Mac is a prefix in modern Irish and Gaelic signifying 'son', as MacDonald, son of Donald. But there are numerous historical uses of the prefix in the sense of 'great', evidently a corruption of the 'mag' in 'magnus'. The Welsh equivalent is Map or Ap, the Norman equivalentFitz and the Irish O'. Research Mac
A Clan (Gaelic for a tribe or family), among the Highlanders of Scotland, consisted of the common descendants of the same progenitor, under the patriarchal control of a chief, who represented the common ancestor. The name of the clan was frequently formed of that of the original progenitor with the affix mac (son): thus the MacDonalds were the sons of Donald, and every individual of this name was considered a descendant of the founder of the clan, and a brother of every one of its members. The chief exercised his authority by right of primogeniture, as the father of his clan: the clansmen revered and served the chief with the blind devotion of children.
The clans each occupied a certain portion of the country, and hostilities with neighbouring clans were extremely common. Next in rank to the chief were a certain number of persons, commonly near relations of the chief, to whom portions of land were assigned, during pleasure or on short leases. Each of these usually had a subdivision of the clan under him, of which he was chieftain, subject, however, to the general head of the sept. The jurisdiction of the chiefs was not very accurately defined, and it was necessary to consult, in some measure, the opinions of the most influential clansmen and the general wishes of the whole body. It was latterly the policy of the government in Scotland to oblige the clans to find a representative of rank to become security at court for their good behaviour; the clans who could not procure a suitable representative, or who were unwilling to do so, were called broken clans, and existed in a sort of outlawry
The most notable instance of a proscribed and persecuted clan was that of the ancient clan MacGregor, who long continued to hold their lands by the coir a glaive, or right of the sword. The rebellions of 1715 and 1745 induced the British government to break up the connection which subsisted between the chiefs and the clansmen. The hereditary jurisdiction of the chiefs was therefore abolished, the people disarmed, and even compelled to relinquish their national dress. Few traces of this institution now remain, except such as have a merely sentimental character; thus all those who possess the same clan name may still talk of their 'chief,' though the latter have now neither land nor influence. Research Clan
Dermot Mac Murragh was the last Irish King of Leinster. He attained the throne in 1140. Having carried off the wife of O'Ruarc, prince of Leitrim, he was attacked by the latter, and after a contest of some years driven out of Ireland in 1167. He then did homage to the English king, and with the help of Richard, earl of Pembroke, recovered his kingdom in 1170, but died in the same year, and was succeeded by Pembroke, who had married his daughter. Research Dermot Mac Murragh
George Brinton McClellan was an American soldier, writer and politician. He was born in 1826 at Philadelphia and died in 1885. Educated at the University of Pennsylvania and at West Point, after graduating from West Point in 1846 he took a commission in the Engineers and served as a lieutenant under Scott in the Mexican War, and was promoted to captain for his services. After the war he worked as an instructor at West Point, leaving in 1855 and went to Europe to study military affairs, and to follow the course of the Crimean War, and he published as a result, The Armies of Europe.
For a few years he was engineer for the Illinois Central Railroad, and a railroad president. At the outbreak of the American Civil War he was appoinred major-general and entrusted with command in West Virginia and he broke up Garnett's army, and was summoned to Washington after the Bull Run catastrophe. In August, 1861, he became commander of the Army of the Potomac, and in November he succeeded General Scott as commander-in-chief. McClellan's services in organizing the army were invaluable. Excess of caution and friction between the Washington authorities and himself led to disappointments in his achievements against the enemy. He commanded through the Peninsulacampaign, executing his famous 'change of base', was relieved of the command, reappointed on September the 7th, 1862, after Pope's disasters, and commanded in the Antietamcampaign. On November the 7th he was removed and placed on waiting orders. He resigned from the army in 1864, and was the same year the Democratic candidate for President, receiving twenty-one electoral votes. He was Governor of New Jersey from 1878 to 1881. 'Little Mac' was phenomenally popular with the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac in spite of outside criticism. Research George B. McClellan
John Dryden was a British poet. He was born in 1631 at Aldwinkle All-Saints, Northamptonshire and died in 1700. He was was descended from an ancient family, his grandfather being Sir Erasmus Dryden of Canons Ashby, Northamptonshire. He was admitted a king's scholar at Westminster under the celebrated Dr. Busby, whence he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, being here elected to a scholarship.
After university he appears to have settled at London in 1657, where he acted as secretary to his cousin Sir Gilbert Pickering, a favourite of Oliver Cromwell; and on the death of the Protector he wrote his Heroic Stanzas on that event. At the Restoration, however, he hailed the return of Charle II in Astraea Redux, and from that time his devotion to the Stuarts knew no decay.
In 1661 he produced his first play, The Duke of Guise; but the first that was performed was The Wild Gallant, which appeared in 1663 and was not a success. This was followed by The Rival Ladies, and The Indian Queen, a tragedy on Montezuma in heroic verse, written in collaboration with Sir Robert Howard, whose sister, Lady Elizabeth Howard, John Dryden married in 1663. He followed up The Indian Queen with The Indian Emperor, which at once raised John Dryden to the highest pitch of public estimation, an elevation which he retained until his death.
The great fire of London put a stop for some time to theatrical exhibitions. In the interval John Dryden published the Annus Mirabilis, an historical account of the events of the year 1666, one of the most elaborate of his productions. In 1668 he also published his celebrated Essay on Dramatic Poesy - the first attempt to regulate dramatic writing. In 1668 the Maiden Queen, a tragi-comedy, was represented. This was followed in 1670 by the Tempest, an alteration from William Shakespeare, in which he was assisted by Sir William Davenant. It was received with general applause, notwithstanding the very questionable taste and propriety of the added characters.
John Dryden was shortly afterwards appointed to the offices of royal historiographer and poet-laureate, with a salary of 200 pounds a year. He now became professionally a writer for the stage, and produced many pieces, some of which have been strongly censured for their licentiousness and want of good taste. The first of his political and poetical satires, Absalom and Achitophel (Monmouth and Shaftesbury), was produced in 1681, and was followed by The Medal, a satire against sedition; and MacFlecknoe, a satire on the poet Shadwell.
On the accession of James in 1685 John Dryden became a Roman Catholic, a conversion the sincerity of which has been not unreasonably regarded with suspicion, considering the time at which it occurred. At court the new convert was received with open arms, a considerable addition was made to his pension, and he defended his new religion at the expense of the old one in a poem, The Hind and the Panther. Among his other services to the new king were a savage reply to an attack by Stillingfleet, and panegyrics on Charles and James under the title of Britannia Rediviva.
At the Revolution John Dryden was deprived of the offices of poet-laureate and historiographer, and of the certain income which these offices secured him. During the remaining ten years of his life he produced some of his best work, including his admirable translations from the classics. He published, in conjunction with Congreve, Creech, and others, a translation of Juvenal, and one of Persius entirely by himself. About a third part of Juvenal was translated by John Dryden, who wrote an essay on satire which was prefixed to the whole. His poetic translation of Virgil appeared in 1697, and, soon after that masterpiece of lyric poetry, Alexander's Feast, his Fables, etc.
He died on May the 1st, 1700, at the age of sixty-nine, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. John Dryden is unequalled as a satirist among English poets, and the best of his tragedies are unsurpassed by any since written. His poetry as a whole is more remarkable for vigour and energy than beauty, but he did much to improve English verse. He was also an admirableprosewriter. Personally he waa modest and kindly. The whole of his works, edited by Sir Walter Scott, were published in 1818 they were later re-published with additional notes, etc, by George Saintsbury. Research John Dryden
The Ingram MAC-10 is an American sub-machine-gun designed in the 1960s by Gordon B Ingram. Because of its small size and high rate of fire it is difficult to control and subsequently was rejected for use by most security and armed forces, including the SAS who tested it. The MAC-10 was originally chambered for the .45 ACPcartridge, and now the 9 mm Parabellum cartridge which is fired at between 1050 and 1150 rounds-per-minute from a 30-round box magazine. Research Ingram MAC-10
Ready, Set, Go! is a powerful desktop publishing program for the Mac with a full-featured built-in word processor. The program uses a flexible grid approach. To create a document, users choose from one of eight standard grids or customize their own. Style sheets to use with any document, automatic chaining of text blocks, and interactive facing pages gives precise control over page composition and enables fast work. Ready, Set, Go! has very strong text-handling capabilities. Its full-featured word processor, similar to MacWrite includes a 100,000 word spelling dictionary a glossary, automatic hyphenation and kerning, and search-and-replace functions. Search-and-replace and make global changes are possible based on font attributes, type styles, and point sizes of up to 255 characters. Ready, Set, Go! can import formatted text files directly from MacWrite, Microsoft Word and other word processing programs. Graphics can be imported in a variety of formats or through the Clipboard. Scaling and sizing is done through a dialog box in
which positions are defined and images sized through measured units. Defining the distance at which text should wrap around an object frame is also possible through the dialog box. The built-in graphic toolbox allows boxes, lines, rules, circles, and ovals to be drawn on a document. Research Ready, Set, Go!
Adobe GoLive 4.0 is an HTMLdesign program. The program operates on the paradigm that layout is king. It gives you as much control over the presentation of your site as possible at the cost, however, of usability. GoLive goes out of its way to protect you from the standard nomenclature and concepts of typical Web-page design. For instance, you can place layout grids for all your elements, from text to graphics, and use layers and tables to make sure that the layout is maintained. The program creates the actual code automatically in the background, and while the resulting pages appear as you laid them out, they will not be very dynamic. Other programs would do well to emulate a number of exceptional features in GoLive. Features such as Java and JavaScript support, database integration, and XML code, considered extras in other programs, are fully integrated with this program and its interface. And GoLive includes a QuickTime editor so not only can you incorporate movies into your pages, you can also coordinate them with HTML-based pages
popping up on cue in separate frames. For all its nods to graphic design, GoLive gives you access to the HTML source code in its own editor, and the Outline view treats the text like object-oriented coding. This feature is helpful if you've got object-oriented training, but not if you're accustomed only to more typical HTML coding standards. The program's interface is clean, thanks to a clever, context-sensitive Inspector that keeps open only the window being worked on. A tabbed palette contains icons for most elements, and you can drag and drop them into your design. Access to some of the most basic tools, however, is unnecessarily convoluted. Adobe GoLive 4.0 creates an environment well-suited for graphic designers, but it's likely to present a significant challenge to those versed in traditional HTML coding. Used as a vertical application with other Adobe products, it makes a great deal of sense, but be prepared to buy into that family-of-products philosophy and perhaps into the Mac platform, as well. Research Adobe GoLive 4.0
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Mac
