1.
Poetry of Scotland
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Much of the earliest Welsh literature was composed in or near Scotland, but only written down in Wales much later. These include The Gododdin, considered the earliest surviving verse from Scotland, very few works of Gaelic poetry survive from this period and most of these in Irish manuscripts. The Dream of the Rood, from which lines are found on the Ruthwell Cross, is the surviving fragment of Northumbrian Old English from early Medieval Scotland. In Latin early works include a Prayer for Protection attributed to St Mugint, there were probably filidh who acted as poets, musicians and historians. After the de-gallicisation of the Scottish court from the twelfth century, what survives of their work was only recorded from the sixteenth century. This includes poems composed by women, including Aithbhreac Nighean Coirceadail, the first surviving major text in Scots literature is John Barbours Brus. In the early fifteenth century Scots historical works included Andrew of Wyntouns verse Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland and Blind Harrys The Wallace and they were probably influenced by Scots versions of popular French romances that were produced in the period. Much Middle Scots literature was produced by makars, poets with links to the court, which included James I. Makars at the court of James IV included Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, Douglass Eneados was the first complete translation of a major classical text in an Anglian language. James V supported William Stewart and John Bellenden, David Lyndsay wrote elegiac narratives, romances and satires. George Buchanan founded a tradition of poetry that would continue in to the seventeenth century. From the 1550s cultural pursuits were limited by the lack of a court, political turmoil. Poets from this period included Richard Maitland of Lethington, John Rolland), Alexander Hume, a new tradition of vernacular Gaelic poetry began to emerge, including work by women such as Mary MacLeod of Harris. The tradition of neo-Latin poetry reached its fruition with the publication of the anthology of the Deliciae Poetarum Scotorum and this period was marked by the work of female Scottish poets including Elizabeth Melvilles, whose Ane Godlie Dream was the first book published by a woman in Scotland. The ballad became a literary form by aristocratic authors including Robert Sempill, Lady Elizabeth Wardlaw. After the Union in 1707 Scottish literature developed a national identity. Allan Ramsay led a revival, the trend for pastoral poetry. The eighteenth century was also a period of innovation in Gaelic vernacular poetry, major figures included Rob Donn Mackay, Donnchadh Bàn Mac an t-Saoir, Uilleam Ross and Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, who helped inspire a new form of nature poetry
2.
William McGonagall
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William Topaz McGonagall was a Scottish weaver, poet and actor. He won notoriety as a bad poet who exhibited no recognition of, or concern for. He wrote about 200 poems, including The Tay Bridge Disaster and The Famous Tay Whale, collections of his verse remain popular, with several volumes available today. McGonagall has been lampooned as the worst poet in British history, the chief criticisms are that he is deaf to poetic metaphor and unable to scan correctly. McGonagalls fame stems from the effects these shortcomings are considered to generate in his work. Scholars argue that his rhythms, weak vocabulary, and ill-advised imagery combine to make his work amongst the most unintentionally amusing dramatic poetry in the English language. His work is in a tradition of narrative ballads and verse written and published about great events and tragedies. In an age before radio and television, their voice was one way of communicating important news to an avid public, William McGonagalls parents, Charles and Margaret, were Irish. It has been suggested that McGonagall may have falsified his place of birth, McGonagall moved north and was apprenticed as a handloom weaver in Dundee, following in his fathers footsteps. In 1846, he married Jean King, they had five sons, despite the industrial revolution slowly making weavers obsolete, McGonagall appeared to prosper, as there was still need for skilled workers to perform tasks of great complexity. Before he showed an interest in poetry, he displayed a keenness for acting, though Mr Giles Theatre, the theatre was filled with his friends and fellow workers, anxious to see what they expected to be an amusing disaster. The play should have ended with Macbeths death, but McGonagall believed the actor playing Macduff was trying to upstage him, by the 1870s, McGonagall and his family were struggling. Work as a weaver was more difficult to find and his oldest daughter shamed the family by giving birth to an illegitimate child, Gilfillan, himself an untrained and poorly-reviewed polemic Christian preacher who occasionally dabbled in poetry, commented admiringly Shakespeare never wrote anything like this. McGonagall realised if he were to succeed as a poet, he required a patron and he received a letter of rejection, written by a royal functionary, thanking him for his interest. vii McGonagall took this as praise for his work. During a trip to Dunfermline in 1879, he was mocked by the Chief Templar, in July 1878, he walked from Dundee to Balmoral, a distance of about 60 miles over mountainous terrain and through a violent thunderstorm to perform for Queen Victoria. When he arrived, he announced himself as The Queens Poet, the guards informed him Youre not the Queens poet. McGonagall presented the letter but was refused entry and had to return home and these were popular, the people of Dundee possibly recognising that McGonagall was so giftedly bad he backed unwittingly into genius. He met with the ire of the publicans, on one occasion being pelted with peas for reciting a poem about the evils of strong drink
3.
Dundee
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Dundee, officially the City of Dundee, is Scotlands fourth-largest city and the 51st-most-populous built-up area in the United Kingdom. The mid-year population estimate for 2015 was 148,210 which gave Dundee a population density of 2, 477/km2 or 6, 420/sq mi and it lies within the eastern central Lowlands on the north bank of the Firth of Tay, which feeds into the North Sea. Under the name of Dundee City, it one of the 32 council areas used for local government in Scotland. Historically part of Angus, the city developed into a burgh in the late 12th century, rapid expansion was brought on by the Industrial Revolution, particularly in the 19th century when Dundee was the centre of the global jute industry. This, along with its major industries gave Dundee its epithet as the city of jute, jam. Biomedical and technological industries have arrived since the 1980s, and the city now accounts for 10% of the United Kingdoms digital-entertainment industry, Dundee has two universities — the University of Dundee and the Abertay University. In 2014 Dundee was recognised by the United Nations as the UKs first UNESCO City of Design for its contributions to fields including medical research, comics. A unique feature of Dundee is that its two football clubs Dundee United and Dundee F. C. have stadiums all but adjacent to each other. With the decline of industry, the city has adopted a plan to regenerate. The name Dundee is made up of two parts, the common Celtic place-name element dun, meaning fort, and a part that may derive from a Celtic element, cognate with the Gaelic dè. The situation of the town and its promotion by Earl David as a trading centre led to a period of prosperity, the earldom was passed down to Davids descendants, amongst whom was John Balliol. The town became a Royal Burgh on Johns coronation as king in 1292, the town and its castle were occupied by English forces for several years during the First War of Independence and recaptured by Robert the Bruce in early 1312. The original Burghal charters were lost during the occupation and subsequently renewed by Bruce in 1327, the burgh suffered considerably during the conflict known as the Rough Wooing of 1543 to 1550, and was occupied by the English forces of Andrew Dudley from 1547. In 1548, unable to defend the town against an advancing Scottish force, in 1645, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, Dundee was again besieged, this time by the Royalist Marquess of Montrose. The town was destroyed by Parliamentarian forces led by George Monck in 1651. The town played a role in the establishment of the Jacobite cause when John Graham of Claverhouse. The town was held by the Jacobites in the 1715–16 rising, many in Scotland, including many in Dundee, regarded him as the rightful king. The economy of mediaeval Dundee centred on the export of raw wool, expansion of the whaling industry was triggered by the second Bounty Act, introduced in 1750 to increase Britains maritime and naval skill base
4.
Balmoral Castle
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Balmoral Castle /bælˈmɒrəl/ is a large estate house in Royal Deeside, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, near the village of Crathie,6.2 miles west of Ballater and 6.8 miles east of Braemar. They remain as the property of the royal family and are not the property of the Crown. Soon after the estate was purchased by the family, the existing house was found to be too small. The architect was William Smith of Aberdeen, although his designs were amended by Prince Albert, the castle is an example of Scots Baronial architecture, and is classified by Historic Scotland as a category A listed building. The new castle was completed in 1856 and the old castle demolished shortly thereafter, the Balmoral Estate has been added to by successive members of the royal family, and now covers an area of approximately 50,000 acres. It is an estate, including grouse moors, forestry, and farmland, as well as managed herds of deer, Highland cattle. King Robert II of Scotland had a lodge in the area. Historical records also indicate that a house at Balmoral was built by Sir William Drummond in 1390, the estate is recorded in 1451 as Bouchmorale, and later was tenanted by Alexander Gordon, second son of the 1st Earl of Huntly. A tower house was built on the estate by the Gordons, in 1662 the estate passed to Charles Farquharson of Inverey, brother of John Farquharson, the Black Colonel. The Farquharsons were Jacobite sympathisers, and James Farquharson of Balmoral was involved in both the 1715 and 1745 rebellions and he was wounded at the Battle of Falkirk in 1746. The Farquharson estates were forfeit, and passed to the Farquharsons of Auchendryne, in 1798, James Duff, 2nd Earl Fife, acquired Balmoral and leased the castle. Sir Robert Gordon, a brother of the 4th Earl of Aberdeen. He made major alterations to the castle at Balmoral, including baronial-style extensions that were designed by John Smith of Aberdeen. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert first visited Scotland in 1842, five years after her accession to the throne, during this first visit they stayed at Edinburgh, and at Taymouth Castle in Perthshire, the home of the Marquess of Breadalbane. They returned in 1844 to stay at Blair Castle and, in 1847, during the latter trip they encountered weather that was extremely rainy, which led Sir James Clark, the queens physician, to recommend Deeside instead, for its more healthy climate. Sir Robert Gordon died in 1847 and his lease on Balmoral reverted to Lord Aberdeen, in February 1848 an arrangement was made—that Prince Albert would acquire the remaining part of the lease on Balmoral, together with its furniture and staff—without having seen the property first. The royal couple arrived for their first visit on 8 September 1848, Victoria found the house small but pretty, and recorded in her diary that, All seemed to breathe freedom and peace, and to make one forget the world and its sad turmoils. The surrounding hilly landscape reminded them of Thuringia, Alberts homeland in Germany, quickly, the house was confirmed to be too small and, in 1848, John and William Smith were commissioned to design new offices, cottages, and other ancillary buildings
5.
Queen Victoria
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Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she adopted the title of Empress of India. Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, both the Duke of Kent and King George III died in 1820, and Victoria was raised under close supervision by her German-born mother Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. She inherited the throne aged 18, after her fathers three brothers had all died, leaving no surviving legitimate children. The United Kingdom was already a constitutional monarchy, in which the sovereign held relatively little direct political power. Privately, Victoria attempted to influence government policy and ministerial appointments, publicly, Victoria married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in 1840. Their nine children married into royal and noble families across the continent, tying them together, after Alberts death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances. As a result of her seclusion, republicanism temporarily gained strength and her Golden and Diamond Jubilees were times of public celebration. Her reign of 63 years and seven months is known as the Victorian era and it was a period of industrial, cultural, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. She was the last British monarch of the House of Hanover and her son and successor, Edward VII, belonged to the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the line of his father. Victorias father was Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, until 1817, Edwards niece, Princess Charlotte of Wales, was the only legitimate grandchild of George III. Her death in 1817 precipitated a crisis that brought pressure on the Duke of Kent. In 1818 he married Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, a widowed German princess with two children—Carl and Feodora —by her first marriage to the Prince of Leiningen and her brother Leopold was Princess Charlottes widower. The Duke and Duchess of Kents only child, Victoria, was born at 4.15 a. m. on 24 May 1819 at Kensington Palace in London. Victoria was christened privately by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Manners-Sutton, on 24 June 1819 in the Cupola Room at Kensington Palace and she was baptised Alexandrina, after one of her godparents, Emperor Alexander I of Russia, and Victoria, after her mother. Additional names proposed by her parents—Georgina, Charlotte, and Augusta—were dropped on the instructions of the Dukes eldest brother, George, the Duke of Clarence and the Duke of Kent married on the same day in 1818, but both of Clarences daughters died as infants. Victorias father died in January 1820, when Victoria was less than a year old, a week later her grandfather died and was succeeded by his eldest son, George IV. The Duke of York died in 1827, when George IV died in 1830, he was succeeded by his next surviving brother, William IV, and Victoria became heir presumptive
6.
California
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California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
7.
Western United States
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The Western United States, commonly referred to as the American West, the Far West, or simply the West, traditionally refers to the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. Because European settlement in the U. S. expanded westward after its founding, prior to about 1800, the crest of the Appalachian Mountains was seen as the western frontier. Since then, the frontier moved westward and eventually lands west of the Mississippi River came to be referred to as the West. The West contains several major biomes, the Western U. S. is the largest region of the country, covering more than half the land area of the United States. Given this expansive and diverse geography it is no wonder the region is difficult to specifically define, a majority of the historian respondents placed the eastern boundary of the West east of the Census definition out on the eastern edge of the Great Plains or on the Mississippi River. The survey respondents as a whole showed just how little agreement there was on the boundaries of the West, within a region as large and diverse as the Western United States, smaller areas with more closely shared demographics and geography have developed as subregions. Meanwhile, the states of Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington can be considered part of the Northwest or Pacific Northwest, West Texas in the Chihuahuan Desert may be considered as part of the Western U. S. Fort Worth has long laid claim to be Where the West Begins, the West is still one of the most sparsely settled areas in the United States with 49.5 inhabitants per square mile. Only Texas with 78.0 inhabitants/sq mi, Washington with 86.0 inhabitants/sq mi. and California with 213.4 inhabitants/sq mi. exceed the national average of 77.98 inhabitants/sq mi. The entire Western region has also strongly influenced by European, Hispanic or Latino, Asian and Native Americans. African and European Americans, however, continue to wield a stronger political influence because of the rates of citizenship and voting among Asians. The West also contains much of the Native American population in the U. S. particularly in the reservations in the Mountain. The Western United States has a sex ratio than any other region in the United States. Because the tide of development had not yet reached most of the West when conservation became an issue, agencies of the federal government own. National parks are reserved for activities such as fishing, camping, hiking, and boating, but other government lands also allow commercial activities like ranching, logging. The largest city in the region is Los Angeles, located on the West Coast, Other West Coast cities include San Diego, San Bernardino, San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, Bakersfield, Sacramento, Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland. Prominent cities in the Mountain States include Denver, Colorado Springs, Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Boise, El Paso, and Cheyenne. Along the Pacific Ocean coast lie the Coast Ranges, which and they collect a large part of the airborne moisture moving in from the ocean
8.
Wells Fargo
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Wells Fargo & Company is an American international banking and financial services holding company headquartered in San Francisco, California, with hubquarters throughout the country. It is the worlds second-largest bank by market capitalization and the third largest bank in the U. S. by assets, Wells Fargo surpassed Citigroup Inc. to become the third-largest U. S. bank by assets at the end of 2015. Wells Fargo is the second-largest bank in deposits, home mortgage servicing, the firms primary U. S. operating subsidiary is national bank Wells Fargo Bank, N. A. which designates its main office as Sioux Falls, South Dakota. In 2016, Wells Fargo ranked 7th on the Forbes Magazine Global 2000 list of largest public companies in the world, in 2015, the company was ranked the 22nd most admired company in the world, and the 7th most respected company in the world. As of October 2015, the company had a rating of AA−. However, for a period in 2007, the company was the only AAA-rated bank. Along with JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup, as of December 31,2015, it had 8,700 retail branches and 13,000 automated teller machines. The company operates across 35 countries and has over 70 million customers globally, in February 2014, Wells Fargo was named the worlds most valuable bank brand for the second year running in The Banker and Brand Finance study of the top 500 banking brands. In December 2016, following the scandal, the company amended its by-laws to separate the roles of chairman, in January 2017, it emerged that Wells Fargo had kept its talks with the U. S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau about the fake account investigation silent from shareholders for up to six months beginning as early as March 2016. A regulatory filing by Wells Fargo revealed in November 2016 that it was under investigation by the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission in relation to its accounts sales practices. Also in November 2016, three U. S. senators alleged that Wells Fargos sales scandal had extended from retail bankers to its employees. Wells Fargo delineates three different business segments when reporting results, Community Banking, Wholesale Banking, and Wealth, Brokerage, the Community Banking segment includes Regional Banking, Diversified Products, and the Consumer Deposits groups, as well as Wells Fargo Customer Connection. Wells Fargo also has around 2,000 stand-alone mortgage branches throughout the country, in March 2017, Wells Fargo announced a plan to offer smartphone-based transactions with mobile wallets including Wells Fargo Wallet, Android Pay and Samsung Pay. Wells Fargo Home Mortgage is the largest retail mortgage lender in the United States, as of Q32011, originating one out of every four home loans. Wells Fargo services $1.8 trillion in home mortgages, the 2nd largest servicing portfolio in the U. S. Now, in 2013 its share is closer to 22%, of which eight percentage points is aggregation. Wells Fargo private student loans are available to students to pay for college expenses, such as, tuition, books, computers. Loans are available for undergraduate, career and community colleges, graduate school, law school, Wells Fargo also provides private student loan consolidation and student loans for parents
9.
American poetry
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Unsurprisingly, most of the early colonists work relied on contemporary British models of poetic form, diction, and theme. However, in the 19th century, a distinctive American idiom began to emerge, the history of American poetry is not easy to know. The received narrative of Modernism proposes that Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot were perhaps the most influential modernist English-language poets in the period during World War I. But this narrative leaves out African American and women poets who were published, by the 1960s, the young poets of the British Poetry Revival looked to their American contemporaries and predecessors as models for the kind of poetry they wanted to write. There are 14 such writers whom we might on that basis call American poets, early examples include a 1616 testimonial poem on the sterling warlike character of Captain John Smith and Rev. One of the first recorded poets of the British colonies was Anne Bradstreet, the poems she published during her lifetime address religious and political themes. She also wrote tender evocations of home, family life and of her love for her husband, edward Taylor wrote poems expounding Puritan virtues in a highly wrought metaphysical style that can be seen as typical of the early colonial period. This narrow focus on the Puritan ethic was, understandably, the dominant note of most of the written in the colonies during the 17th. Of course, being a Puritan minister as well as a poet, a distinctly American lyric voice of the colonial period was Phillis Wheatley, a slave whose book Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was published in 1773. She was one of the poets of her day, at least in the colonies. The 18th century saw an emphasis on America itself as fit subject matter for its poets. The work of Rebecca Hammond Lard, although old, still apply to life in todays world. She writes about nature, not only the nature of environment, on the whole, the development of poetry in the American colonies mirrors the development of the colonies themselves. The early poetry is dominated by the need to preserve the integrity of the Puritan ideals that created the settlement in the first place, as the colonists grew in confidence, the poetry they wrote increasingly reflected their drive towards independence. This shift in subject matter was not reflected in the mode of writing which tended to be conservative and this can be seen as a product of the physical remove at which American poets operated from the center of English-language poetic developments in London. The first significant poet of the independent United States was William Cullen Bryant, whose contribution was to write rhapsodic poems on the grandeur of prairies. Formed the Fireside Poets were a group of 19th-century American poets from New England, the poets primary subjects were the domestic life, mythology, and politics of the United States, in which several of the poets were directly involved. Other notable poets to emerge in the early and middle 19th century include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, Sidney Lanier, and James Whitcomb Riley
10.
Grand Rapids, Michigan
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Grand Rapids is the second-largest city in Michigan, and the largest city in West Michigan. It is on the Grand River about 30 miles east of Lake Michigan, as of the 2010 census, the city population was 188,040. In 2010, the Grand Rapids metropolitan area had a population of 1,005,648, Grand Rapids is the county seat of Kent County, Michigan. A historic furniture-manufacturing center, Grand Rapids is home to five of the leading office furniture companies. Its more common nickname of River City refers to the landmark river for which it was named. The city and surrounding communities are diverse, based in the health care, information technology, automotive, aviation. Grand Rapids is the hometown of U. S. President Gerald Ford, for thousands of years, succeeding cultures of indigenous peoples occupied the area. Over 2000 years ago, people associated with the Hopewell culture occupied the Grand River Valley, later, a tribe from the Ottawa River traveled to the Grand River valley, fighting three battles with the Prairie Indians who were established in the area. The tribe later split, with the Chippewas settling in the lower peninsula, the Pottawatomies staying south of the Kalamazoo River. In 1740, an Ottawa man who would later be known as Chief Noonday, between 1761 and 1763, Chief Pontiac visited the area annually, gathering over 3,000 natives and asking them to volunteer to fight the British in Detroit, which would culminate into Pontiacs War. The Potawatomi attacked the Ottawa in 1765, attempting to take the Grand River territory but were defeated, by the end of the 1700s, there were an estimated 1,000 Ottawa in the Kent County area. After the French established territories in Michigan, Jesuit missionaries and traders traveled down Lake Michigan, at the start of the 19th century, European fur traders and missionaries established posts in the area among the Ottawa. They generally lived in peace, trading European metal and textile goods for fur pelts and they were French-speaking and Roman Catholic. They likely both spoke Ottawa, Madelines maternal ancestral language, La Framboise, whose mother was Ottawa and father French, later merged her successful operations with the American Fur Company. By 1810, Chief Noonday established a village on the west side of the river with about 500 Ottawa, madeline La Framboise retired the trading post to Rix Robinson in 1821 and returned to Mackinac. The first permanent European-American settler in the Grand Rapids area was Isaac McCoy, general Lewis Cass, who commissioned Charles Christopher Trowbridge to establish missions for Native Americans in Michigan, ordered McCoy to establish a mission in Grand Rapids for the Ottawa. In 1824, Baptist missionary Rev. L. Slater traveled with two settlers to Grand Rapids to perform work, the winter of 1824 proved to be difficult, with Slaters group having to resupply and return before the spring. Slater then erected the first settler structures in Grand Rapids, a log cabin for himself, in 1825, McCoy returned and established a missionary station
11.
English poetry
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This article focuses on poetry written in English from the United Kingdom, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The article does not include poetry from other countries where the English language is spoken, the earliest surviving English poetry, written in Anglo-Saxon, the direct predecessor of modern English, may have been composed as early as the 7th century. This is generally taken as marking the beginning of Anglo-Saxon poetry and it is possible to identify certain key moments, however. The Dream of the Rood was written before circa AD700, by and large, however, Anglo-Saxon poetry is categorised by the manuscripts in which it survives, rather than its date of composition. While the poetry that has survived is limited in volume, it is wide in breadth, beowulf is the only heroic epic to have survived in its entirety, but fragments of others such as Waldere and the Finnesburg Fragment show that it was not unique in its time. Other genres include much religious verse, from works to biblical paraphrase, elegies such as The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The Ruin, and numerous proverbs, riddles. With one notable exception, Anglo-Saxon poetry depends on alliterative verse for its structure, with the Norman conquest of England, beginning in 1111 the Anglo-Saxon language rapidly diminished as a written literary language. The new aristocracy spoke predominantly Norman, and this became the language of courts, parliament. While Anglo-Norman or Latin was preferred for high culture, English literature by no means died out, other transitional works were preserved as popular entertainment, including a variety of romances and lyrics. With time, the English language regained prestige, and in 1362 it replaced French and Latin in Parliament, the reputation of Chaucers successors in the 15th century has suffered in comparison with him, though Lydgate and Skelton are widely studied. A group of Scottish writers arose who were believed to be influenced by Chaucer. The rise of Scottish poetry began with the writing of The Kingis Quair by James I of Scotland, the main poets of this Scottish group were Robert Henryson, William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas. The Renaissance was slow in coming to England, with the generally accepted start date being around 1509 and it is also generally accepted that the English Renaissance extended until the Restoration in 1660. However, a number of factors had prepared the way for the introduction of the new learning long before this start date. A number of medieval poets had, as noted, shown an interest in the ideas of Aristotle. The introduction of printing by Caxton in 1474 provided the means for the more rapid dissemination of new or recently rediscovered writers and thinkers. Caxton also printed the works of Chaucer and Gower and these books helped establish the idea of a poetic tradition that was linked to its European counterparts. In addition, the writings of English humanists like Thomas More and Thomas Elyot helped bring the ideas, the establishment of the Church of England in 1535 accelerated the process of questioning the Catholic world-view that had previously dominated intellectual and artistic life
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