1844. The lord of the borough had a market and fair in the 13th century, and three fairs in March, July and December were held in 1792. Markets still exist on Thursdays and Saturdays. Weavers were introduced by Edward III., and the town became the chief centre of the Suffolk cloth industry after the Restoration.
SUDD, or Sadd (an Arabic word meaning “to dam”), the
name given to the vegetable obstruction which has at various
dates closed the waters of the Upper Nile to navigation. It is
composed of masses of papyrus and um suf (Vossia procera) and
the earth adhering to the roots of those reeds. Mingled with the
papyrus and um suf (Arabic for “mother-of-wool”) are small
swimming plants and the light brittle ambach. The papyrus
and um suf grow abundantly along the Nile banks and the connected
lagoons between 7° N. and 13° N. Loosened by storms
these reeds drift until they lodge on some obstruction and form a
dam across the channel, converted by fresh arrivals into blocks
that are sometimes 25 m. in length, and extend 15 to 20 ft.
below the surface. These masses of decayed vegetation and
earth, resembling peat in consistency, are so much compressed
by the force of the current that men can walk over them everywhere.
In parts elephants could cross them without danger.
The pressure of the water at length causes the formation of a side
channel or the bursting of the sudd. (For sudd cutting see Nile.)
In the Bahr-el-Ghazal the sudd, being chiefly composed of small swimming plants, is of less formidable nature than that of the main stream.
Consult, O. Deuerling, Die Pflanzenbarren der afrikanischen Flüsse (Munich, 1909), a valuable monograph; and the bibliography under Nile, especially Captain H. G. Lyons, The Physiography of the Nile and its Basin (Cairo, 1906).
SUDERMANN, HERMANN (1857–), German dramatist
and novelist, was born on the 30th of September 1857 at Matziken
in East Prussia, close to the Russian frontier, of a Mennonite
family long settled near Elbing. His father owned a small
brewery in the village of Heydekrug, and Sudermann received
his early education at the Realschule in Elbing, but, his parents
having been reduced in circumstances, he was apprenticed to a
chemist at the age of fourteen. He was, however, enabled to
enter the Realgymnasium in Tilsit, and to study philosophy and
history at Königsberg University. In order to complete his
studies Sudermann went to Berlin, where he was tutor in several
families. He next became a journalist, was from 1881–1882
editor of the Deutsches Reichsblatt, and then devoted himself to
novel-writing. The novels and romances Im Zwielicht (1886),
Frau Sorge (1887), Geschwister (1888) and Der Katzensteg (1890)
failed to bring the young author as much recognition as his first
drama Die Ehre (1889), which inaugurated a new period in the
history of the German stage. Of his other dramas the most
successful were Sodoms Ende (1891), Heimat (1893), Die
Schmetterlingsschlacht (1894), Das Glück im Winkel (1895), Morituri (1896),
Johannes (1898), Die drei Reiherfedern (1899), Johannesfeuer
(1900), Es lebe das Leben! (1902), Der Sturmgeselle Sokrates
(1903) and Stein unter Steinen (1905). Sudermann is also the
author of a powerful social novel, Es war (1904), which, like Frau
Sorge and Der Katzensteg, has been translated into English.
See W. Kawerau, Hermann Sudermann (1897); H. Landsberg, Hermann Sudermann (1902); H. Jung, Hermann Sudermann (1902); H. Schoen, Hermann Sudermann, poète dramatique et romancier (1905); and I. Axelrod, Hermann Sudermann (1907).
SUE, EUGÈNE [Joseph Marie] (1804–1857), French novelist, was born in Paris on the 20th of January 1804. He was the son of a distinguished surgeon in Napoleon’s army, and is said to have had the empress Josephine for godmother. Sue himself acted as surgeon both in the Spanish campaign undertaken by France in 1823 and at the battle of Navarino (1828). In 1829 his father’s death put him in possession of a considerable fortune, and he settled in Paris. His naval experiences supplied much of the materials of his first novels, Kernock le pirate (1830), Alar-Gull (1831), La Salamandre (2 vols., 1832), La Coucaratcha (4 vols., 1832–1834), and others, which were composed at the height of the romantic movement of 1830. In the quasi-historical style he wrote Jean Cavalier, ou Les Fanatiques des Cevennes (4 vols., 1840) and Latréaumont (2 vols., 1837). He was strongly affected by the
Socialist ideas of the day, and these prompted his most famous works: Les Mystères de Paris (10 vols., 1842–1843) and Le Juif errant (10 vols., 1844–1845), which were among the most popular specimens of the roman-feuilleton. He followed these up with some singular and not very edifying books: Les Sept péchés capitaux
(16 vols., 1847–1849), which contained stories to illustrate each sin, Les Mystères du peuple (1840–1856), which was suppressed by the censor in 1857, and several others, all on a very large scale, though the number of volumes gives an exaggerated idea of their
length. Some of his books, among them the Juif errant and the Mystères de Paris, were dramatized by himself, usually in collaboration with others. His period of greatest success and popularity coincided with that of Alexandre Dumas, with whom some writers have put him on an equality. Sue has neither Dumas’s wide range of subject, nor, above all, his faculty of conducting
the story by means of lively dialogue; he has, however, a command of terror which Dumas seldom or never attained. From the literary point of view his style is bad, and his construction prolix. After the revolution of 1848 he sat for Paris (the Seine) in the Assembly from April 1850, and was exiled in consequence of his protest against the coup d’état of the 2nd of December
1851. This exile stimulated his literary production, but the works of his last days are on the whole much inferior to those of his middle period. Sue died at Annecy (Savoy) on the 3rd of August 1857.
SUEBI, or Suevi, a collective term applied to a number of peoples in central Germany, the chief of whom appear to have been the Marcomanni, Quadi, Hermunduri, Semnones and Langobardi. From the earliest times these tribes inhabited the basin of the Elbe. The Langobardic territories seem to have lain about the lower reaches of the river, while the Semnones lay
south. The Marcomanni occupied the basin of the Saale, but under their king, Maroboduus, they moved into Bohemia during the early part of Augustus’s reign, while the Quadi, who are first mentioned in the time of Tiberius, lay farther east towards the sources of the Elbe. The former home of the Marcomanni was occupied by the Hermunduri a few years before the Christian
era. Some kind of political union seems to have existed among all these tribes. The Semnones and Langobardi were at one time subject to the dominion of the Marcomannic king Maroboduus, and at a much later period we hear of Langobardic troops
taking part against the Romans in the Marcomannic War. The
Semnones claimed to be the chief of the Suebic peoples, and
Tacitus describes a great religious festival held in their tribal
sanctuary, at which legations were present from all the other
tribes.
Tacitus uses the name Suebi in a far wider sense than that defined above. With him it includes not only the tribes of the basin of the Elbe, but also all the tribes north and east of that river, including even the Swedes (Suiones). This usage, which is not found in other ancient writers, is probably due to a confusion of the Suebi with the agglomeration of peoples under their supremacy, which as we know from Strabo extended to some at least of the eastern tribes.
In early Latin writers the term Suebi is occasionally applied to any of the above tribes. From the 2nd to the 4th century, however, it is seldom used except with reference to events in the neighbourhood of the Pannonian frontier, and here probably means the Quadi. From the middle of the 4th century onward it appears most frequently in the regions south of the Main, and soon the names Alamanni and Suabi are used synonymously The Alamanni (q.v.) seem to have been, in part at least, the descendants of the ancient Hermunduri, but it is likely that they had been joined by one or more other Suebic peoples, from the Danubian region, or more probably from the middle Elbe, the land of the ancient Semnones. It is probably from the Alamannic region that those Suebi came who joined the Vandals in their invasion of Gaul, and eventually founded a kingdom in north-west Spain. After the 1st century the term Suebi seems never to be applied to the Langobardi and seldom to the Baiouarii (Bavarians), the descendants of the ancient Marcomanni. But besides the Alamannic Suebi we hear
