Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/807

 s w i s w i 775 reaches its most complete reduction, as in adult specimens the upper incisors are absent and the lower ones worn down to the roots. III. FAMILY DICOTYLID^E. Snout as in Suidoe. Dentition : i -f, c l, p f , m f ; toted 38. Incisors rooted; upper canines directed downwards, with sharp cutting hinder edges. Toes, four on the fore feet and three on the hind feet (the fifth wanting). Stomach complex. A caecum. Confined to the New World. There is one genus, Dicotyles, with two species, D. tagac-ii, the Collared Peccary, and D. labiatus, the White- Lipped Peccary. See PECCAKY. (w. H. F.) SWINEMUNDE, a Baltic port and bathing-place on the island of Usedom in Pomerania, Prussia, is situated at the mouth of the Swine, 35 miles to the north-west of Stettin. Its broad unpaved streets and one-story houses built in the Dutch style give it an almost rustic appear- ance, although its industries, beyond some fishing, are entirely connected with its shipping. The entrance to the harbour, one of the best on the Prussian Baltic coast, is protected by two long breakwaters, and is strongly fortified. Swinemiinde lighthouse, 216 feet high, the loftiest in Germany, rises beside the new docks on the island of Wollin, on the other side of the narrow Swine. Ships drawing not more than 16 feet can proceed to Stettin, but those of heavier burden discharge or lighten at Swinemiinde, which thus stands in the relation of a fore-port to the larger city, with which it is connected by railway. Exclusive of merely passing ships, 615 vessels with a burden of 189,491 tons entered and 607 vessels with a burden of 179,336 tons cleared the port in 1880. In 1882 it possessed a fleet of 39 vessels with a burden of 5218 tons. The population in 1880 was 8478. The Swine, the central and shortest passage between the Stettiner Hatf and the Baltic Sea, was formerly flanked by the fishing villages of West and East Swine. Towards the beginning of last century it was made navigable for large ships, and Swinemiinde, which was founded on the site of West Swine in 1748, was fortified and raised to the dignity of a town by Frederick the Great in 1765. In 1775 it had 1000 inhabitants, in 1816 3191. SWINTOISr, a town in the West Biding of Yorkshire, is situated at the junction of the Dearne and Dove naviga- tion with the river Don navigation, and of the South Yorkshire and Midland railway lines, 9 miles north-east of Sheffield and 8 south-west of Doncaster. In the church of St Margaret (rebuilt in 1817) two beautiful Norman arches of the old church are preserved. There are collieries, quarries, and brickfields in the neighbourhood. A large number of persons are employed in the South Yorkshire Railway establishment for the repairing of engines and waggons. There are also flint and glass-bottle works, iron-works (for stoves, grates, fenders, and kitchen ranges), and earthenware manufactures. The town was formerly renowned for its Buckingham ware, but the manufacture has been discontinued for some years. A free warren was granted to Swinton by Henry II. King John, on his march from York to Boston, slept at Swinton old hall. The population of the urban sanitary district (area 1700 acres) in 1871 was 5150, and in 1881 it was 7612. SWINTON, a large village of Lancashire, is situated on several railway lines, 5 miles north-west of Manchester and 6 south-east of Bolton. The Swinton industrial schools, opened in February 1846, are a fine range of buildings of brick with stone facings, surrounded with grounds extend- ing to 20 acres. The church of St Peter, a fine building of stone with a lofty western tower, was erected from the designs of Sir Gilbert Scott in 1869. The manufacture of cotton and coal mining are the chief industries. Anciently a large part of Swinton was possessed by the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem. Swinton and Pendlebury form an urban sanitary district (area 2166 acres) under the government of a local board of twelve members; its population, estimated at 14,052 for 1871, amounted in 1881 to 18,107. SWITHUN, ST, bishop of Winchester from 852 to 862. The name of St Swithun, patron saint of Winchester cathedral from the 10th to the 16th century, is scarcely to be found in any contemporary document. His death is entered in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the year 861 ; and his signature is appended to several charters in Kemble's Codex Diplomaticus. Of these charters three belong to 833, 838, and some year between 860 and 862. In the first the saint signs as " Swithunus presbyter regis Egberti," in the second as "Swithunus diaconus," and in the third as " Swithunus eptscopus." Hence if the second charter be genuine the first must be spurious, and is so marked in Kemble. More than a hundred years later, when Dunstan and Ethelwold of Winchester were inaugurating their church reform and sup- planting the secular canons of the degenerate English founda- tions by monks, St Swithun was adopted as patron of the restored church at Winchester, formerly dedicated to St Peter and St Paul. His body was taken up from its almost forgotten grave outside the old monastery and transplanted to Ethelwold's new basilica on 15th July 971. Numerous miracles preceded and followed this transla- tion. "We have seen," saysone contemporary writer, "the precincts of the monastery so thronged with crowds of ailing folk that a traveller could scarcely make his way to the shrine ; and yet, after some days, so numerous were the cures that even within the church itself there were scarcely five sick people to be seen." Another writer, likewise a contemporary, claims to the saint's credit two hundred cures in the short space of ten days. The revival of St Swithun's fame gave rise to a mass of legendary literature, from which it can only be deduced that towards the end of the 10th century very little was known concerning his career. The so-called Vitas Swithuni of Lantfred and Wulstan, written about this time, hardly contain the very smallest kernel of bio- graphical fact ; and all that has in later years passed for authentic detail of St Swithun's life is extracted from a biography, ascribed with much probability to Gotzelin, a monk who came over to Eng- land with Hermann, bishop of Salisbury from 1058 to 1078. From this writer, who has perhaps preserved some fragments of genuine tradition, we learn that St Swithun was born in the reign of Egbert, and was ordained priest by Helmstan, bishop of Winchester (838-c. 852). His fame reached the king's ears, who appointed him tutor of his son Adulphus (Ethelwulf) and numbered him amongst his chief friends. Under Ethelwulf he was appointed bishop of Winchester, to which see he was consecrated by Archbishop Ceolnoth. In his new office he was remarkable for his piety and his zeal in building new churches or restoring old ones. At his request Ethelwulf gave the tenth of his royal lands to the church. His humility was such that he made his diocesan journeys on foot ; and when he gave a bantpuet he invited the poor and not the rich. He built near the eastern gate of his cathedral city a bridge whose stone arches were so strongly constructed that in Gotzelin's time they seemed a work " non leviter ruiturus." He died 2d July 862, and gave orders that he was not to be buried within the church but outside in "a vile and unworthy place." William of Malmesbury adds that, as Bishop Alhstan of Sherborne was Ethelwulf s minister for temporal, so St Swithun was for spiritual matters. The same chronicler uses a remarkable phrase in recording the bishop's prayer that his burial might be "ubi et pedibus prretereuntiurn et stillicidiis ex alto rorantibus esset obnoxius." This expression has been taken as indicating that the well-known weather myth contained in the doggrel lilies St Swithin's day if thou dost rain For forty days it will remain ; St Switliin's "day if thou be fair For forty days 'twill rain na mair had already, in the 12th century, crystallized round the name of St Swithun ; but it is doubtful if the passage lends itself by any straining to this interpretation. Mr Raine has suggested that the legend is derived from the tremendous downpour of rain that occurred, according to the Durham chroniclers, on St Swithun s day, 1315 (Hist. Dunelm., pp. xiii. 96-7). Another theory, more plausible, but historically worthless, traces it to a heavy shower by which, on the day of his translation, the saint marked his displeasure towards those who were removing his remains. This story, however, cannot be traced farther back than some two or three centuries at the outside, and is at variance with the 10th- century writers, who are all agreed that the translation took place in accordance with the saint's desire as expressed by vision. More probable is Mr Earle's suggestion that in the legend as now current