K I L K I M 77
Ayrshire, Scotland, is situated on both sides of the Kilmarnock water, near its junction with the Irvine, 21 miles south-west of Glasgow by rail. The town is long and narrow, but its principal streets are well-built and spacious. Among the chief buildings are the town-house, the court-house, the corn exchange buildings (including the Albert tower, 110 feet high, and various public offices), the observatory, and the academy, built in 1876 at a cost of £5000 to accommodate six hundred children. Kilmarnock also possesses the endowed Kay schools, an industrial school in the once famous Kilmarnock House, a school of art, an athenæum, a public library, an opera-house, and an infirmary. In the Kay park of 40¾ acres, purchased from the duke of Portland for £9000 (with a legacy left by a native of the town in 1866), stands the Burns Monument, inaugurated in August 1879. Kilmarnock rose into importance in the 17th century by its production of striped woollen "Kilmarnock cowls" and broad blue bonnets. Knitted woollen bonnets are still manufactured to an annual value of about £25,000, but by far the most important textile industry is carpet-weaving. When trade is good, the annual turn out of Brussels and Scotch carpets is valued at about £100,000. There are several spinning mills in connexion with the carpet factories. Tweeds, blankets, shawls, and tartans are produced to a limited but rapidly increasing extent; the manufacture of wincey is larger. Calico-printing, once important, has dwindled. The boot and shoe trade is prosperous; and there are very extensive iron and engineering works in the town. Situated in a highly cultivated region, Kilmarnock is famous for its dairy produce; and the largest cheese-show in Scotland is held there annually. The neighbourhood abounds in freestone and coal. The burgh is governed by a provost, six bailies, and eighteen councillors. It unites with Dumbarton, Port-Glasgow, Renfrew, and Rutherglen in returning one member to parliament. The population in 1881 was 23,901.
KILSYTH, a burgh of barony in Stirlingshire, Scotland, is situated about 12 miles north-east of Glasgow. It is ill built and dingy. On August 15, 1645, the Covenanters under Baillie were defeated at Kilsyth by Montrose with great slaughter. Kilsyth is further interesting as the centre of remarkable religious revivals in 1742-43 and 1839. The present village dates from the middle of the 17th century. It became a burgh of barony in 1826 by charter from George IV. The inhabitants are chiefly engaged in the neighbouring coal and iron works; but weaving and paper-making are also carried on. The population in 1881 was 5402.
KILWINNING, a market-town in Cunningham district, Ayrshire, Scotland, is situated on the right bank of the Garnock, 26 miles south-west of Glasgow by rail. The houses are neat, but somewhat straggling. The chief buildings are the parish church (with a handsome detached Gothic tower erected in 1815 in place of an older one, 103 feet high, which fell in 1814), the Free church, and the board school. The greatest interest of the place centres in its ruined abbey, originally one of the richest in Scotland. Founded about 1140 by Hugh de Morville, lord of Cunningham, it was dedicated to St Winning, who lived on the spot during the 8th century, and has given his name to the town. This beautiful specimen of Early English was destroyed in 1561; and its lands were granted to the earl of Eglinton and others. Kilwinning is the traditional birthplace of Scottish freemasonry; and Kilwinning lodge, said to have been founded by the foreign architects and masons who came to build the abbey, is still looked up to as the mother-lodge in Scotland. The royal company of archers of Kilwinning – dating, it is said, as far back as 1488 – used till recently to meet annually to shoot at the papingo, or popinjay, in the manner described in Scott's Old Mortality; and in 1881 an attempt has been made to revive the custom. The former industry in weaving shawls and lighter fabrics has quite died out. The large iron, coal, and fire-clay works in the neighbourhood employ most of the working inhabitants. A woollen-mill, with sixty hands, but capable of employing three hundred, was opened in 1881. The population of the parish in 1881 was 7037; of the town, 3469. About a mile from Kilwinning is Eglinton Castle, the principal seat of the earl of Eglinton, where the famous Eglinton tournament was held in 1839.
KIMBERLEY, formerly called New Rush, one of the mining towns of the diamond district of South Africa, situated in Griqualand West, to the east of the Orange river, 520 miles north-east of Cape Town. Though it dates only from 1872, and has much of the temporary character to be expected from the conditions that gave it existence, it bids fair to be a permanent settlement, having a number of buildings of stone and brick, a marketplace, banks, churches, &c., and publishing a Diamond News. Although in 1874 the population left almost en masse for the gold mines of Leydenberg (in Transvaal), the town was estimated in 1881 to have something like 10,000 inhabitants, besides a floating native population about equal in number. See Holub, Seven Years in South Africa, 1881.
KIMḤI. ReDaK, i.e., Rabbi David Ḳimḥi or Kimchi,[1] was born at Narbonne after 1155, and died probably in the same city about 1235. His father Rabbi Yoseph, or his grandfather Rabbi Isaac (Yiṣḥaḳ) Ibn Ḳimḥi, had immigrated into Provence from Spain, where Arab fanaticism had compelled the Jews to flee from the sword of tyranny. In Provence the family took the Gentile surname of Petit.[2] Rabbi David lost his father (who was himself a grammarian, Bible commentator, and poet of no mean order) very early; but his elder and only brother, Rabbi Mosheh (a fair scholar, but famous chiefly through his younger brother), was his principal oral teacher. The valuable literary treasures of his father, however, falling into his hands, Redak grew strong by studying them, and, as we know, eclipsed them completely, although he lacked his father's originality. But, if Rabbi David lacked originality, he had abundance of instinct for finding out the best in the works of his predecessors, and abundance of genius for digesting and assimilating it till it became his own in a peculiar way. Although preceded by Ḥayyúj, Ibn Janáḥ, and others, and succeeded by Abraham de Balmes, Elias Levita, and others, Ḳimḥi has maintained the position of the greatest Jewish grammarian and lexicographer for six hundred and fifty years. And, although much inferior as a Biblical scholar and talmudist to Rashi, and as a critic and philosopher to Abraham Ibn Ezra, he has outstripped both in the eyes, not only of the Christians, but to some extent even of the Jews, and thus reigned supreme for more than half a millennium, as a commentator on the Bible. The fact is, he united in his own person the childlike simplicity of Rashi and the incisive criticism of Ibn Ezra. Add to this that he was master of the Targums and Aggadoth as few before or after him, that he had Hebrew, Arabic, and Greek philosophy at his fingers' ends, and that he was endowed with a truly poetical soul, and the mystery is explained how the merely reproductive scholar could cause original scholars of the highest eminence, but who were one-sided, to be all but forgotten. Not only have his works, in whatever field they are to be found, been printed and reprinted, but the most important of them are translated
1 Not Kamchi. Compare (
Hebrew characters) in the Talmud. Yerushalmi, Horayoth, iii. 2.
2 From these circumstances Ḳimḥi is known as Hassephardi (the Spaniard), as Ibn Ḳimḥi, or as Maistre Petit. Petit is, to a certain extent, an equivalent of Ḳimḥi (from (Hebrew characters), grain ground small).
