built up a large Sunday school, and established a kindergarten, industrial schools, and other important charities. He died in Chicago on the 3rd of October 1894. He was an excellent preacher, but no theologian. He published Sermons (1874), including most of his "heretical" utterances, Truths for To-day (2 vols., 1874-1876), Motives of Life (1879), and Club Essays (1881).
See Joseph F. Newton, David Swing, Poet-Preacher (Chicago, 1909).
SWINTON, an urban district in the Rotherham parliamentary division of the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, 10 ½ m. N.E. of Sheffield, on the Midland, North Eastern and Great Central railways. Pop. (1891), 9705; (1901), 12,217. It is situated at the junction of the Dearne and Dove navigation with the river Don navigation. In the churchyard of St Margaret's church (rebuilt in 1817) two beautiful Norman arches of the old church are preserved. There are collieries, quarries and brickfields in the neighbourhood. There are also flint and glass- bottle works, ironworks (for stoves, grates, fenders and kitchen
ranges), and earthenware manufactures. The town was formerly renowned for its Rockingham ware. A free warren was granted to Swinton by Henry II.
SWINTON AND PENDLEBURY, an urban district in the Eccles parliamentary division of Lancashire, England, 5 m. N.W. of Manchester, with stations on the Lancashire & Yorkshire railway. Pop. (1901), 27,005. 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 Swinton industrial schools, opened in February 1846, are a fine range of buildings of brick with stone facings, surrounded with grounds extending to 20 acres. 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.
SWITCHBACK, a form of pleasure railway, built over alternate descents and ascents, the train or car first gathering momentum by running down an incline, and surmounting by means of this a lesser ascent. Switchbacks were originally merely an imitation, using cars upon wheels, of the sledge-coasting courses of Russia, and were indeed named by the French montagnes russes. They were introduced in Paris in 1816, but soon disappeared in consequence of several serious accidents. About 1880 they again became popular both in Europe and America. A variation of the switchback, though lacking its essential principle of climbing by means of momentum, is the water-chute, an imitation of the Canadian toboggan-slide, in which cars built in the shape of boats glide down steep inclines into artificial lakes at their bases. This is popularly called " shooting the chutes." A further variation is " looping the loop," in which a heavy car on wheels, or a bicycle, starting at a considerable altitude, descends an incline so steep that sufficient momentum is accumulated to carry it completely round a track in the form of a perpendicular loop, in the course of which journey the
occupants or rider, while crossing the top of the loop, are actually head downwards. Later it was made even more dangerous by taking out part of the top of the loop, so that the car or bicycle actually passes through the air across the gap.
SWITCH PLANTS, a botanical term for plants, such as broom, with leaves very small or absent, and slender green shoots.
SWITHUN (or Swithin), ST (d. 862), bishop of Winchester and patron saint of Winchester Cathedral from the 10th to the 16th century. He is scarcely mentioned in any document of his own time. 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, 860-862. In the first the saint signs as "Swithunus presbyter regis Egberti," in the second as "Swithunus diaconus," and in the third as "Swithunus epis- copus." 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, St Swithun was adopted as patron of the restored church at Winchester, formerly dedicated to St Peter and St Paul. His body was transferred from its almost forgotten grave to Ethelwold's new basilica on the 15th of July 971, and according to contemporary writers, numerous miracles preceded and followed the translation.
The revival of St Swithun's fame gave rise to a mass of legendary literature. The so-called Vitae Swithuni of Lantfred and Wulstan, written about A.D. 1000, hardly contain any germ of biographical fact; and all that has in later years passed for authentic detail of St Swithun's life is extracted from a biography ascribed to Gotzelin, a monk who came over to England 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 (Æthelwulf) and numbered him amongst his chief friends. Under Æthelwulf 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 Æthelwulf 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 banquet 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 on the 2nd of 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 Æthelwulf'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 praeter- euntium et stillicidiis ex alto rorantibus esset obnoxius. This expression has been taken as indicating that the well-known weather myth contained in the doggrel lines—
St Swithin's day if thou dost rain
For forty days it will remain;
St Swithin'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. James Raine suggested that the legend was derived from the tremendous downpour of rain that occurred, according to the Durham chroniclers, on St Swithun's day, 1315 (Hist. Dunelm. pp. xiii. 96-97). 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 further 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 John Earle's suggestion that in the legend as now current we have the survival of some pagan or possibly prehistoric day of augury, which has successfully sheltered itself under the protection of an ecclesiastical saint. This view is supported by the fact adduced in Notes and Queries (1st series, xii. 137) that in France St Mard (June 8) and St Gervase and St Protais (June 19) are credited with an influence on the weather almost identical with that attributed to St Swithun in England. Similarly we have in Flanders St Godelieve (July 6) and in Germany the Seven Sleepers' Day (June 27). Of other stories connected with St Swithun the two most famous are those of the Winchester egg-woman and Queen Emma's ordeal. The former is to be found in Gotzelin's life (c. 1100), the latter in T. Rudborne's Historia major (15th century)—a work which is also responsible for the not improbable legend that Swithun accompanied Alfred on his visit to Rome in 856.
The so-called lives of St Swithun written by Wulstan, Lantfred, and perhaps others towards the end of the 10th century may be found in Bollandus's Acta sanctorum (July), i. 321-327; Mabillon's. Acta SS. O. B. vi. 70, &c, vii. 628, &c; and J. Earle's Life and Times of St Swithun, 59, &c. See also William of Malmesbury, Gest. reg. i. 150, and De gest. pont. 160, 167, 179; Florence of Worcester,, i. 168; T. Rudborne ap. Wharton's Anglia sacra, i. 287; T. D. Hardy's Cat. of MSS. i. 513-517; J. Brand's Popular Antiquities; R. Chambers's Book of Days; Ethelwulf's Tithe Charters, nearly all of which refer to St Swithun in the body of the text, may be studied in Haddon and Stubbs's Councils, iii. 636-645; a comparison of the charter on page 642 with Gotzelin's life (ap. Earle, 69)' and William of Malmesbury (Gest. reg. 150; De gest. pont. 160) seems to show that these charters, even if forgeries, date. back at least to the nth century, as well as the story of his being Ethelwulf's "altor et ductor."
SWITZERLAND, a republican country of central Europe, comprising the Swiss Confederation, and bounded N. by the
