OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nine Men's Morris

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​NINE MEN’S MORRIS, known also as Morelles and Merelles, an ancient English game played with 9 counters a side on a board marked with four squares, one within the other. The middle points of the three inside squares are connected by straight lines, and, in a variation of the game, the corners also. The players, whose counters are of different colours, place these alternately one by one upon the intersections of the lines, the object of each being to get three of his own men in line, in which case he has the privilege of pounding, i.e. removing from the board, any one of his opponent’s men; although he may not take one of a row of three, unless there are no others. When all 18 counters have been placed on the board they are moved to adjacent unoccupied intersections. When all but three of a player’s men have been captured he is allowed to jump or hop to any vacant point he chooses. As soon as a player is reduced to two men he loses. In the time of Shakespeare (Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act ii. Scene 1) the game was commonly played out of doors.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ninib

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​NINIB, the ideographic designation of a solar deity of Babylonia. The phonetic designation is uncertain—perhaps Annshit. The cult of Ninib can be traced back to the oldest period of Babylonian history. In the inscriptions found at Shirgulla (or Shirpurla, also known as Lagash), he appears as Nin-girsu, that is, “the lord of Girsu,” which appears to have been a quarter of Shirgulla. He is closely associated with Bel (q.v.), or En-lil of Nippur, as whose son he is commonly designated. The combination points to the amalgamation of the district in which Ninib was worshipped with the one in which Bel was the chief deity. This district may have been Shirgulla and surrounding places, which, as we know, fell at one time under the control of the rulers of Nippur.
Ninib appears in a double capacity in the epithets bestowed on him, and in the hymns and incantations addressed to him. On the one hand he is the healing god who releases from sickness and the ban of the demons in general, and on the other he is the god of war and of the chase, armed with terrible weapons. It is not easy to reconcile these two phases, except on the assumption ​that he has absorbed in his person various minor solar deities, representing different phases of the sun, just as subsequently Shamash absorbed the attributes of practically all the minor sun-deities.
In the systematized pantheon, Ninib survives the tendency towards centralizing all sun cults in Shamash by being made the symbol of a certain phase of the sun. Whether this phase is that of the morning sun or of the springtime with which beneficent qualities are associated, or that of the noonday sun or of the summer solstice, bringing suffering and destruction in its wake, is still a matter of dispute, with the evidence on the whole in favour of the former proposition. At the same time, the possibility of a confusion between Ninib and Nergal (q.v.) must be admitted, and perhaps we are. to see the solution of the problem in the recognition of two diverse schools of theological speculation, the one assigning to Ninib the role of the spring-tide solar deity, 'the other identifying him with the sun of the summer solstice. In the astral-theological system Ninib becomes the planet Saturn. The swine seems 'to have been the animal sacred to him, or to have been one of the symbols under which he is represented. The consort of Ninib was Gula (q.v.). (M. Ja.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ninian, St

See also Saint Ninian on Wikipedia; St Ninian in the 9th Edition; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​NINIAN, ST, a Briton, probably from Strathclyde, who was trained at Rome and founded a church at Whithorn on the West side of Wigtown Bay. Whithorn has been identified with the Leukopibia of Ptolemy, but this is uncertain. Bede, writing three centuries after Ninian, ascribes the name Ad Candidam Casam to the fact that the church of Ninian was built of stone. We are told by Bede that St Ninian dedicated his church to St Martin of Tours, who died between 397 and 400, but Ailred of Rievaulx is our only authority for the statement that St Martin supplied him with masons. The population of the north shore of the Solway Firth at the beginning of the 5th century were probably either Picts or Goidels or a blend of both, and naturally hostile to the Romanized Britons. Bede records that Ninian preached among the Picts within the Mounth, which indicates that he was acquainted with the Pictish language. The legends of his work in Ireland probably arise from the influence exercised in that country by the church of Whithorn. The date of Ninian’s death is given by Archbishop Ussher as 432, but there is no authority for this statement.
See Bede, Hist. Eccl. (ed. C. Plummer, Oxford, 1896), iii., iv.; Ailred of Rievaulx, “Life of St Ninian,” in the Historians of Scotland vol. v. (Edinburgh, 1874); W. F. Skene, Celtic Scotland (Edinburgh, 1877), ii. 2 ff.; and J. Rhys, Celtic Britain (London, 1904), p. 173.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ninus

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​NINUS, in Greek mythology, the eponymous founder of Nineveh (q.v.), and thus the city itself personified. He was said to have been the son of Belos or Bel, to have conquered in seventeen years the whole of western Asia with the help of Ariaeus, king of Arabia, and to have founded the first empire. During the siege of Bactra he met Semiramis, the wife of one of his officers, Onnes, whom he took from her husband and married. The fruit of the marriage was Ninyas, i.e. “The Ninevite.” After the death of Ninus, Semiramis, who was accused of causing it, erected to him a temple-tomb, nine stades high and ten stades broad, near Babylon. According to Castor (ap. Syncell. p. 167) his reign lasted fifty-two years, its commencement falling 2189 B.C. according to Ctesias. Another Ninus is described by some authorities as the last king of Nineveh, successor of Sardanapalus.
See J. Gilmore, Fragments of the Persika of Ktesias (1888).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nimar

See also Nimar on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​NIMAR, a district of British India, in the Nerbudda division of the Central Provinces. The administrative headquarters are at Khandwa; but the capital in Mahommedan times was Burhanpur. Area, 4273 sq. m. Pop. (1901) 329,615, showing an increase of 14·2% in the decade. The district consists of two portions of the Nerbudda and Tapti valleys, separated by a section of the Satpura range, about 15 m. in breadth. On the highest peak, about 850 ft. above the plain and 1800 above sea-level, stands the fortress of Asirgarh, commanding a pass which has for centuries been the chief highway between Upper India and the Deccan. The district contains extensive forests, but the only tract reserved by government is the Punasa forest, which extends for about 120 m. along the south bank of the Nerbudda, and contains young teak, besides sáj (Terminalia tomentosa) and anjan (Hardwickia binata). The staple crops are cotton and millet; ganja or Indian hemp is also allowed to be grown under government supervision. The Great Indian Peninsula railway runs through the district, and a branch of the Rajputana line from Indore joins it at Khandwa. There are factories for ginning and pressing cotton at Khandwa, and manufacture of gold-embroidered cloth at Burhanpur.
The name Nimar, derived from that of the ancient province, is also applied to a district in the state of Indore, lying W. of the British district on both banks of the Nerbudda. Area, 3871 sq. m.; pop. (1901) 257,110. From 1823 onwards this tract, then belonging to Sindhia, was under British management; in 1861 it was ceded in full sovereignty to the British, but in 1867 it passed to Holkar as the result of an exchange of territory.
See Nimar District Gazetteer (Allahabad, 1908).
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Adams, Thomas

From volume 1 of the work.
[ W. H. H. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Addison, John

From volume 1 of the work.
[ W. H. H. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Aelsters, Georges

From volume 1 of the work.
​AELSTERS, Georges Jacques, born of a musical family at Ghent, 1770, died there 1849; carilloneur of that town from 1788 to 1839; for fifty years director of the music at the church of St. Martin, and composer of much church music still performed in Flanders, especially a 'Miserere.'
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Adlgasser, Anton

From volume 1 of the work.
[ C. F. P. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Adami da Bolsena, Andrea

From volume 1 of the work.
[ C. F. P. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Adolfati, Andrea

From volume 1 of the work.
[ M. C. C. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Adrien, Martin

From volume 1 of the work.
​ADRIEN, or ANDRIEN, Martin Joseph, called Adrien l'Ainé, born at Liége 1766; a bass singer, taking alternate parts with Chéron at the opera in Paris from 1785 to 1804; afterwards choirmaster at the opera. In March 1822 he succeeded Lainé as professor of declamation at the École Royale de Musique, and died in the following November, a victim to the exaggerated system of declamation then in vogue. His voice was harsh, and his method of singing bad, but he had merit as an actor. He composed the 'Hymne à la Victoire' on the evacuation of the French territory in 1795, and the hymn to the martyrs for liberty.
His brother (name unknown) was born at Liége 1767; published five collections of songs (Paris, 1790-1802), and was for a short time choirmaster at the Théatre Feydeau.
[ M. C. C. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Adcock, James

From volume 1 of the work.
[ W. H. H. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Adlung, Jacob

From volume 1 of the work.
[ C. F. P. ]
# A Compendium of Irish Biography/Threlkeld, Caleb

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​Threlkeld, Caleb, M.D., author of Synopsis Stirpium Hibernicarum … The first Essay of the kind in the Kingdom of Ireland (Dublin, 1727), was born in Cumberland, 31st May 1676. After studying at Glasgow, where he acquired a taste for botany, he settled near his birth-place as a dissenting clergyman. In 1712 he took the degree of Doctor of Medicine at Edinburgh, and next year, "having a straight income, and a large family, he removed to Dublin, and settled there in the united character of divine and physician." He ultimately devoted himself entirely to medicine, and became a successful and respected practitioner. He died in Mark's-alley, Dublin, 28th April 1728, aged 51, and was buried in "the new burial ground, belonging to St. Patrick's." His botanical work, above mentioned, which claimed to be the first essay of the kind attempted in Ireland, was published in Dublin the year before his death. Dr. Pulteney, in his Sketches of Botany, from which this notice is taken, says: "Threlkeld's Flora … does not contain more than 535 species. The author appears to have been better acquainted with the history of plants than with plants themselves, and seems not to have studied botany in a systematic way."
# A Compendium of Irish Biography/Tighernach

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​Tighernach, Abbot of Clonmacnoise, historian and annalist, lived in the 11th century. O' Curry says his "name stands among the first of Irish annalists … If we take into account the early period at which he wrote, the variety and extent of his knowledge, the accuracy of his details, and the scholarly criticism and excellent judgment he displays, we must agree … that not one of the countries of northern Europe can exhibit a historian of equal antiquity, learning, and judgment." O'Donovan says: "His quotations from Latin and Greek authors are numerous; and his balancing their authorities against each other manifests a degree of criticism uncommon in the iron age in which he flourished. He quotes Eusebius, Orosius, Julius Africanus, Bede, Josephus, St. Jerome, and others." Eight copies or fragments of his annals are known to exist; but no one of them is perfect. Two are in the Bodleian Library at Oxford; two in the Royal Irish Academy; one in Trinity College; two in the British Museum; and one in the library of the Earl of Ashburnham. Professor O'Curry gives a minute account of these manuscripts. Tighernach died in 1088, and was buried at Clonmacnoise.
* ↑ Four Masters, Annals of Ireland by the: Translated and Edited by John O'Donovan. 7 vols. Dublin, 1856.
* ↑ O'Curry, Eugene: Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History. Dublin, 1861.
# A Compendium of Irish Biography/Thorkil

Turgesius
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​Thorkil, or Turgesius, a Scandinavian chieftain who held sway in Ireland from about 832 to 845. It has been suggested by some writers that he was identical with Ragnar Lodbrok. He arrived with three fleets. Dr. Todd says: "He seems to have had in view a higher object than the mere plunder which influenced former depredators of his nation. He aimed at the establishment of a regular government or monarchy over his countrymen in Ireland, the foundation of a permanent colony, and the subjugation or extermination of the native chieftains. For this purpose the forces under his command, or in connexion with him, were skilfully posted on Lough Ree, at Limerick, Dundalk Bay, Carlingford, Lough Neagh, and Dublin. He appears also to have attempted the establishment of the national heathenism of his own country, in the place of the Christianity which he found in Ireland … With this view he placed his wife, Ota, at Clonmacnoise, at that time second only to Armagh in ecclesiastical importance, who gave her audiences, or according to another reading, her oracular answers, from the high altar of the principal church of the monastery." He was reinforced from time to time by the arrival of contingents of his countrymen, but in 845 was arrested in his victorious course by Malachy I., then King of Meath, who had him drowned in Lough Owel. The romantic story of his death, told by Cambrensis, evidently an imitation of the story of Hengist's treacherous banquet to Vortigern, although repeated by Keating, is not found in any ancient Irish authority."
# A Compendium of Irish Biography/Tighe, Mary

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​Tighe, Mary, the author of Psyche and of other poems, daughter of William Blachford, was born in Ireland on 9th October 1772. Highly connected, beautiful, and gifted, she was at an early age the centre of attraction in the Viceregal court of Dublin, and in 1793 married her cousin Henry Tighe, of Rosanna, in the County of Wicklow. The union was not happy. The publication of Psyche in 1795 established her reputation as a poet. This work has been characterized as "pure, polished, sublime—the outpouring of a trammelled soul yearning to be freed from its uncongenial surroundings." In a contemporary portrait "she is depicted with rich flowing, dark-brown hair, a few tendrils of which stray upon her smooth, intellectual forehead. The eyes are of a deep blue, large and pellucid; the lower part of the face is exquisitely formed, … the general expression of the countenance is sweet, innocent, and lofty, but tinged with a look of inexpressible sadness." She was attacked with consumption, and, after wandering in search of health for some years, died at the residence of her brother-in-law, at Woodstock, in the County of Kilkenny, 24th March 18 10, aged 37, and was buried in the churchyard of Inistioge, where a monument by Flaxman marks her grave.
# A Compendium of Irish Biography/Thomson, Charles

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​Thomson, Charles, LL.D., Secretary of the United States Congress during the Revolutionary War, was born at Maghera, in the County of Londonderry, 29th November 1729. In 1741 he and three sisters landed penniless at Newcastle, Delaware. He was educated by Dr. Allison, and became teacher in a school belonging to the Society of Friends. He early enjoyed the friendship of Benjamin Franklin. In 1758 he was sent to treat with the Indians at Oswego. The Delaware tribe adopted him, and conferred on him an Indian name signifying " One who speaks truth." He consistently espoused the cause of the Revolution, and his services as Secretary of the Continental Congress from 1774 to the organization of the government under the Federal Constitution in 1789, were highly esteemed. He made copious notes of the proceedings of Congress and the progress of the Revolution; and after retiring from public life prepared a history of his own times. But his goodness of heart would not permit him to publish it, and a short time before his death he destroyed the manuscript, giving as a reason that he was unwilling to blast the reputation of families rising into repute, by placing on record the want of patriotism of their progenitors during the war. He was a good classical scholar, and was the author of a Harmony of the Gospels, a translation of the Old and New Testaments, and an Inquiry into the cause of the Alienation of the Delaware and Shawnee Indians. He died in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, 16th August 1824, aged 94.
* ↑ Biographical Dictionary—American Biography: Francis S. Drake. Boston, 1876.
* ↑ Biographical Dictionary—Lossing's Field-book of the American Revolution. 2 vols. 1852.
# A Compendium of Irish Biography/Thornton, Matthew

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​Thornton, Matthew, Colonel, one of the signers of the American Declaration of Independence, was born in Ireland in 1714. He went to America at an early age, studied medicine, and settled as a physician at Londonderry, New Hampshire. In 1745 he served as a surgeon in an expedition against Louisburg, and was appointed a colonel of militia. In 1775 he presided over the convention which assumed the government in the name of the people of the colony. He was a delegate to Congress in 1776, in which capacity he signed the Declaration of Independence. ​He held the position of Judge of the Supreme Court of New Hampshire until 1782, was subsequently a member of the House and of the Senate, and in 1785 of the Council. He died at Newburyport, Massachusetts, 24th June 1803, aged about 89..
# A Compendium of Irish Biography/Tichborne, Sir Henry

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​Tichborne, Sir Henry (son of Sir Benjamin Tichborne, ancestor of the English baronets of that name), was born in 1581. He was for some time governor of the Caatle of Lifford, and was knighted by James I. in 1623. On the rising of the Catholics in October 1641, he was commissioned by the Lords-Justices to raise a regiment of 1,000 men, and he occupied Drogheda on the 4th of November. His heroic four months' defence of the town against overwhelming forces of the Irish insurgents under Sir Felim O'Neill, until the siege was raised early in March, is fully narrated in a letter to his wife, written in 1651, which is generally to be found bound with Sir John Temple's History of the Irish Rebellion. After the northward retreat of the Irish, he followed them to Ardee, took Dundalk, and for a time occupied Carlingford. In 1642 he was made one of the Lords-Justices. On the Restoration, Charles II. constituted him Field-Marshal of his forces in Ireland. Clarendon writes of him as a man of " excellent fame." He died in 1667, aged 85, and was buried at Drogheda. [His grandson was knighted by William III. in 1694, and was in 1715 created Baron Ferrard of Beaulieu, in Louth.]
* ↑ Burke, Sir Bernard: Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited, and Extinct Peerages. London, 1866.
* ↑ Burke, Sir Bernard: Peerage and Baronetage.
* ↑ Clarendon, Earl of: History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars. 8 vols. Oxford, 1826.
* ↑ Shell, Richard Lalor, Memoirs: W. Torrens M'Cullagh. 2 vols. London, 1855.
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Duet

From volume 1 of the work.
[ E. P. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Dulcken, Louise

From volume 1 of the work.
[ G. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Dubourg, Matthew

From volume 1 of the work.
[ P. D. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Dun, Finlay

[ W. He. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Ducis, Benedictus

From volume 1 of the work.
​DUCIS, or HERTOGHS, Benedictus, a Flemish musician in the early part of the 16th century, organist of the Lady Chapel in the cathedral at Antwerp, and 'Prince de la Gilde' in the brotherhood of St. Luke in that city. He left Antwerp in 1515, and is supposed to have come to England, perhaps to the court of Henry VIII, but as his name does not appear in the lists of court musicians at that time, and no manuscript compositions of his have been found in this country, it appears that his residence here must have been very short, if not altogether mythical. His elegy on the death of Josquin (1531), and another on the death of Erasmus (1536) fix two more dates in his life. After that no more is known of him. Some German historians have claimed him as a countryman on the strength of the publication and dedication of a setting of the Odes of Horace (published at Ulm in 1539, and dedicated to the youths of that city), maintaining that this proves his residence in that city, but the dedication was more probably the work of the publisher than of the composer. His connection with Antwerp, mentioned above, was discovered not many years ago, by M. Leon de Burbure, and certainly outweighs anything said in favour of his being a German; while the internal evidence of his compositions, which bear the decided Flemish character, and very closely approach the style of Josquin, sets the matter entirely at rest.
[ J. R. S.-B. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Duddyngton, Anthony

From volume 1 of the work.
[ V. de P. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Dulcimer

From volume 1 of the work.
​DULCIMER (Fr. Tympanon; Ital. Cembalo, Timpanon, Salterio tedesco; Germ. Hachbrett). The prototype of the pianoforte, as the psaltery was of the harpsichord. These instruments were so nearly alike that one description might serve for both, were it not for the different manner of playing them, the strings of the dulcimer being set in vibration by small hammers held in the hands, while in the psaltery the sounds were produced by plectra of ivory, metal, or quill, or even the fingers of the performer. It is also no less desirable to separate in description instruments so nearly resembling each other, on account of their ultimate development into the harpsichord and pianoforte by the addition of keys. [See Harpsichord, and Pianoforte.]
Dr. Rimbault (Pianoforte, p. 23) derives dulcimer from 'dulce melos.' Perhaps the 'dulce,'—also used in the old English 'dulsate' and 'dulsacordis,' unknown instruments unless dulcimers—arose from the ability the player had to produce sweet sounds with the softer covered ends of the hammers, just as 'piano' in pianoforte suggests a similar attribute. The Italian 'Salterio tedesco' implies a German derivation for this hammer-psaltery. [See also Cembalo.] The roughness of description used by mediæval Italians in naming one form of psaltery 'strumento di porco,' pig's head, was adopted by the Germans in their faithful translation 'Schweinskopf,' and in naming a dulcimer 'Hackbrett'—a butcher's board for chopping sausage-meat.
The dulcimer is a trapeze-shaped instrument of not more than three feet in greatest width, composed of a wooden framing enclosing a wrest-plank for the tuning-pins, round which the strings are wound at one end; a soundboard ornamented with two or more sound-holes and carrying two bridges between which are the lengths of wire intended to vibrate; and a hitchpin-block for the attachment of the other ends of the strings. Two, three, four, and sometimes five strings of fine brass or iron wire are grouped for each note. [App. p.619 "English dulcimers have ten long notes of brass wire in unison strings, four or five in number, and ten shorter notes of the same. The first series, struck with hammers to the left of the right-hand bridge, is tuned
the F being natural. The second series, struck to the right of the left-hand bridge, is
the F being again natural. The remainder of the latter series, struck to the left of the left-hand bridge, gives
[ A. J. H. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Dubourg, George

From volume 1 of the work.
[ W. H. H. ]