Ladislaus Lokietek recovered it from Wenceslaus III. Ladislaus made it his capital, and from this time until 1764 it remained the coronation and burial place of the Polish kings, even after the royal residence had been removed by Siegmund III. (1587–1632) to Warsaw. On the third partition of Poland in 1795 Austria took possession of Cracow; but in 1809 Napoleon wrested it from that power, and incorporated it with the duchy of Warsaw, which was placed under the rule of the king of Saxony. In the campaign of 1812 the emperor Alexander made himself master of this and the other territory which formed the duchy of Warsaw. At the general settlement of the affairs of Europe by the great powers in 1815, it was agreed that Cracow and the adjoining territory should be formed into a free state; and, by the Final Act of the congress signed at Vienna in 1815, “the town of Cracow, with its territory, is declared to be for ever a free, independent and strictly neutral city, under the protection of Russia, Austria and Prussia.” In February 1846, however, an insurrection broke out in Cracow, apparently a ramification of a widely spread conspiracy throughout Poland. The senate and the other authorities of Cracow were unable to subdue the rebels or to maintain order, and, at their request, the city was occupied by a corps of Austrian troops for the protection of the inhabitants. The three powers, Russia, Austria and Prussia, made this a pretext for extinguishing this independent state; and as the outcome of a conference at Vienna (November 1846) the three courts, contrary to the assurance previously given, and in opposition to the expressed views of the British and French governments, decided to extinguish the state of Cracow and to incorporate it with the dominions of Austria.
CRADDOCK, CHARLES EGBERT (1850–), the pen-name of Mary Noailles Murfree, American author, who was born near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, on the 24th of January 1850, the great-granddaughter of Col. Hardy Murfree. She was crippled in childhood by paralysis. She attended school in Nashville and Philadelphia. Spending her summers in the mountains of eastern Tennessee, she came to know the primitive people there with whose life her writings deal. She contributed to Appleton’s Journal, and, first in 1878, to The Atlantic Monthly. No one, apparently, suspected that the author of these stories was a woman, and her identity was not disclosed until 1885, a year after the publication of her first volume of short stories, In the Tennessee Mountains. She deals mainly with the narrow, stern life of the Tennessee mountaineers, who, left behind in the advance of civilization, live amid traditions and customs, and speak a dialect, peculiarly their own; and her work abounds in exquisite descriptions of scenery. Among her other books are: Where the Battle was Fought (1884), a novel dealing with the old aristocratic southern life; Down the Ravine (1885) and The Story of Keedon Bluffs (1887) for young people; The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains (1885), a novel; In the Clouds (1886), a novel; The Despot of Broomsedge Cove (1888), a novel; In the “Stranger-People’s” Country (1891); His Vanished Star (1894), a novel; The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories (1895); The Phantoms of the Footbridge and Other Stories (1895); The Young Mountaineers (1897), short stories; The Juggler (1897); The Story of Old Fort Loudon (1899); The Bushwhackers and Other Stories (1899); The Champion (1902); A Spectre of Power (1903); The Frontiersman (1904); The Storm Centre (1905); The Amulet (1906); The Windfall (1907); and Fair Mississippian (1908).
CRADLE (of uncertain etymology, possibly connected with “crate” and “creel,” i.e. basket; the derivation from a Celtic word, with a sense of rocking, is scouted by the New English Dictionary), a child’s bed of wood, wicker or iron, with enclosed sides, slung upon pivots or mounted on rockers. It is a very ancient piece of furniture, but the date when it first assumed its characteristic swinging or rocking form is by no means clear. A miniature in an illuminated Histoire de la belle Hélaine in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (end of the 14th or beginning of the 15th century) shows an infant sleeping in a tiny four-post bed slung upon rockers. In its oldest forms the cradle is an oblong oak box without a lid—originally the rockers appear to have been detachable—but, like all other household appliances, it has been subject to changes of fashion alike in shape and adornment. It has been panelled and carved, supported on Renaissance pillars, inlaid with marqueterie or mounted in gilded bronze. The original simple shape persisted for two or three centuries—even the hood made its appearance very early. In the 18th century, however, cradles were often very elaborate—indeed in France they had begun to be so much earlier, but the richly carved and upholstered examples were used chiefly for purposes of state, being in fact miniature lits de parade. In modern times they have become lighter and simpler, the old hood being very often replaced by a draped curtain dependent from a carved or shaped upright. About the middle of the 19th century iron cradles were introduced, along with iron bedsteads. A number of undoubted historic cradles have been preserved, together with many others with doubtful attributions. Two alleged cradles of Henry V. exist; one which claims to have been used by the unhappy earl of Derwentwater is in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; the other is at Windsor Castle. That of Henry IV. of France, now in the Château de Pau, is mounted upon a large tortoiseshell. That of the king of Rome (“Napoleon II.”) was designed by Prud’hon, and along with that of the comte de Chambord is preserved in the Garde Meuble. In England a cradle is now often called a “bassinet” (i.e. little basket), and the “cot” has to some extent taken its place. By analogy, the word “cradle” is also applied to various sorts of framework in engineering, and to a rocking-tool used in engraving.
CRADOCK, a town of South Africa, capital of a division of the Cape province, in the upper valley of the Great Fish river, 181 m. by rail N. by E. of Port Elizabeth. Pop. (1904) 7762. It is one of the chief centres of the wool industry of the Cape, and does also a large trade in ostrich feathers, mohair, &c. The town enjoys a reputation as one of the best health resorts in the province. It stands at an altitude of 2856 ft.; the climate is very dry, the average annual rainfall being 14.50 in. The mean maximum temperature is 77.6° F. Three miles N. of the town are sulphur baths (temp. 100° F.) used for the treatment of rheumatism. In the neighbouring district survive a few herds of zebras, now protected by the game laws. The town dates from the beginning of the 19th century and is named after Sir John Cradock, governor of the Cape 1811–1813. The division has an area of 3048 sq. m. and a pop. (1904) of 18,803, of whom 41% are white.
CRAFT (a word common to Teutonic languages for strength, or power; cf. Ger. Kraft), a word confined in English only, of the Teutonic languages in which it occurs, to intellectual power, and used as a synonym of “art.” It then means skill or ingenuity, especially in the manual arts, hence its use in the expression “Arts and Crafts” (q.v.), and it is thus applied to the trade or profession in which such skill is displayed, to an association of workmen of a particular trade, a trade gild, and in particular to Freemasons, “the craft”; the word appears also in words such as “handicraft” or “craftsman.” Skill applied to outwit or deceive gives the common sense of cunning or trickery, and it is this meaning which is implied in such combined words as “priestcraft,” “witchcraft” and the like. A more particular use of the word is in the nautical sense of vessels of transport by water; this is probably a colloquially shortened form either of “vessels of a fisherman’s, lighterman’s &c., craft,” i.e. “art,” or of “vessels of a heavier or lighter craft,” i.e. burden or capacity; in both cases the qualifying words are dropped and the word comes to be used of vessels in general.
CRAG (a Celtic word, cf. Gael. creag, Manx creg, and Welsh and modern Scots craig), a steep rock. The word appears in many place-names in the north of England and in Scotland, and is also connected with “carrick,” a word of similar meaning, also found in place-names. In geology, the term is applied to the strata in which a shelly sand deposit is found, and, in the expression “crag and tail,” to a formation of hills, in which one side is precipitous and lofty and the other slopes or “tails” gradually away, as in the Castle Rock in Edinburgh.
