with the military station of Magos or Magna. The course of Offa’s Dyke (Clawdd Oda) is perceptible at various points in the hilly regions west of Knighton and Presteign. Very slight traces exist of the many castles erected at various times after the Norman invasion. The parish churches of Radnorshire are for the most part small and of rude construction, and many of them have been modernized or rebuilt. The churches at Old Radnor, Presteign and Llanbister, however, are interesting edifices, and a few possess fine oaken screens, as at Llananno and Llandegley. There was only one monastic house of consequence, the Cistercian abbey of St Mary, founded by Cadwallon ap Madoc in 1143 in “the long valley” of the Clywedog, six miles east of Rhayader, and from its site commonly called Abbey Cwm Hir. Its existing ruins are insignificant, but the proportions of the church, which was 238 ft. long, are still traceable. The modern mansion adjoining, known as Abbey Cwm Hir, was for some generations the residence of the Fowler family, once reputed the wealthiest in the county.
Customs, &c.—Although in most instances the old Celtic place-names survive throughout the Western portion of the county, it is only in the wild remote districts of Cwmdauddwr and St Harmon’s that the Welsh tongue predominates, and in this region some of the old Welsh superstitious linger amongst the peasants and shepherds of the hills. In the eastern part of the county English is spoken universally, and the manners and customs of the inhabitants differ little from those prevailing in the neighbouring county of Hereford. On the western side of Radnor Forest the modern spirit of progress has destroyed most of the old local customs. Until the beginning of the 19th century the ancient Welsh service of the pylgain on Christmas morning was observed in Rhayader church; and the same town was formerly remarkable for an interesting ceremony, evidently of great antiquity, whereat after a funeral each attendant mourner was wont to throw a stone upon a certain spot near the church with the words “Carn ar dy ben" (a stone on thy head). The laying of malicious sprites by means of lighted tapers was formerly practised in the churches of the Wye Valley; and a curious service, commemorative of the dead and known as “the Month’s End,” is still observed in certain parish churches, a month after the actual funeral has taken place. The practice of farmers and their wives or daughters riding to the local markets on ponies, the older women sometimes knitting as they proceed, still continues, and is specially characteristic of agricultural life in Radnorshire.
See A General History of the County of Radnor (compiled from the MS. of the late Rev. Jonathan Williams and other sources) (Brecknock, 1905).
RADOM, a government of Russian Poland, occupying a triangular space between the Vistula and Pilica, and bounded N. by the governments of Warsaw and Siedlce, E. by Lublin, S. by the crown land of Austrian Galicia and the Polish government of Kielce, and W. by that of Piotrków. The area is 4768 sq. m. Its southern part stretches over the well-wooded Sandomir heights, a series of short ranges of hills, 800 to 1000 ft. in altitude, intersected by deep valleys, which, running west and east and drained by tributaries of the Vistula, are excellently adapted for agriculture. In its central parts, the government is level, the soil fertile, and the surface, which is diversified here and there with wood, is broken up by occasional spurs (800 ft.) of the Lysa Góra Mountains. The northern districts consist of low, flat tracts with undefined valleys, exposed to frequent floods and covered over large areas with marshes; the basin of the Pilica, notorious for its unhealthiness, is throughout a low marshy plain. Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian and Triassic deposits appear in the south, Cretaceous and Jurassic in the middle, and Tertiary in the north. Extensive tracts are covered with Glacial deposits,—the Scandinavian erratics reaching as far south as Ilza; these last in their turn are overlain by widespread post-Glacial lacustrine deposits. The climate is cold and moist, the mean temperature for the year being 47°·5 Fahr., for January -5°·8, and for July 77°. The Vistula skirts the government on the south and east, and is an important means of communication, steamers plying as far up as Sandomir (Sedomierz). The Sandomir district suffers occasionally from disastrous inundations of the river. The tributaries of the Vistula are short and small, those of the Pilica are sluggish streams meandering amidst marshes. The estimated population in 1906 was 932,800 The government is divided into seven districts, the chief towns of which are Radom, Ilza, Konskie, Kozienice, Opatów, Opoczno and Sandomir. Out of the total area about 50% is under cultivation and 28% under forests. The principal crops are wheat, rye, barley, oats, buck-wheat, hemp, flax and potatoes, these last chiefly cultivated for distilleries. Grain is exported. Live stock is kept in large numbers. Manufactures have considerably developed of late years, the government being rich in iron ore, while coal and zinc occur, as also marble, gypsum, alabaster, potters’ clay and red sandstone. The iron industry occupies more than 60,000 workmen, and turns out annually some 100,000 tons of pig iron, 25,000 tons of iron, and 550,000 tons of steel. There are several sugar works, tanneries, flour-mills, machinery works, distilleries, breweries and brick works. Trade is not very extensive, the only channel of commerce being the Vistula.
(P.A.K.; J.T.Be.)
RADOM, a town of Russia, capital of the government of the same name, 100 m. by rail S. from Warsaw. Pop. 28,749, half of whom were Jews. It is one of the best built provincial towns of Poland. The church of St Wlaclaw, contemporary with the foundation of the town, was transformed by the Austrians into a storehouse, and subsequently by the Russian government into a military prison. The old castle is in ruins, and the old Bernardine monastery is used as barracks. Radom has several iron and agricultural machinery works and tanneries. In 1216 it occupied the site of what is now Old Radom. New Radom was founded in 1340 by Casimir the Great, king of Poland. Here Jadwiga was elected queen of Poland in 1382, and here too in 1401 the first act relating to the union of Poland with Lithuania was signed; the seim or diet of 1505, where the organic law of Poland was sworn by the king, was also held at Radom. Several great fires, and still more the Swedish war of 1701–7, were the ruin of the old city. After the third partition of Poland in 1795 it fell under Austrian rule; it was in 1815 annexed to Russia, and became chief town of the province of Sandomir.
RADOMYSL, formerly Mychek, a town of Russia, in the government of Kiev, 31 m. W. of the city of Kiev, on the Teterev river. Pop. 18,154. It is a very old town, being mentioned in 1150; from 1746 to 1795 it was the residence of the metropolitan of the United Greek Church. It has tanneries and flour-mills, and exports timber, corn and mushrooms.
RADOWITZ, JOSEPH MARIA VON (1797–1853), Prussian general and statesman, was born at Blankenburg in the Harz Mountains, his family being of Hungarian origin. As a young lieutenant in the Westphalian artillery he was wounded and taken prisoner at the battle of Leipzig (1813), subsequently entered the Hanoverian service, and in 1823 that of Prussia. His promotion was rapid, and in 1830 he became chief of the general staff of the artillery. In 1836 he went as Prussian military plenipotentiary to the federal diet at Frankfort, and in 1842 was appointed envoy to the courts of Carlsruhe, Darmstadt and Nassau. He had early become an intimate friend of the crown prince (afterwards King Frederick William IV.), and the Prussian constitution of February 1847 was an attempt to realize the ideas put forward by him in his Gespräche aus der Gegenwart über Staat und Kirche, published under the pseudonym “Waldheim” in 1846. In November 1847 and March 1848 Radowitz was sent by King Frederick William to Vienna to attempt to arrange common action for the reconstruction of the German Confederation. In the Frankfort parliament he was leader of the extreme Right; and after its break-up he was zealous in promoting the Unionist policy of Prussia, which he defended both in the Prussian diet and in the Erfurt parliament. He was practically responsible for the foreign policy of Prussia from May 1848 onwards, and on the 27th of September 1850
