1908 the club have won the Scottish Second Division (third tier, now Scottish League One) twice and the Scottish First Division (second tier, now the Scottish Championship) six times, most recently in 2013. Thistle have won the Scottish Cup and the Scottish League Cup in 1921 and 1971 respectively.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: The club are currently managed by Ian McCall in his second spell in charge. Under Alan Archibald's management, the club achieved promotion to the newly formed Scottish Premiership in 2013, and remained there for five consecutive seasons. During this spell Thistle secured major investment and in 2017 finished in the top six of Scottish football for the first time in over three decades. Key players such as Kris Doolan broke numerous records and became one of the club's top goal scorers. Despite relegation in the 2017–18 Scottish Premiership season, Archibald remained as Thistle's manager. However, after a poor start to the 2018–19 Scottish Championship campaign Archibald's 5-year tenure came to an end. He returned to the club as McCall's assistant in 2019.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: Partick Thistle Football Club was formed in 1876 in the burgh of Partick, which was at that time administratively independent of Glasgow (Partick was not subsumed into Glasgow until 1912). The club's first recorded match (and victory) took place in February against a local junior team, named Valencia. The location of this match, and thereby Thistle's first home ground, was recorded as 'Overnewton Park', which is thought to have been located next to Overnewton Road, just south of Kelvingrove Park. In 1891, Partick Thistle joined the Scottish Football Alliance, one of several competitions set up immediately after the formation of the Scottish Football League in 1890. The club won the Second Division championship in 1897 and were elected to the First Division. The following season they were re-elected after finishing in eighth place. In 1900 they were elected back to the top level, having finished as Second Division champions again, but were relegated the following season and then promoted in second place in 1902. This would be the last time Thistle changed their division for almost 70 years. Since joining the Scottish professional leagues in 1893, Thistle had been an unpredictable side, spending four years in the First Division and five in the Second, winning promotion three times. It was during the 1902–03 Scottish Division One season that Thistle set their highest finish in the Scottish league structure, finishing 8th in the table with 19 points. In the following 33 years, they moved from home to home, using parks at Kelvingrove, Jordanvale, Muirpark, Inchview among others. In 1897 they moved to Meadowside, where they played until 1908. After being homeless for over a season, they moved to their present home, Firhill Stadium, in the Maryhill district of Glasgow. They played their first home match at Firhill, on 18 September 1909, in a 3–1 victory against Dumbarton Harp.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: In 1921 Thistle won the Scottish Cup, beating Rangers 1–0 in the final. Johnny Blair scored the only goal of the game, which was held at Celtic Park. The Jags reached the final again nine years later, facing the same opposition, but Rangers won 2–1 in a replay following a 0–0 draw in the first match. In 1935 the Jags won both the Glasgow Cup and the Charity Cup, competitions that were taken seriously at the time.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: Although it was over 30 years before Thistle achieved further cup success they not only maintained their top tier status during this period but finished third in the league in 1947–48, 1953–54 and 1962–63.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: On 23 October 1971 Davie McParland's team secured the club's most famous result against Jock Stein's Celtic in the League Cup final at Hampden Park, Glasgow. 62,470 fans watched Thistle take a dramatic 4–0 lead at half time with goals from Alex Rae, Bobby Lawrie and Jimmy Bone amongst the many emerging talents in the Thistle squad including Alan Rough, Alex Forsyth and Denis McQuade. Kenny Dalglish pulled a goal back for Celtic, however the final result was never in doubt as Thistle eased to a 4–1 victory. Ironically before the match, former BBC sport broadcaster Sam Leitch stated that "In Scotland, it's League Cup final day at Hampden Park, where Celtic meet Partick Thistle, who have no chance."


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: Thistle's fortunes on the pitch declined during the 1980s. Although the club had experienced difficult times before, having dropped into the second tier of Scottish football twice in the 1970s, they had bounced straight back up on both occasions. The relegation of 1982 led to the club's first sustained period outside the top tier since the late 19th century. Between 1986 and 1989, Thistle were owned by Ken Bates, chairman of Chelsea, whose intention was to use Thistle as a feeder club for the English team; however few players moved between the clubs during those years, which were also unsuccessful on the field (they finished 8th in the second tier for five seasons running between 1985–86 and 1989–90).


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: Although this period of exile ended with promotion in 1992, mounting financial problems, including a debt of over £1.5 million, threatened to put the club out of existence. In 1998 in particular the club was close to going bankrupt and was only kept afloat by the fan-organised "Save the Jags" campaign. Despite avoiding financial oblivion Thistle were relegated to the third tier of Scottish Football in 1997–98 and only narrowly avoided a further relegation the following season, finishing in eighth place.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: In 1999 John Lambie commenced his third period as manager of the club and under his stewardship Thistle enjoyed a brief revival, winning back-to-back promotions in 2000–01 and 2001–02, the second of which earned the club a place in the Scottish Premier League. SPL guidelines at the time stipulated that clubs would only be eligible for promotion to the league if their stadium had a minimum 10,000 seated capacity. To comply with these guidelines the terraced section at the north end of Firhill was replaced with a 2000-seat stand. Speaking in 2004, Thistle chairman Tom Hughes argued the club did not at the time require a stadium with such a large capacity and building the new stand 'seriously affected [their] competitiveness'. Thistle maintained their place in the SPL under Lambie by finishing 10th in 2002–03, despite being favourites for relegation.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: Following Lambie's retirement at the end of the 2002–03 season, Thistle struggled. Gerry Collins (Lambie's previous assistant) was sacked mid-season and replaced with joint player-managers Derek Whyte and Gerry Britton. This change was not enough to revive the team, and Thistle were relegated at the end of the 2003–04 season after Inverness, having won the First Division title, were permitted to groundshare with Aberdeen. In season 2004–05 the team continued to struggle and Whyte and Britton were dismissed mid-season. Dick Campbell, their successor, was unable to avoid relegation to the Second Division. He did return the club to the First Division the following season, through the newly introduced play-off system, having finished 4th in the league. This brought to a close the club's most unpredictable decade, in footballing terms at least: between 1996 and 2006 Thistle had been promoted three times and relegated four times. They were the second team in Scottish football to be relegated from the top flight through successive subsequent relegations, excluding those caused by league reconstruction, after St. Johnstone in the 1980s.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: Despite starting well upon returning to the First Division, Dick Campbell was sacked on 27 March 2007, following a succession of poor results. A caretaker management team of Jimmy Bone and Terry Butcher saw out the season before Ian McCall, a former player, was unveiled as manager. McCall's first season saw Thistle finish 6th in the First Division and embark on a successful Scottish Cup campaign, reaching the quarter-finals before being defeated by eventual winners Rangers after a 1–1 draw at Ibrox, Thistle lost the replay 2–0 at Firhill. League form further improved in season 2008–09 with Thistle exceeding expectations to finish 2nd in the First Division, behind St Johnstone. This season saw midfielder Gary Harkins win the Irn Bru Phenomenal Player of the Year and Northern Ireland's Jonny Tuffey become the club's first full international for several years.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: McCall quit his post as manager in April 2011, citing personal reasons. Jackie McNamara was initially appointed as caretaker manager before being made full-time manager of the club at the end of the 2010–11 season.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: McNamara and assistant Simon Donnelly guided Thistle to a sixth-place finish in 2011–12 season. The following season Thistle started well and emerged as promotion candidates, competing with Dunfermline and Greenock Morton for a place in the following season's top flight. On 29 January 2013 the club gave permission to Dundee United to speak to McNamara about becoming their new manager. The following day McNamara and his assistant Simon Donnelly resigned, to become the new management team at United. Along with Donnelly, Jackie McNamara brought goalkeeper Craig Hinchliffe, Paul Paton and Chris Erskine to Tannadice. Thistle were second in the league at the time and, because McNamara was under contract, compensation was owed to the club.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: On 30 January 2013, Alan Archibald was appointed as the club's interim manager, with former Thistle player Scott Paterson as his assistant. On 22 March, the duo were given the job on a permanent basis signing a one-year rolling contract. The following month on 20 April 2013, the club clinched promotion to the Scottish Premiership having sealed the First Division championship with a 2–0 victory away to Falkirk. The title win meant Thistle returned to the top flight of Scottish football for the first time in nine years. The team also lost the Scottish Challenge Cup final to Queen of the South on penalties in April 2013.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: Thistle's initial return to the Premiership had mixed success. The team managed to maintain a relatively positive away record, however it was months before Thistle finally secured a home win, with them beating Aberdeen 3–1 at Firhill in February 2014. Thistle managed to avoid the relegation and play-off spots, eventually finishing third-bottom, following a 4–2 win away to Hearts at Tynecastle. Thistle announced the club were completely free of debt in November 2015.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: The 2015–16 Scottish Premiership season saw Thistle secure long-term contracts for many of their key players, including Kris Doolan, Callum Booth, Tomáš Černý and Mustapha Dumbuya.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: On 7 May 2016, Thistle secured their Premiership status with a 2–0 away victory to Kilmarnock, with goals coming from Steven Lawless and Kris Doolan. This result meant that Archibald overtook former manager Davie McParland as the record holder of top-flight victories. On 8 April 2017, Thistle beat Motherwell 1–0 to secure a place in the top six for the first time since the league split was first introduced to the Scottish top flight in 2000–01.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: In the 2017–18 Scottish Premiership, Thistle finished in 11th position, narrowly avoiding 12th place with Ross County being automatically relegated. Thistle subsequently went into the Scottish Premiership play-offs against Livingston, who had finished second in the Scottish Championship in their first season of returning to the league. On 17 May 2018, Thistle lost the first leg 2–1 away at Almondvale Stadium, with Kris Doolan getting Thistle's goal. Livingston then came to face Thistle at Firhill on 20 May 2018. Livingston won the away leg 0–1 after Keaghan Jacobs scored in the 46th minute. Thistle were relegated to the Scottish Championship after a stay in the top flight of five years. Subsequently, speculation surrounded whether or not Archibald would remain as Thistle's manager. On 24 May, Thistle announced on their website Archibald would remain as Partick Thistle's manager going into the Championship next season. As a result of Thistle's poor season, a number of players were not offered a new contract by the club including captain Abdul Osman, Callum Booth, Steven Lawless, Mustapha Dumbuya, Paul McGinn and Ryan Scully. Transfer listed players were Adam Barton, Niall Keown and Miles Storey. Australian midfielder Ryan Edwards triggered a relegation contract clause, allowing him to leave the club immediately. After a poor start to their 2018–19 Scottish Championship season, Archibald was sacked as manager on 6 October 2018 following a 2–0 loss to Ross County, leaving Thistle 8th in the Championship.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: On 15 October 2018, Thistle announced that former Celtic and Scotland international Gary Caldwell had been appointed as Archibald's replacement. Chairman Jacqui Low said "Put simply, he plans to build a strong defence that allows us to then push forward and play attacking football."


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: Thistle's first season in the Scottish Championship after relegation was a difficult one; the club were one of the promotion favourites but after a poor first half of the season they were sitting bottom by December and facing the possibility of back to back relegations. Caldwell performed a large squad overhaul in January including the key signing of Scott McDonald who went on to score 7 goals in 13 games. Caldwell managed to turn the season around with the club finishing in 6th position and avoiding further relegation to League One with a 3–0 away win to Queen of the South thus removing the threat of the relegation play-offs. Although safe, Caldwell released striker Kris Doolan who ended his decade-long stay at the club after being informed that his contract would not be renewed. Other players to depart included Miles Storey, Scott McDonald, Niall Keown and Souleymane Coulibaly.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: From June 2019 and during the run up to the start of the 2019–20 season, a consortium led by Chinese American billionaire Chien Lee and American businessman Paul Conway looked to buy Partick Thistle, with talks going on throughout the beginning of the season. Partick Thistle Trust, a supporters group and the single biggest shareholder at the time with 19.28% of the club, released a statement urging shareholders not to support the potential takeover bid. By November, the takeover had not taken place.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: Thistle made another poor start to the Championship season, picking up two points in the opening five games. Following a 1–1 draw away to Arbroath, Caldwell was sacked as manager.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: After the sacking of Caldwell, Partick Thistle appointed Ayr United boss Ian McCall as their manager on the 23rd of September 2019.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: On 21 November, Colin Weir completed the takeover of Partick Thistle, instead of the consortium led by Chien Lee and Paul Conway. Weir purchased a majority shareholding and a holding in land at Firhill, Weir then immediately gave the land back to the club. Weir's takeover included the plan to gift the shares of the club back to the fans, to ensure Partick Thistle became a fan owned club, with a Working Group of The PTFC Trust and Thistle Forever plus an interim board overseeing the transfer of shares. After Weir's takeover the club announced that the plans for Partick Thistle's own training ground were to be shelved with the focus instead on completing the takeover and transfer of shares to the fans. In December 2019, majority shareholder and lifelong Jags fan Weir died at the age of 71.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: McCall made several changes during the January 2020 transfer window, including bringing in the likes of Brian Graham, Zak Rudden and Darren Brownlie, with veteran striker Kenny Miller among those leaving, but Thistle continued to struggle. Thistle were knocked out of the Scottish Cup in a 2–1 home defeat against Celtic, and later lost in the Scottish Challenge Cup semi final to League One side Raith Rovers.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: Scottish football was stopped in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, at which time Thistle were in last place in the Championship (two points behind 9th place Queen of the South, although Thistle had a game in hand). A vote was subsequently taken to curtail the Championship, League One and League Two seasons, which meant that Thistle were relegated to League One. After talks of league reconstruction (which would have prevented Thistle being relegated) fell through, and following an anonymous donation, Thistle joined a legal action by Heart of Midlothian (who were relegated from the Scottish Premiership) against the SPFL. After a hearing at the Court of Session, a Scottish Football Association arbitration panel ruled that the SPFL had acted within its powers and therefore confirmed the relegations of Hearts and Thistle, meaning Thistle had now been relegated twice in the space of three seasons, dropping from the Premiership to League One.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: The 2020–21 Scottish League One season was a stop-start affair due to COVID-19 and shutdown mid-season for a number of months before restarting in March, with the clubs agreeing to a further reduced 22 game season rather than the 27 game season originally planned. After a mixed first half of the campaign in League One, Thistle went on a fantastic run of form in April, winning six games and drawing two, as they secured the 2020–21 Scottish League One title on 29 April 2021 after defeating Falkirk 5–0 (their first trophy for eight years) and promotion back to the Scottish Championship at the first time of asking. Thistle manager Ian McCall described the title win as the most satisfying of his career.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: On their return to the Championship Thistle finished 4th in the league securing a promotion play-off place. Thistle lost 3–1 on aggregate to eventual finalists Inverness in the Premiership to end the 2021–22 season.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: The first crest to appear on a Partick Thistle kit was a thistle design, and every logo since has featured a thistle. The thistle appeared first in 1902, then again in 1909. It remained until 1978, when a new logo with the thistle housed inside a roundel was used. A modernist logo with the thistle on a rectangle was introduced in 1990, and the current crest was introduced in 2008.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: The Jags flirted with a number of colour schemes in their early years. From their inception until 1900 the kits were predominantly blue with red and white trimmings. There was then a brief period in which the players wore an orange and black striped top with white shorts and black socks. This was replaced in 1905 by a colour scheme close to that used by Aston Villa, before the club reverted to the predominantly blue kits in 1909. In season 1936–37 they changed to, and settled upon, the red-yellow-and-black attire for which they are best known, this change having been triggered initially by the club borrowing kits from the local rugby union team, West of Scotland Football Club.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: In 2008–09 and 2009–10, Thistle became the first football club in Scotland to use pink as the primary colour in their away kit. In 2008–09 this took the form of silver- and pink-hooped tops.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: During the 2014–15 season, Partick Thistle supported the Breast Cancer Care Charity by wearing a black and pink away shirt, with the charity ribbon on the shirt. The partnership saw a portion of kit sale revenue being donated to Breast Cancer Care.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: For the 2019–20 season, Partick Thistle released their new away kit which featured a Rainbow flag design under the sleeves to show support for the LGBT movement. By doing so, they became the first Scottish club to incorporate the flag on a football jersey. Club executive Gerry Britton said: "We are really pleased with how the strips look and hope the supporters will like them as much as we do. We were very clear when putting together the design, that we wanted to make a statement about inclusivity and that’s what inspired the rainbow feature on the away shirt."


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: Before moving to the Maryhill area in 1909, Partick Thistle hosted their home games over numerous sites in and around Glasgow including Kelvingrove Park, Jordanvale Park and Muir Park. In 1897, the club moved to Meadowside, near the River Clyde. However, in 1908 Thistle were forced to vacate the area to make way for a new shipyard.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: After playing at numerous other grounds in Glasgow, Greenock, Port Glasgow, Kilmarnock, Edinburgh and even Aberdeen for over a season, Partick Thistle moved to their present home, Firhill Stadium, in 1909, when they purchased some spare Caledonian Railway land in Maryhill for £5,500. The stadium consists of three stands: the Main Stand which was built in 1927 and can seat around 2,900 supporters; the Jackie Husband Stand, which was built in 1994 and has a capacity of approximately 6,500; and the North Stand, renamed the "John Lambie Stand" in 2018 in tribute to the legendary club manager who died that year, which can house around 2,000 supporters. On the south side of the stadium there is a grass embankment, known to home fans as "The Bing", which had been open terracing until this was demolished in 2006 due to the stand failing to meet the criteria of Scottish Football Association safety regulations. There have been various plans to redevelop the south end of the stadium but thus far none have come to fruition.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: Firhill has been used by other football teams and for rugby over the years. Between 1986 and 1991 Clyde ground shared with Thistle, following their eviction from Shawfield. Hamilton Academical also ground shared for two spells over seven years, following them being forced out of Douglas Park in 1994. In December 2005, Firhill also became the home of Glasgow's professional rugby union team, Glasgow Warriors, when they moved from their previous base at Hughenden Stadium. After returning to Hughenden in 2006, the Warriors took up a two-year residency at Firhill from the start of the 2007–08 Celtic League season. This was extended in April 2009 for a further five years. Glasgow Warriors left Firhill after the 2011–12 season and moved to Scotstoun Stadium. During the 2012–13 season the ground was also used by Celtic's under-20 squad as their home ground, but following Thistle's promotion this stopped for the 2013–14 season.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: During the 2013–14 season, the Main Stand was re-opened to seat the high number of away supporters. In one instance, the North Stand was used for Celtic supporters as fears grew over fire dangers. During early June 2016 the Main Stand was renamed The "Colin Weir Stand" in honour of Colin Weir who was made the first ever patron of Partick Thistle after making numerous donations to the club's youth system, the "Thistle Weir Academy".


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: On the Glasgow Subway network, Kelvinbridge and St George's Cross are within 15 minutes walk of the stadium. The A81 road (Maryhill Road), leading to Firhill Road, runs from the M8 motorway and is also the route of several local buses from the city centre. and , served by trains from Glasgow Queen Street, are the nearest railway stations to Firhill, but are not particularly close; the walk between the two sites takes around 30 minutes.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: For many years, Thistle struggled to find a permanent training ground at which to base themselves. Subsequently, the club relied on independently owned facilities that usually restricted Thistle's ability to train freely.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: As of 2014, the club trained at the University of Glasgow's "Garscube Sports Complex" on the northern periphery of the city (near Bearsden, East Dunbartonshire).


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: Thistle's fortunes improved however in April 2017, the month they secured their top-six Premiership status. Millionaire couple Colin and Christine Weir invested in the club again, allowing plans for a new £4 million purpose-built training centre for the club to use as a permanent base. Thistle expected to lease this from the Weirs' company "Three Black Cats".


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: In July 2018, it was announced that the new training facility would be named after Thistle's 1971 Scottish League Cup Final manager Davie McParland, who died just days after the announcement was made. The new facility was to be located near the town Kirkintilloch. Plans for the new facility were abandoned in December 2019 as the investment money was instead used by Colin Weir to purchase the club and to operate a fan-owned business model. A short time after this announcement, Weir died at the age of 71.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: In preparation for the 2020–21 Scottish League One season, Thistle trained at Burnbrae Stadium in Milngavie, which is the home of rugby union club West of Scotland FC.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: All former players or managers listed have been inducted into either the Scottish Football Hall of Fame or Partick Thistle's own Hall of Fame. These include players who participated in both the 1921 Scottish Cup Final and the 1971 Scottish League Cup Final.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: The club has a relatively modest fanbase which is mostly centred around Northern Glasgow, although they do have pockets of fans from across the globe. Being in close proximity to a large student population the club attracts many new fans from the local universities.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: Although the club competes with neighbours Rangers and Celtic, due to the vast differences in team size and fortunes those rivalries are not reciprocated. The "Glasgow derby" is therefore contested with Clyde, sometimes dubbed the "Old Firm alternative". One of the fiercest rivals were Airdrieonians with past violent clashes between fans including Airdrie's Section B group, however this rivalry has faded with time. Strong rivalries also existed with Clydebank due to the geographic proximity and controversial ownership in the past (with plans which almost saw both clubs bankrupt); and local rivals Kilmarnock. The club has a more modern rivalry with Morton, which stemmed from the 2012–13 title race; Thistle won the First Division and Morton finished runners-up.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: Thistle fans sing songs during matches, some of which are relatively generic but others which are unique. Choruses of "He Wears Number 9", "Rellow Army", "Mary fae Maryhill", "Over Land and Sea", "Forever and Ever", "We've Followed the Thistle for Many a Day" (to the tune of "Wild Rover"), "Oh Maryhill is wonderful", "We’re a well known Glasgow Football Team", "Super Ian McCall", "We score when we want" and "Gerry Britton is the King of Spain" are commonly heard in the singing section of the home support, in the John Lambie stand.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: During their previous foray into the top flight of Scottish football in season 2002–03 attendances exceeded 6,000, whereas in the lower divisions they have tended to range between 2,000 and 4,000.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: During the Jags' title winning campaign of 2012–13, a match of significant importance was played against Greenock Morton; the attendance was 8,875 which was the biggest First Division crowd that season.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: On the day of their return to the top flight against Dundee United on 2 August 2013, the attendance at Firhill was 7,822. Average home attendances for Thistle's maiden season back in the Scottish Premiership was around 5,000, however the 2014–15 season saw a 25% drop with an average home crowd of 3,500.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: The club's main sponsor is Just Employment Law, taking over from Kingsford Capital Management. MacB resumed sponsorship of Partick Thistle in the summer of 2012, and subsequently signed a two-year extension, keeping them as main sponsors until the end of the 2014–15 season. Scottish security system company Alarmfast also started sponsoring Thistle for the 2014–15 season.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: Thistle's kit maker is Irish manufacturers O'Neills, having replaced Spanish company Joma at the start of the 2020–21 season.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: Partick Thistle's current mascot is a sun-shaped character named Kingsley, and was designed by the Turner Prize-nominated artist David Shrigley. Kingsley was unveiled on 22 June 2015 to coincide with Thistle's new sponsorship with California-based investment firm Kingsford Capital Management. Kingsley succeeded Jaggy MacBee, a bumble bee who had been the club's mascot from 2011 to 2015, as part of the club's sponsorship with Scottish beverage company MacB. Prior to that the mascot was a brightly-coloured toucan called Pee Tee.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: Kingsley gained widespread notoriety online, having trended worldwide on Twitter, as well as being publicised by major networks such as CNN and "The Washington Post", CNN and TIME Magazine. The launch, and subsequent pictures, appeared across the UK media including in The Daily Telegraph, The Times, BBC, Sky Sports, The Herald, and Talk Sport.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: Partick Thistle's general manager Ian Maxwell hailed the success of Kingsley in drawing attention to the club, stating that the worldwide interest and TV coverage amounted to the "biggest amount of publicity from a sponsorship launch in Scottish football history". The Kingsley mascot has become a major source of merchandising potential for the club, with demand outstripping supply.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: Thistle Weir Ladies Football Club was officially founded as part of the Thistle Weir Academy in 2014, having previously existed as part of the Charitable Trust for one year prior to that.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: In October 2018, the team gained promotion to the Scottish Women's Premier League 2 (SWPL 2), which is the second highest tier for women's football in Scotland. In January 2019, the club rebranded as Partick Thistle Women's Football Club.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: The team train at the Firhill Complex in Maryhill, but play their matches at Petershill Park in Springburn.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: In October 2013, millionaires and long time Thistle fans Chris and Colin Weir donated £750,000 to Partick Thistle to set up a new advanced youth academy. The academy was named the Thistle Weir Youth Academy and is run by Scott Allison. Graduates of the academy include James Penrice, Aidan Fitzpatrick, Jack Hendry and Kevin Nisbet.


title: Partick Thistle F.C.

text: Thistle have participated in European competition on three different occasions. On the first occasion, they qualified having finished third in the First Division. They progressed to the second round of the Fairs Cup before being eliminated by Spartak Brno. They qualified for the UEFA Cup in 1972–73 after winning the League Cup the previous season; Hungarian side Honvéd eliminated them in the first round. Their most recent European campaign was the 1995 UEFA Intertoto Cup, when they finished 4th with four points in Group 6.


title: Julian Jackson (boxer)

text: Julian Jackson (born September 12, 1960) is a former professional boxer from the U.S. Virgin Islands who competed from 1981 to 1998. He is a three-time world champion in two weight classes, having held the WBA super welterweight title from 1987 to 1990, and the WBC middleweight title twice between 1990 and 1995. Possessing formidable knockout power, Jackson is regarded by many as one of the hardest punchers in boxing history, pound for pound, and was ranked number 25 by "The Ring" magazine in a 2003 list of "100 Greatest Punchers". Jackson's knockout-to-win ratio stands at 89%. Jackson was elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2019.


title: Julian Jackson (boxer)

text: Jackson represented the United States Virgin Islands at the 1979 Pan American Games, losing his first fight to Jose Baret of the Dominican Republic.


title: Julian Jackson (boxer)

text: Jackson turned professional in February 1981 and had many of his early fights in Puerto Rico, where he lived for a short time, and gained a shot at WBA super welterweight champion Mike McCallum in August 1986. Jackson hurt the champion on a couple occasions in the first round, but McCallum came storming back with a barrage that forced the referee to stop matters in the second round.


title: Julian Jackson (boxer)

text: After McCallum moved up to middleweight, Jackson got his second shot at the now-vacant WBA title in November 1987 against Korean Baek In-chul, winning in three rounds. Baek would go on to win the WBA super-middleweight title a year later. Jackson made three defenses of his crown, against former IBF title-holder Buster Drayton (TKO 3), Francisco DeJesus (KO 8), and future three-time champion Terry Norris (TKO 2). All these defenses were won with a single knockout punch.


title: Julian Jackson (boxer)

text: Jackson then vacated his crown, moved up to 160 lb (73 kg), and was matched against Herol 'Bomber' Graham for the vacant WBC middleweight title. Due to Jackson's recent retina damage which had required surgery, the British Boxing Board of Control felt that Jackson was returning to boxing too soon and didn't allow him to box in the UK, so the bout was held at Torrequebrada Hotel & Casino, Benalmádena, Andalucía, Spain on 24 November 1990.


title: Julian Jackson (boxer)

text: Graham was putting on his typical savvy performance against Jackson: countering, slipping, and dancing out of the way, targeting Jackson's vulnerable eye which started to swell. After being consistently beaten to the punch for three and a half rounds, Jackson then unleashed one of the great right hands in boxing history. After Jackson connected with the punch, Graham was unconscious before he hit the canvas, and was revived only after five alarming minutes.


title: Julian Jackson (boxer)

text: Defenses against Dennis Milton (KO 1), Ismael Negron (KO 1), and Ron Collins (TKO 5) ended quickly, but Thomas Tate would make Jackson work longer and harder in their August 1992 encounter – Julian had to go to the scorecards for the first time in a title bout in winning a 12-round unanimous decision, scoring a knockdown along the way. At this point Jackson was in the middle of the pound-for-pound rankings.


title: Julian Jackson (boxer)

text: This would lead to his showdown in May 1993 with another big hitter, Gerald McClellan. This time the challenger prevailed, as Jackson failed to find the knockout blow when hitting McClellan with hard punches and controlling Rounds 2 and 3, with McClellan turning the fight around and knocking Jackson down twice in the fifth round. The second knockdown prompted the referee to stop the fight, after Jackson made it to his feet yet remained unsteady. After winning his next three fights, Jackson had another shot at the title in May 1994 in a rematch with McClellan. In a very brief fight, Jackson hit McClellan with some hard punches, but Jackson was then hurt himself and put under heavy pressure by McClellan, with McClellan flooring Jackson with a left hook to the body after 65 seconds. The referee counted Jackson out as he rose to his feet.


title: Julian Jackson (boxer)

text: After McClellan vacated the title to move up to super-middleweight, Jackson would have a second but brief reign as WBC middleweight champion, beating the previously undefeated European champion Agostino Cardamone in March 1995. Jackson had a shaky end to the first round, during which he was hurt and put under pressure until the bell by Cardamone, who wasn't considered a hard puncher. In round two however, Jackson again showed his punching power by suddenly dropping Cardamone heavily with a short right hand. Cardamone managed to make it to his feet but remained badly shaken, forcing the referee to stop the fight.


title: Julian Jackson (boxer)

text: Jackson lost the title in his first defense against Quincy Taylor in August 1995, by a sixth round stoppage. During the fight with Taylor, Jackson tore his rotator cuff and looked a shadow of his former self. Jackson would have four more low-key victories, before ending his career with losses to Verno Phillips and Anthony Jones, both in nine rounds, in 1998.


title: Julian Jackson (boxer)

text: After retiring from the sport, Jackson joined the ministry and still lives in his birthplace of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. He has continued his involvement in the local boxing field as a trainer and coach, and his three sons, Julius Jackson, Julian Jackson Jr. and John Jackson, have all competed professionally since 2009.


title: Julian Jackson (boxer)

text: Jackson was once hired by Coral World Ocean Park in St. Thomas as a way to attract visitors to the park.


title: Ian Bannen

text: Ian Edmund Bannen (29 June 1928 – 3 November 1999) was a Scottish actor with a long career in film, on stage, and on television. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in "The Flight of the Phoenix" (1965), the first Scottish actor to receive the honour, as well as two BAFTA Film Awards for his performances in Sidney Lumet's "The Offence" (1973) and John Boorman's "Hope and Glory" (1987).


title: Ian Bannen

text: On stage, he was renowned for his interpretations of William Shakespeare and Eugene O'Neill, and was an original member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He won the 1981 Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Brian Friel's "Translations".


title: Ian Bannen

text: Bannen was born in Airdrie, Lanarkshire, the son of Clare (née Galloway) and John James Bannen, a lawyer. After attending St Aloysius' College, Glasgow and Ratcliffe College, Leicestershire, Bannen served in Egypt as a corporal in the British Army. His first acting role came in a 1947 Dublin stage production of "Armlet of Jade". He became a successful figure on the London stage, making a name for himself in the plays of both Shakespeare and Eugene O'Neill. He was an original member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and appeared on Broadway.


title: Ian Bannen

text: Bannen's film debut was in the early 1950s with a small role in "Pool of London" (1951), and he quickly rose to prominence, primarily in a wide range of supporting roles. He had a very significant role as Stoker Samuel Bannister in "Yangtse Incident". During the early stages of his career he worked with the Boulting Brothers on "Private's Progress" and "Carlton-Browne of the F.O.". His performance as Crow in "The Flight of the Phoenix (1965 film)" earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, making him the first Scottish actor to receive this honour; he also received a Golden Globe nomination for New Star of the Year - Actor. That same year, he starred alongside Sean Connery in the WWII prison drama, "The Hill".


title: Ian Bannen

text: Director John Schlesinger cast him as a replacement for Alan Bates in the part of well-off homosexual doctor Daniel Hirsh in his controversial film "Sunday Bloody Sunday" (1971), after Bates was deemed unavailable to shoot. According to screenwriter Penelope Gilliatt, Bannen never felt comfortable with the part. The anxiety adversely affected his performance during the early filming. Schlesinger replaced Bannen with Peter Finch, who received an Oscar nomination for the role. Bannen later regretted this, saying not taking the role had set back his career.


title: Ian Bannen

text: Bannen received an Academy Award nomination in 1965 for Best Supporting Actor, for his performance in "The Flight of the Phoenix" as Ratbags Crow, one of the survivors of a plane crash. He also received a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as suspected child molester Kenneth Baxter in "The Offence" (1973). He also won acclaim for his roles as Brother Benedict in "Lamb" (1986), Grandfather George in John Boorman's "Hope and Glory" (1987) (for which he received a second Best Supporting Actor BAFTA nomination), the elder Robert de Brus in "Braveheart" (1995) and as the touchingly crafty villager in "Waking Ned Devine" (1998).


title: Ian Bannen

text: He was the subject of an episode of "This is Your Life" in 1999, when he was surprised by Michael Aspel.


title: Ian Bannen

text: Bannen was killed, aged 71, in a car accident near Loch Ness in November 1999. He and his wife, Marilyn Salisbury, who had been driving, were discovered in an overturned vehicle in Knockies Straight between Inverness and Fort Augustus. Marilyn, a veterinarian for the Ministry of Agriculture, suffered only minor injuries. The couple had been married since 1978. They had no children. She died on 28 August 2019.


title: Ian Bannen

text: Coatbridge College, Lanarkshire annually presents the Ian Bannen Memorial Award to the best actor or actress in its classes.


title: Ad libitum

text: In music and other performing arts, the phrase (; from Latin for 'at one's pleasure' or 'as you desire'), often shortened to "ad lib" (as an adjective or adverb) or "ad-lib" (as a verb or noun), refers to various forms of improvisation.


title: Ad libitum

text: The roughly synonymous phrase ('in accordance with [one's] good pleasure') is less common but, in its Italian form , entered the musical "lingua franca" (see below).


title: Ad libitum

text: The phrase "at liberty" is often associated mnemonically (because of the alliteration of the "lib-" syllable), although it is not the translation (there is no cognation between and ). Libido is the etymologically closer cognate known in English.


title: Ad libitum

text: As a direction in sheet music, indicates that the performer or conductor has one of a variety of types of discretion with respect to a given passage:


title: Ad libitum

text: Note that the direction (see above) has a more restricted meaning, generally referring to only the first two types of discretion. Baroque music, especially, has a written or implied , with most composers intimating the freedom the performer and conductor have.


title: Ad libitum

text: "Ad-lib" is used to describe individual moments during live theatre when an actor speaks through their character using words not found in the play's text. When the entire performance is predicated on spontaneous creation, the process is called improvisational theatre.


title: Ad libitum

text: In film, the term "ad-lib" usually refers to the interpolation of unscripted material in an otherwise scripted performance. For example, in interviews, Dustin Hoffman says he "ad-libbed" the now famous line, "I'm walking here! I'm walking here!" as "Ratso" Rizzo in "Midnight Cowboy".


title: Ad libitum

text: Live performers such as television talk-show hosts sometimes deliver material that sounds ad-libbed but is actually scripted. They may employ "ad-lib writers" to prepare such material. Some actors are also known for their ability or tendency to ad-lib, such as Peter Falk (of the series "Columbo"), who would ad-lib such mannerisms as absent-mindedness while in character.


title: Ad libitum

text: The HBO sitcom "Curb Your Enthusiasm" by Seinfeld co-creator Larry David primarily uses retroscripting and ad lib instead of scripted dialogue.


title: One Piece (season 8)

text: The eight season of the "One Piece" anime series contains The "Water Seven" Chapter. Its episodes are directed by Kōnosuke Uda and Munehisa Sakai and produced by Toei Animation. The episodes are based on Eiichirō Oda's "One Piece" manga series, and adapt the 34th through 39th volumes of its source material over thirty-five episodes. They initially ran from April 17, 2005 through April 30, 2006 on Fuji TV. Twelve DVD compilations, each containing three episodes, were released by Toei between January 10, 2007 to December 5, 2007. In October 2011, Funimation announced they had acquired this season, along with the entirety of the previous season for release as part of their own US "Season Four". The press release stated that the episodes would be featured in 16:9 widescreen. The press release also mentioned that the episodes would be released in "HD" hinting at a possible Blu-ray release, but made no direct mention of the high definition disc format.


title: One Piece (season 8)

text: The season centers around the intrigue of Water Seven as Nico Robin leaves the crew to seemingly join up with Cipher Pol No. 9, a hidden organization under the world government as the Straw Hat Pirates are accused of an attempted assassination on Iceberg, the leader of Water Seven and the Galley-La Company. Meanwhile, most of their money is stolen from Usopp by Franky's henchmen before they could use it for repairs. Later, after finding out the Going Merry was unrepairable, Usopp leaves when Luffy reluctantly admits that the ship is done for.


title: One Piece (season 8)

text: The season uses five pieces of theme music: one opening theme and four ending themes. The opening theme is by BOYSTYLE. The four ending themes are by Tackey & Tsubasa, used in the first two episodes; by Asia Engineer, used to end episodes 231 to 245; "Dear friends" by TRIPLANE, used for episodes 246 to 255; and by TVXQ, which was used for the remainder of the season. In English speaking territories, "Mirai Koukai" was replaced with "Eternal Pose" due to music licensing issues.


title: One Piece (season 8)

text: In North America, this season was recategorized as part of ""Season Four"" for its DVD release by Funimation Entertainment. The Australian "Season Four" sets were renamed "Collection 18" through "21".


title: Halo (religious iconography)

text: A halo (from the Greek , ; also known as a nimbus, aureole, glory, or gloriole) is a crown of light rays, circle or disk of light that surrounds a person in art. It has been used in the iconography of many religions to indicate holy or sacred figures, and has at various periods also been used in images of rulers and heroes. In the religious art of Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism among other religions, sacred persons may be depicted with a halo in the form of a circular glow, or flames in Asian art, around the head or around the whole body—this last one is often called a mandorla. Halos may be shown as almost any colour or combination of colours, but are most often depicted as golden, yellow or white when representing light or red when representing flames.


title: Halo (religious iconography)

text: Sumerian religious literature frequently speaks of (loaned into Akkadian as ), a "brilliant, visible glamour which is exuded by gods, heroes, sometimes by kings, and also by temples of great holiness and by gods' symbols and emblems."


title: Halo (religious iconography)

text: Homer describes a more-than-natural light around the heads of heroes in battle. Depictions of Perseus in the act of slaying Medusa, with lines radiating from his head, appear on a white-ground toiletry box and on a slightly later red-figured vase in the style of Polygnotos, . On painted wares from south Italy, radiant lines or simple haloes appear on a range of mythic figures: Lyssa, a personification of madness; a sphinx; a sea demon; and Thetis, the sea-nymph who was mother to Achilles. The Colossus of Rhodes was a statue of the sun-god Helios and had his usual radiate crown (copied for the Statue of Liberty). Hellenistic rulers are often shown wearing radiate crowns that seem clearly to imitate this effect.


title: Halo (religious iconography)

text: In India, use of the halo might date back to the second half of the second millennium BC. Two figures appliqued on a pottery vase fragment from Daimabad's Malwa phase (1600–1400 BC) have been interpreted as a holy figure resembling the later Hindu god Shiva and an attendant, both with halos surrounding their heads, Aureola have been widely used in Indian art, particularly in Buddhist iconography where it has appeared since at least the 1st century AD; the Kushan Bimaran casket in the British Museum is dated 60 AD (at least between 30BC and 200 AD). The rulers of the Kushan Empire were perhaps the earliest to give themselves haloes on their coins, and the nimbus in art may have originated in Central Asia and spread both east and west.


title: Halo (religious iconography)

text: In Chinese and Japanese Buddhist art the halo has also been used since the earliest periods in depicting the image of Amitabha Buddha and others. Tibetan Buddhism uses haloes and aureoles of many types, drawing from both Indian and Chinese traditions, extensively in statues and Thangka paintings of Buddhist saints such as Milarepa and Padmasambhava and deities. Different coloured haloes have specific meanings: orange for monks, green for the Buddha and other more elevated beings, and commonly figures have both a halo for the head, and another circular one for the body, the two often intersecting somewhere around the head or neck. Thin lines of gold often radiate outwards or inwards from the rim of the halo, and sometimes a whole halo is made up of these.


title: Halo (religious iconography)

text: In India the head halo is called or , while the full body halo is . Elaborate haloes and especially aureoles also appear in Hindu sculpture, where they tend to develop into architectural frames in which the original idea can be hard to recognise. Theravada Buddhism and Jainism did not use the halo for many centuries, but later adopted it, though less thoroughly than other religious groups.


title: Halo (religious iconography)

text: In Asian art, the nimbus is often imagined as consisting not just of light, but of flames. This type seems to first appear in Chinese bronzes of which the earliest surviving examples date from before 450. The depiction of the flames may be very formalized, as in the regular little flames on the ring aureole surrounding many Chola bronzes and other classic Hindu sculptures of divinities, or very prominent, as with the more realistic flames, and sometimes smoke, shown rising to a peak behind many Tibetan Buddhist depictions of the "wrathful aspect" of divinities, and also in Persian miniatures of the classic period. Sometimes a thin line of flames rise up from the edges of a circular halo in Buddhist examples. In Tibetan paintings the flames are often shown as blown by a wind, usually from left to right. This type is also very rarely found, and on a smaller scale, in medieval Christian art.


title: Halo (religious iconography)

text: Halos are found in Islamic art from various places and periods, especially in Persian miniatures and Moghul and Ottoman art influenced by them. Flaming halos derived from Buddhist art surround angels, and similar ones are often seen around Muhammad and other sacred human figures. From the early 17th century, plainer round haloes appear in portraits of Mughal Emperors and subsequently Rajput and Sikh rulers; despite the more local precedents art historians believe the Mughals took the motif from European religious art, though it expresses a Persian idea of the God-given charisma of kingship that is far older. The Ottomans avoided using halos for the sultans, despite their title as Caliph, and they are only seen on Chinese emperors if they are posing as Buddhist religious figures, as some felt entitled to do.


title: Halo (religious iconography)

text: The halo represents an aura or the glow of sanctity which was conventionally drawn encircling the head. It first appeared in the culture of Hellenistic Greece and Rome, possibly related to the Zoroastrian "hvarena" – "glory" or "divine lustre" – which marked the Persian kings, and may have been imported with Mithraism. Though Roman paintings have largely disappeared, save some fresco decorations, the haloed figure remains fresh in Roman mosaics. In a 2nd-century AD Roman floor mosaic preserved at Bardo, Tunisia, a haloed Poseidon appears in his chariot drawn by hippocamps. Significantly, the triton and nereid who accompany the sea-god are not haloed.


title: Halo (religious iconography)

text: In a late 2nd century AD floor mosaic from Thysdrus, El Djem, ("illustration") Apollo Helios is identified by his effulgent halo. Another haloed Apollo in mosaic, from Hadrumentum, is in the museum at Sousse. The conventions of this representation, head tilted, lips slightly parted, large-eyed, curling hair cut in locks grazing the neck, were developed in the 3rd century BC to depict Alexander the Great (Bieber 1964; Yalouris 1980). Sometime after this mosaic was executed, the Emperor began to be depicted with a halo, which was not abandoned when they became Christian; initially Christ only had one when shown on a throne as Christ in Majesty.


title: Halo (religious iconography)

text: The halo was incorporated into Early Christian art sometime in the 4th century with the earliest iconic images of Christ, initially the only figure shown with one (together with his symbol, the Lamb of God). Initially the halo was regarded by many as a representation of the "Logos" of Christ, his divine nature, and therefore in very early (before 500) depictions of Christ before his Baptism by John he tends not to be shown with a halo, it being a matter of debate whether his "Logos" was innate from conception (the Orthodox view), or acquired at Baptism (the Adoptionist view). At this period he is also shown as a child or youth in "Baptisms", though this may be a hieratic rather than an age-related representation.


title: Halo (religious iconography)

text: A cruciform halo, that is to say a halo with a cross within, or extending beyond, the circle is used to represent the persons of the Holy Trinity, especially Jesus, and especially in medieval art. In Byzantine and Orthodox images, inside each of the bars of the cross in Christ's halo is one of the Greek letters Ο Ω Ν, making up —"ho ōn", literally, "the Existing One"—indicating the divinity of Jesus. At least in later Orthodox images, each bar of this cross is composed of three lines, symbolising the dogmas of the Trinity, the oneness of God and the two natures of Christ.


title: Halo (religious iconography)

text: In mosaics in Santa Maria Maggiore (432–40) the juvenile Christ has a four-armed cross either on top of his head in the radius of the nimbus, or placed above the radius, but this is unusual. In the same mosaics the accompanying angels have haloes (as, in a continuation of the Imperial tradition, does King Herod), but not Mary and Joseph. Occasionally other figures have crossed haloes, such as the seven doves representing the Seven gifts of the Holy Spirit in the 11th century Codex Vyssegradensis Tree of Jesse (where Jesse and Isaiah also have plain haloes, as do the Ancestors of Christ in other miniatures).


title: Halo (religious iconography)

text: Later, triangular haloes are sometimes given to God the Father to represent the Trinity. When he is represented by a hand emerging from a cloud, this may be given a halo.