title: Cornish language

text: Middle Cornish orthography has a significant level of variation, and shows influence from Middle English spelling practices. Yogh (Ȝ ȝ) is used in certain Middle Cornish texts, where it is used to represent a variety of sounds, including the dental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/, a usage which is unique to Middle Cornish and is never found in Middle English. Middle Cornish scribes tend to use ⟨c⟩ for /k/ before back vowels, and ⟨k⟩ for /k/ before front vowels, though this is not always true, and this rule is less consistent in certain texts. Middle Cornish scribes almost universally use ⟨wh⟩ to represent /ʍ/ (or /hw/), as in Middle English. Middle Cornish, especially towards the end of this period, tends to use orthographic ⟨g⟩ and ⟨b⟩ in word-final position in stressed monosyllables, and ⟨k⟩ and ⟨p⟩ in word-final position in unstressed final syllables, to represent the reflexes of late Brittonic /ɡ/ and /b/, respectively.


title: Cornish language

text: Written sources from this period are often spelled following English spelling conventions since many of the writers of the time had not been exposed to Middle Cornish texts or the Cornish orthography within them. Around 1700, Edward Lhuyd visited Cornwall, introducing his own partly phonetic orthography that he used in his , which was adopted by some local writers, leading to the use of some Lhuydian features such as the use of circumflexes to denote long vowels, ⟨k⟩ before front vowels, word-final ⟨i⟩, and the use of ⟨dh⟩ to represent the voiced dental fricative /ð/.


title: Cornish language

text: After the publication of Jenner's Handbook of the Cornish Language, the earliest revivalists used Jenner's orthography, which was influenced by Lhuyd's system. This system was abandoned following the development by Nance of a "unified spelling", later known as Unified Cornish, a system based on a standardization of the orthography of the early Middle Cornish texts. Nance's system was used by almost all Revived Cornish speakers and writers until the 1970s. Criticism of Nance's system, particularly the relationship of spelling to sounds and the phonological basis of Unified Cornish, resulted in rival orthographies appearing by the early 1980s, including Gendal's Modern Cornish, based on Late Cornish native writers and Lhuyd, and Ken George's Kernewek Kemmyn, a mainly morphophonemic orthography based on George's reconstruction of Middle Cornish c. 1500, which features a number of orthographic, and phonological, distinctions not found in Unified Cornish. Kernewek Kemmyn is characterised by the use of universal ⟨k⟩ for /k/ (instead of ⟨c⟩ before back vowels as in Unified); ⟨hw⟩ for /hw/, instead of ⟨wh⟩ as in Unified; and ⟨y⟩, ⟨oe⟩, and ⟨eu⟩ to represent the phonemes /ɪ/, /o/, and /œ/ respectively, which are not found in Unified Cornish. Criticism of all of these systems, especially Kernewek Kemmyn, by Nicolas Williams, resulted in the creation of Unified Cornish Revised, a modified version of Nance's orthography, featuring: an additional phoneme not distinguished by Nance, "ö in German schön", represented in the UCR orthography by ⟨ue⟩; replacement of ⟨y⟩ with ⟨e⟩ in many words; internal ⟨h⟩ rather than ⟨gh⟩; and use of final ⟨b⟩, ⟨g⟩, and ⟨dh⟩ in stressed monosyllables. A Standard Written Form, intended as a compromise orthography for official and educational purposes, was introduced in 2008, although a number of previous orthographic systems remain in use and, in response to the publication of the SWF, another new orthography, Kernowek Standard, was created, mainly by Nicholas Williams and Michael Everson, which is proposed as an amended version of the Standard Written Form.


title: Cornish language

text: The phonological system of Old Cornish, inherited from Proto-Southwestern Brittonic and originally differing little from Old Breton and Old Welsh, underwent various changes during its Middle and Late phases, eventually resulting in several characteristics not found in the other Brittonic languages. The first sound change to distinguish Cornish from both Breton and Welsh, the assibilation of the dental stops and in medial and final position, had begun by the time of the Vocabularium Cornicum, c. 1100 or earlier. This change, and the subsequent, or perhaps dialectical, palatalization (or occasional rhotacization in a few words) of these sounds, results in orthographic forms such as Middle Cornish 'father', Late Cornish (Welsh ), Middle Cornish 'believe', Late Cornish (Welsh ), and Middle Cornish 'leave', Late Cornish (Welsh ). A further characteristic sound change, pre-occlusion, occurred during the sixteenth century, resulting in the nasals and being realised as and respectively in stressed syllables, and giving Late Cornish forms such as 'head' (Welsh ) and 'crooked' (Welsh ).


title: Cornish language

text: As a revitalised language, the phonology of contemporary spoken Cornish is based on a number of sources, including various reconstructions of the sound system of middle and early modern Cornish based on an analysis of internal evidence such as the orthography and rhyme used in the historical texts, comparison with the other Brittonic languages Breton and Welsh, and the work of the linguist Edward Lhuyd, who visited Cornwall in 1700 and recorded the language in a partly phonetic orthography.


title: Cornish language

text: Cornish is a Celtic language, and the majority of its vocabulary, when usage frequency is taken into account, at every documented stage of its history is inherited direct from Proto-Celtic, either through the ancestral Proto-Indo-European language, or through vocabulary borrowed from unknown substrate language(s) at some point in the development of the Celtic proto-language from PIE. Examples of the PIE > PCelt. development are various terms related to kinship and people, including 'mother', 'aunt, mother's sister', 'sister', 'son', 'man', 'person, human', and 'people', and words for parts of the body, including ‘hand’ and 'tooth'. Inherited adjectives with an Indo-European etymology include 'new', 'broad, wide', 'red', 'old', 'young', and 'alive, living'.


title: Cornish language

text: Several Celtic or Brittonic words cannot be reconstructed to Proto-Indo-European, and are suggested to have been borrowed from unknown substrate language(s) at an early stage, such as Proto-Celtic or Proto-Brittonic. Proposed examples in Cornish include 'beer' and 'badger'.


title: Cornish language

text: Other words in Cornish inherited direct from Proto-Celtic include a number of toponyms, for example 'hill', 'fort', and 'land', and a variety of animal names such as 'mouse', 'wether', 'pigs', and 'bull'.


title: Cornish language

text: During the Roman occupation of Britain a large number (around 800) of Latin loan words entered the vocabulary of Common Brittonic, which subsequently developed in a similar way to the inherited lexicon. These include 'arm' (from British Latin ), 'net' (from ), and 'cheese' (from ).


title: Cornish language

text: A substantial number of loan words from English and to a lesser extent French entered the Cornish language throughout its history. Whereas only 5% of the vocabulary of the Old Cornish Vocabularium Cornicum is thought to be borrowed from English, and only 10% of the lexicon of the early modern Cornish writer William Rowe, around 42% of the vocabulary of the whole Cornish corpus is estimated to be English loan words, without taking frequency into account. (However when frequency "is" taken into account this figure for the entire corpus drops to 8%.) The many English loanwords, some of which were sufficiently well assimilated to acquire native Cornish verbal or plural suffixes or be affected by the mutation system, include 'to read', 'to understand', 'way', 'boot' and 'art'.


title: Cornish language

text: Many Cornish words, such as mining and fishing terms, are specific to the culture of Cornwall. Examples include 'mine waste' and 'to mend fishing nets'. and are different types of pastries. is a 'traditional Cornish dance get-together' and is a specific kind of ceremonial dance that takes place in Cornwall. Certain Cornish words may have several translation equivalents in English, so for instance may be translated into English as either 'book' or 'volume' and can mean either 'hand' or 'fist'.


title: Cornish language

text: As in other Celtic languages, Cornish lacks a number of verbs commonly found in other languages, including modals and psych-verbs; examples are 'have', 'like', 'hate', 'prefer', 'must/have to' and 'make/compel to'. These functions are instead fulfilled by periphrastic constructions involving a verb and various prepositional phrases.


title: Cornish language

text: The grammar of Cornish shares with other Celtic languages a number of features which, while not unique, are unusual in an Indo-European context. The grammatical features most unfamiliar to English speakers of the language are the initial consonant mutations, the verb–subject–object word order, inflected prepositions, fronting of emphasised syntactic elements and the use of two different forms for "to be".


title: Cornish language

text: Cornish has initial consonant mutation: The first sound of a Cornish word may change according to grammatical context. As in Breton, there are four types of mutation in Cornish (compared with three in Welsh, two in Irish and Manx and one in Scottish Gaelic). These changes apply to only certain letters (sounds) in particular grammatical contexts, some of which are given below:


title: Cornish language

text: Cornish has no indefinite article. can either mean "harbour" or "a harbour". In certain contexts can be used, with the meaning 'a certain, a particular', e.g. 'a certain harbour'. There is, however, a definite article 'the', which is used for all nouns regardless of their gender or number, e.g. 'the harbour'.


title: Cornish language

text: Cornish nouns belong to one of two grammatical genders, masculine and feminine, but are not inflected for case. Nouns may be singular or plural. Plurals can be formed in various ways, depending on the noun:


title: Cornish language

text: Some nouns are collective or mass nouns. Singulatives can be formed from collective nouns by the addition of the suffix ⫽-enn⫽ (SWF "-en"):


title: Cornish language

text: Verbs are conjugated for person, number, tense and mood. For example, the verbal noun 'see' has derived forms such as 1st person singular present indicative 'I see', 3rd person plural imperfect indicative 'they saw', and 2nd person singular imperative 'see!' Grammatical categories can be indicated either by inflection of the main verb, or by the use of auxiliary verbs such as 'be' or 'do'.


title: Cornish language

text: Cornish uses inflected (or conjugated) prepositions: Prepositions are inflected for person and number. For example, (with, by) has derived forms such as 'with me', 'with him', and 'with you (plural)'.


title: Cornish language

text: Word order in Cornish is somewhat fluid and varies depending on several factors such as the intended element to be emphasised and whether a statement is negative or affirmative. In a study on Cornish word order in the play Bewnans Meriasek (c. 1500), Ken George has argued that the most common word order in main clauses in Middle Cornish was, in affirmative statements, SVO, with the verb in the third person singular:


title: Cornish language

text: When affirmative statements are in the less common VSO order, they usually begin with an adverb or other element, followed by an affirmative particle, with the verb inflected for person and tense:


title: Cornish language

text: In negative statements, the order was usually VSO, with an initial negative particle and the verb conjugated for person and tense:


title: Cornish language

text: The Celtic Congress and Celtic League are groups that advocate cooperation amongst the Celtic Nations in order to protect and promote Celtic languages and cultures, thus working in the interests of the Cornish language.


title: Cornish language

text: There have been films such as , some televised, made entirely, or significantly, in the language. Some businesses use Cornish names.


title: Cornish language

text: Cornish has significantly and durably affected Cornwall's place-names as well as Cornish surnames and knowledge of the language helps the understanding of these ancient meanings. Cornish names are adopted for children, pets, houses and boats.


title: Cornish language

text: There is Cornish literature, including spoken poetry and song, as well as traditional Cornish chants historically performed in marketplaces during religious holidays and public festivals and gatherings.


title: Cornish language

text: There are periodicals solely in the language, such as the monthly , and . BBC Radio Cornwall has a news broadcast in Cornish and sometimes has other programmes and features for learners and enthusiasts. Local newspapers such as the "Western Morning News" have articles in Cornish and newspapers such as "The Packet", "The West Briton" and "The Cornishman" have also been known to have Cornish features. There is an online radio service in Cornish called , publishing a one-hour podcast each week, based on a magazine format. It includes music in Cornish as well as interviews and features.


title: Cornish language

text: The language has financial sponsorship from sources including the Millennium Commission. A number of language organisations exist in Cornwall: (Our Language), the Cornish sub-group of the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages, , (the Cornish Language Board) and (the Cornish Language Fellowship).


title: Cornish language

text: There are ceremonies, some ancient, some modern, that use the language or are entirely in the language.


title: Cornish language

text: Though estimates of the number of Cornish speakers vary, there are thought to be around five hundred today. Currently Cornish is spoken at home, outside the home, in the workplace and at ritual ceremonies. Cornish is also being used in the arts.


title: Cornish language

text: Cornwall has had cultural events associated with the language, including the international Celtic Media Festival, hosted in St Ives in 1997. The Old Cornwall Society has promoted the use of the language at events and meetings. Two examples of ceremonies that are performed in both the English and Cornish languages are Crying the Neck and the annual mid-summer bonfires.


title: Cornish language

text: Since 1969, there have been three full performances of the Ordinalia, originally written in the Cornish language, the most recent of which took place at the plen-an-gwary in St Just in September 2021. While significantly adapted from the original, as well as using mostly English-speaking actors, the plays used sizable amounts of Cornish, including a character who spoke only in Cornish and another who spoke both English and Cornish. The event drew thousands over two weeks, also serving as a celebration of Celtic culture. The next production, scheduled for 2024, could, in theory, be entirely in Cornish, without English, if assisted by a professional linguist.


title: Cornish language

text: Cornish is taught in some schools; it was previously taught at degree level at the University of Wales, though the only existing course in the language at University level is as part of a course in Cornish Studies at the University of Exeter. In March 2008 a course in the language was started as part of the Celtic Studies curriculum at the University of Vienna, Austria.


title: Cornish language

text: The University of Cambridge offers courses in Cornish through its John Trim Resources Centre, which is part of its Language Centre. In addition the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (which is part of the faculty of English) also carries out research into the Cornish language.


title: Cornish language

text: In 2015 a university-level course aiming at encouraging and supporting practitioners working with young children to introduce the Cornish language into their settings was launched. The "Cornish Language Practice Project (Early Years)" is a level 4 course approved by Plymouth University and run at Cornwall College. The course is not a Cornish-language course but students will be assessed on their ability to use the Cornish language constructively in their work with young children. The course will cover such topics as "Understanding Bilingualism", "Creating Resources" and "Integrating Language and Play", but the focus of the language provision will be on Cornish. A non-accredited specialist Cornish-language course has been developed to run alongside the level 4 course for those who prefer tutor support to learn the language or develop their skills for use with young children.


title: Cornish language

text: Cornwall's first Cornish-language crèche, , was established in 2010 at Cornwall College, Camborne. The nursery teaches children aged between two and five years alongside their parents to ensure the language is also spoken in the home.


title: Cornish language

text: A number of dictionaries are available in the various orthographies, including "A Learners' Cornish Dictionary in the Standard Written Form" by Steve Harris (ed.), by Ken George, by Nicholas Williams and "A Practical Dictionary of Modern Cornish" by Richard Gendall. Course books include the three-part series, , and , as well as the more recent and . Several online dictionaries are now available, including one organised by An Akademi Kernewek in SWF.


title: Cornish language

text: Classes and conversation groups for adults are available at several locations in Cornwall as well as in London, Cardiff and Bristol. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic a number of conversation groups entitled have been held online, advertised through Facebook and other media. A surge in interest, not just from people in Cornwall but from all over the world, has meant that extra classes have been organised.


title: Cornish language

text: William Scawen produced a manuscript on the declining Cornish language that continually evolved until he died in 1689, aged 89. He was one of the first to realise the language was dying out and wrote detailed manuscripts which he started working on when he was 78. The only version that was ever published was a short first draft but the final version, which he worked on until his death, is a few hundred pages long. At the same time a group of scholars led by John Keigwin (nephew of William Scawen) of Mousehole tried to preserve and further the Cornish language and chose to write in Cornish. One of their number, Nicholas Boson, tells how he had been discouraged from using Cornish to servants by his mother. This group left behind a large number of translations of parts of the Bible, proverbs and songs. They were contacted by the Welsh linguist Edward Lhuyd, who came to Cornwall to study the language.


title: Cornish language

text: Early Modern Cornish was the subject of a study published by Lhuyd in 1707, and differs from the medieval language in having a considerably simpler structure and grammar. Such differences included sound changes and more frequent use of auxiliary verbs. The medieval language also possessed two additional tenses for expressing past events and an extended set of possessive suffixes.


title: Cornish language

text: John Whitaker, the Manchester-born rector of Ruan Lanihorne, studied the decline of the Cornish language. In his 1804 work "the Ancient Cathedral of Cornwall" he concluded that: "[T]he English Liturgy, was not desired by the Cornish, but forced upon them by the tyranny of England, at a time when the English language was yet unknown in Cornwall. This act of tyranny was at once gross barbarity to the Cornish people, and a death blow to the Cornish language."


title: Cornish language

text: Robert Williams published the first comprehensive Cornish dictionary in 1865, the . As a result of the discovery of additional ancient Cornish manuscripts, 2000 new words were added to the vocabulary by Whitley Stokes in "A Cornish Glossary". William C. Borlase published "Proverbs and Rhymes in Cornish" in 1866 while "A Glossary of Cornish Names" was produced by John Bannister in the same year. Frederick Jago published his "English–Cornish Dictionary" in 1882.


title: Cornish language

text: In 2002 the Cornish language gained new recognition because of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages. Conversely, along with government provision was the governmental basis of "New Public Management", measuring quantifiable results as means of determining effectiveness. This put enormous pressure on finding a single orthography that could be used in unison. The revival of Cornish required extensive rebuilding. The Cornish orthographies that were reconstructed may be considered versions of Cornish because they are not traditional sociolinguistic variations. In the middle-to-late twentieth century, the debate over Cornish orthographies angered more people because several language groups received public funding. This caused other groups to sense favouritism as playing a role in the debate.


title: Cornish language

text: A governmental policymaking structure called New Public Management (NPM) has helped the Cornish language by managing public life of the Cornish language and people. In 2007, the Cornish Language Partnership MAGA represents separate divisions of government and their purpose is to further enhance the Cornish Language Developmental Plan. MAGA established an Ad-Hoc Group, which resulted in three orthographies being presented. The relations for the Ad-Hoc Group were to obtain consensus among the three orthographies and then develop a "single written form". The result was creating a new form of Cornish, which had to be natural for both new learners and skilled speakers.


title: Cornish language

text: In 1981, the Breton library edited (Passion of our lord), a 15th-century Cornish poem. The first complete translation of the Bible into Cornish, translated from English, was published in 2011. Another Bible translation project translating from original languages is underway. The New Testament and Psalms were posted on-line on YouVersion (Bible.com) and Bibles.org in July 2014 by the Bible Society.


title: Cornish language

text: A few small publishers produce books in Cornish which are stocked in some local bookshops, as well as in Cornish branches of Waterstones and WH Smith, although publications are becoming increasingly available on the Internet. Printed copies of these may also be found from Amazon. The Truro Waterstones hosts the annual "" literary awards, established by to recognise publications relating to Cornwall or in the Cornish language. In recent years, a number of Cornish translations of literature have been published, including "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (2009), "Around the World in Eighty Days" (2009), "Treasure Island" (2010), "The Railway Children" (2012), "Hound of the Baskervilles" (2012), "The War of the Worlds" (2012), "The Wind in the Willows" (2013), "Three Men in a Boat" (2013), "Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass" (2014), and "A Christmas Carol" (which won the 2012 award for Cornish Language books), as well as original Cornish literature such as "" ("The Lyonesse Stone") by Craig Weatherhill. Literature aimed at children is also available, such as ("Where's Spot?"), ("The Beast of Bodmin Moor"), three "Topsy and Tim" titles, two "Tintin" titles and ("Briallen and the Alien"), which won the 2015 award for Cornish Language books for children. In 2014 , Nicholas Williams' translation of J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" was published.


title: Cornish language

text: In 1983 BBC Radio Cornwall started broadcasting around two minutes of Cornish every week. In 1987, however, they gave over 15 minutes of airtime on Sunday mornings for a programme called ("Holdall"), presented by John King, running until the early 1990s. It was eventually replaced with a five-minute news bulletin called ("The News"). The bulletin was presented every Sunday evening for many years by Rod Lyon, then Elizabeth Stewart, and currently a team presents in rotation. Pirate FM ran short bulletins on Saturday lunchtimes from 1998 to 1999. In 2006, Matthew Clarke who had presented the Pirate FM bulletin, launched a web-streamed news bulletin called ("Weekly News"), which in 2008 was merged into a new weekly magazine podcast (RanG).


title: Cornish language

text: Cornish television shows have included a 1982 series by Westward Television with each episode containing a three-minute lesson in Cornish. , an eight-episode series produced by Television South West and broadcast between June and July 1984, later on S4C from May to July 1985, and as a schools programme in 1986. Also by Television South West were two bilingual programmes on Cornish Culture called .


title: Cornish language

text: In 2016 Kelly's Ice Cream of Bodmin introduced a light hearted television commercial in the Cornish language and this was repeated in 2017.


title: Cornish language

text: The first episode from the third season of the US television program Deadwood features a conversation between miners, purportedly in the Cornish language, but they are actually speaking Irish. One of the miners is then shot by thugs working for businessman George Hearst and justifies the murder by saying, "He come at me with his foreign gibberish."


title: Cornish language

text: A number of Cornish Language films have also been made. Amongst others, this includes "Hwerow Hweg", a 2002 drama film written and directed by Hungarian film-maker Antal Kovacs and "Trengellick Rising", a short film written and directed by Guy Potter.


title: Cornish language

text: Screen Cornwall works with Cornwall Council to commission a short film in the Cornish Language each year, with their FilmK competition. Their website states "FylmK is an annual contemporary Cornish language short film competition, producing an imaginative and engaging film, in any genre, from distinctive and exciting filmmakers".


title: Cornish language

text: English composer Peter Warlock wrote a Christmas carol in Cornish (setting words by Henry Jenner). The Cornish electronic musician Aphex Twin has used Cornish names for track titles, most notably on his "DrukQs" album.


title: Cornish language

text: Several traditional Cornish folk songs have been collected and can be sung to various tunes. These include "An Awhesyth", "Bro Goth agan Tasow", and "Delkiow Sivy".


title: Cornish language

text: In 2018, the singer Gwenno Saunders released an album in Cornish, entitled , saying: "I speak Cornish with my son: if you're comfortable expressing yourself in a language, you want to share it."


title: Cornish language

text: The Cornish language features in the toponymy of Cornwall, with a significant contrast between English place-names prevalent in eastern Cornwall and Cornish place-names to the west of the Camel-Fowey river valleys, where English place-names are much less common. Hundreds of Cornish family names have an etymology in the Cornish language, the majority of which are derived from Cornish place-names. Long before the agreement of the Standard Written Form of Cornish in the 21st century, Late Cornish orthography in the Early Modern period usually followed Welsh to English transliteration, phonetically rendering C for K, I for Y, U for W, and Z for S. This meant that place names were adopted into English with spellings such as ‘Porthcurno’ and ‘Penzance’; they are written and in the Standard Written Form of Cornish, agreed upon in 2008. Likewise words such as (‘island’) can be found spelled as ‘’ as at Ince Castle. These apparent mistransliterations can, however, reveal an insight into how names and places were actually pronounced, explaining, for example, how anglicised is still pronounced [ˈlansǝn] with emphasis on the first element, perhaps from Cornish , though the "Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names" considers this unlikely.


title: Cornish language

text: The following tables present some examples of Cornish place names and surnames and their anglicised versions:


title: Mullet (haircut)

text: The mullet is a hairstyle in which the hair is cut shorter at the front, top and sides, but is longer at the back.


title: Mullet (haircut)

text: According to the "Oxford English Dictionary", use of the term "mullet" to describe this hairstyle was "apparently coined, and certainly popularized, by American hip-hop group the Beastie Boys", who used "mullet" and "mullet head" as epithets in their 1994 song "Mullet Head", combining it with a description of the haircut: "number one on the side and don't touch the back, number six on the top and don't cut it wack, Jack." They expounded on the subject at length in a six-page article entitled "Mulling Over The Mullet" in Issue 2 (1995) of their magazine Grand Royal, offering a selection of alternative names for the cut, including "Hockey Player Haircut" and "Soccer Rocker".


title: Mullet (haircut)

text: On "Slate"'s "Decoder Ring" podcast, Willa Paskin discussed the etymology of the term, noting that Oxford English Dictionary credited the Australian "Street Machine" automotive magazine with the first published description of the term in 1992, predating Beastie Boys. "Decoder Ring" discovered that the magazine image had been faked; in a 2018 apology posted to imgur, the creator had admitted to faking the text, adjusting the magazine dates, and shown proof.


title: Mullet (haircut)

text: In 2019, Kiefer Sutherland was widely reported, based on an interview with "Yahoo!", to be the unwitting instigator of the style due to the director's requirements for his lead role in the 1987 film "The Lost Boys". He also confirmed part of the inspiration for his hairstyle came from Billy Idol. In 2022 press interviews marking the 35th anniversary of the film, Sutherland again recounted the story.


title: Mullet (haircut)

text: A metal figurine, dated back to the 1st-century AD and found during 2018 preparations for a new car park at the Wimpole Estate, England, was hypothesised by archaeologists to indicate that natives in ancient Britain during the Roman occupation could have worn their hair similarly to mullets.


title: Mullet (haircut)

text: In the sixth century, Byzantine scholar Procopius wrote that some factions of young males wore their hair long at the back and cut it short over the forehead. This non-Roman style was termed the "Hunnic" look.


title: Mullet (haircut)

text: Researcher Alan Henderson describes the ancient hairstyle as useful, as it kept the hair out of the eyes, yet provided warmth and protection for the neck.


title: Mullet (haircut)

text: In "Mourt's Relation", author Edward Winslow described the Plymouth pilgrims' first encounter with the Native Americans, Samoset of the Abenaki in 1621:


title: Mullet (haircut)

text: Tom Jones sported a mullet in two of his three 1965 performances of his hit song "It's Not Unusual" on the Ed Sullivan Show, May 2, 1965 and June 13, 1965.


title: Mullet (haircut)

text: Mullets were worn by rock stars David Bowie, Rod Stewart, Keith Richards, and Paul McCartney in the early 1970s. When writing Neil Peart's eulogy in January 2020, Greg Prato asserted Peart had a mullet, based on his observations of a 1974 video, further suggesting "he also may have been one of the first rockers to sport another hairstyle – the rattail", based on a 1985 video, "The Big Money".


title: Mullet (haircut)

text: In Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom in the 1980s, mullets were "everywhere", according to Tess Reidy writing at "The Guardian" in 2019. The 1980s were also the high point of the mullet's popularity in continental Europe.


title: Mullet (haircut)

text: Also in the 1980s, the mullet became part of lesbian culture, where it came to be used as a way of identifying oneself as a member of that culture in public.


title: Mullet (haircut)

text: After the much-publicized 1992 DC Comics storyline in which Superman apparently died, the character returned to the 1993 follow-up storyline "Reign of the Supermen", in which he was depicted with a mullet. The cancelled Superman film project, "Superman Lives", would have depicted Superman with a mullet.


title: Mullet (haircut)

text: Punk rock band the Vandals sang of the mullets worn by country music singers and guests of "The Jerry Springer Show" and listed regional names for the style in the 1998 song "I've Got an Ape Drape".


title: Mullet (haircut)

text: Vocalist Wesley Willis wrote and released the track "Cut the Mullet" in 1998 and frequently performed it at live shows.


title: Mullet (haircut)

text: The 2001 film "American Mullet" documents the phenomenon of the mullet hairstyle and the people who wear it.


title: Mullet (haircut)

text: The same year Universal Records (Canada) released the album "Mullet Years: Power Ballads", a collection of hard rock ballads.


title: Mullet (haircut)

text: The mullet was returned to the spotlight in 2015 by K-pop idol G-Dragon during his band BIGBANG's Made World Tour. Byun Baekhyun of EXO also sported a mullet in promotion for the group's 2017 song "Ko Ko Bop". K-pop artists who have worn mullets include Block B's Zico, Song Min-ho, Nam Joo-hyuk, Dean, Stray Kids' Chan and Han, VIXX's N, B.A.P.'s Himchan, Seventeen's Woozi and The8, and BTS's V.


title: Mullet (haircut)

text: The mullet has also experienced a revival within American sports. After winning back-to-back Stanley Cups, Phil Kessel was spotted in Pittsburgh Penguins training camp in September 2017 bringing the mullet back to its native roots of Pittsburgh Hockey. Similarly, Oklahoma State head football coach Mike Gundy wore a mullet starting in early 2017; the popularity of his mullet supposedly earned Oklahoma State millions of dollars in marketing revenue. In addition, from 2010 to 2015, Patrick Kane of the Chicago Blackhawks popularized the "playoff mullet," an alternative to the traditional NHL playoff beard. Current Pittsburgh Steelers running back James Conner began sporting a mullet in 2018, continuing the Yinzer tradition of the hairstyle in Western Pennsylvania.


title: Mullet (haircut)

text: In September 2020, i-D called 2020 "the year of the mullet", attributing its boom in popularity to COVID-19 lockdowns and their closing of hair salons. In an article for Vice Media, the mullet-wearing teenagers interviewed all described getting the haircut as a joke, with one stating "There's an irony to the mullet haircut. It's this disgustingly gross haircut, which means it's definitely worn in an ironic way". Magda Ryczko, founder of the queer-owned barbershop Hairrari in Brooklyn, notes that mullets allow for a professional front-facing look for COVID-19 era Zoom meetings, while maintaining a messier, more fun look off-camera, when the longer back section of hair may be revealed. An annual national USA Mullet Championship began in 2020.


title: Mullet (haircut)

text: Like many '90s trends, mullets have made their way back into mainstream hairstyles. The most popular version is called the mullet fade. The versatility of the taper fade has modernized the classic mullet, giving it a cleaner look.


title: Laz Alonso

text: Lazaro Alonso (born March 25, 1974) is an American actor. He is known for playing Tsu'tey in James Cameron's science fiction film "Avatar" and Fenix Calderon in the film "Fast & Furious". Alonso has had roles in other films such as "Jarhead", "This Christmas", "Miracle at St. Anna" and "Detroit". As of 2019, Alonso is part of the main cast of Amazon Prime Video original series "The Boys" (based on the comic book series of the same name) playing the character known as Marvin T. "MM (Mother's Milk)" Milk.


title: Laz Alonso

text: Alonso was born and raised in Washington, D.C. and is of Afro Cuban descent. He is an alumnus of Howard University. After graduating from Howard University with a BBA in marketing, he had a career as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch on Wall Street before making his way into entertainment.


title: Laz Alonso

text: Alonso began his career hosting shows on the BET network. Alonso appeared in music videos by Toni Braxton and Aaliyah.


title: Laz Alonso

text: Also has had supporting roles in films such as "Stomp the Yard", "Down for Life", "Jarhead", "G," "", "This Christmas" and "Miracle at St. Anna".


title: Laz Alonso

text: In 2009, he played Fenix Calderon, the main antagonist in the film "Fast & Furious", the fourth installment in the "Fast & Furious" film series. Alonso had a major role as the Na'vi warrior Tsu'tey in James Cameron's science fiction adventure film "Avatar".


title: Laz Alonso

text: Alonso also played one of the lead characters on the 2011, TV series "Breakout Kings" during its first season and the first episode of season two.


title: Laz Alonso

text: He has made television guest starring appearances on "The Unit", "Bones", "", "NCIS", "The Practice" and "Eyes".


title: Laz Alonso

text: Alonso also played one of the main characters, Detective Billy Soto, on the NBC series "The Mysteries of Laura".


title: Folk rock

text: Folk rock is a hybrid music genre that combines the elements of folk and rock music, which arose in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom in the mid-1960s. In the U.S., folk rock emerged from the folk music revival. Performers such as Bob Dylan and the Byrds—several of whose members had earlier played in folk ensembles—attempted to blend the sounds of rock with their pre-existing folk repertoire, adopting the use of electric instrumentation and drums in a way previously discouraged in the U.S. folk community. The term "folk rock" was initially used in the U.S. music press in June 1965 to describe the Byrds' music.


title: Folk rock

text: The commercial success of the Byrds' cover version of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" and their debut album of the same name, along with Dylan's own recordings with rock instrumentation—on the albums "Bringing It All Back Home" (1965), "Highway 61 Revisited" (1965), and "Blonde on Blonde" (1966)—encouraged other folk acts, such as Simon & Garfunkel, to use electric backing on their records and new groups, such as Buffalo Springfield, to form. Dylan's controversial appearance at the Newport Folk Festival on 25 July 1965, where he was backed by an electric band, was also a pivotal moment in the development of the genre.


title: Folk rock

text: During the late 1960s in Britain and Europe, a distinct, eclectic British folk rock style was created by Pentangle, Fairport Convention and Alan Stivell. Inspired by British psychedelic folk and the North American style of folk rock, British folk rock bands began to incorporate elements of traditional British folk music into their repertoire, leading to other variants, including the overtly English folk rock of the Albion Band and Celtic rock.


title: Folk rock

text: In its earliest and narrowest sense, the term "folk rock" refers to the blending of elements of folk music and rock music, which arose in the U.S. and UK in the mid-1960s. The genre was pioneered by the Byrds, who began playing traditional folk music and songs by Bob Dylan with rock instrumentation, in a style heavily influenced by the Beatles and other British Invasion bands. The term "folk rock" was initially coined by the U.S. music press to describe the Byrds' music in June 1965, the month in which the band's debut album was issued. Dylan also contributed to the creation of the genre, with his recordings utilizing rock instrumentation on the albums "Bringing It All Back Home", "Highway 61 Revisited", and "Blonde on Blonde".


title: Folk rock

text: In a broader sense, folk rock encompasses similarly inspired musical genres and movements in different regions of the world. Folk rock may lean more towards either folk or rock in instrumentation, playing and vocal style, and choice of material. While the original genre draws on music of Europe and North America, there is no clear delineation of which other culture's music might be included as influences.


title: Folk rock

text: The American folk-music revival began during the 1940s; building on the interest in protest folk singers such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, it reached a peak in popularity in the mid-1960s with artists such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. In 1948, Seeger formed the Weavers, whose mainstream popularity set the stage for the folk revival of the 1950s and early 1960s and also served to bridge the gap between folk, popular music, and topical song. The Weavers' sound and repertoire of traditional folk material and topical songs directly inspired the Kingston Trio, a three-piece folk group who came to prominence in 1958 with their hit recording of "Tom Dooley". The Kingston Trio provided the template for a flood of "collegiate folk" groups between 1958 and 1962.


title: Folk rock

text: At roughly the same time as these "collegiate folk" vocal groups came to national prominence, a second group of urban folk revivalists, influenced by the music and guitar picking styles of folk and blues artist such as Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Brownie McGhee, and Josh White, also came to the fore. Many of these urban revivalists were influenced by recordings of traditional American music from the 1920s and 1930s, which had been reissued by Folkways Records; Harry Smith's "Anthology of American Folk Music" was particularly influential. While this urban folk revival flourished in many cities, New York City, with its burgeoning Greenwich Village coffeehouse scene and population of topical folk singers, was widely regarded as the centre of the movement. Out of this fertile environment came such folk-protest luminaries as Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, and Peter, Paul and Mary, many of whom would transition into folk rock performers as the 1960s progressed.


title: Folk rock

text: The vast majority of the urban folk revivalists shared a disdain for the values of mainstream American mass culture and led many folk singers to begin composing their own "protest" material. The influence of this folk-protest movement would later manifest itself in the sociopolitical lyrics and mildly anti-establishment sentiments of many folk rock songs, including hit singles such as "Eve of Destruction", "Like a Rolling Stone", "For What It's Worth", and "Let's Live for Today".


title: Folk rock

text: During the 1950s and early 1960s in the UK, a parallel folk revival referred to as the second British folk revival, was led by folk singers Ewan MacColl and Bert Lloyd. Both viewed British folk music as a vehicle for leftist political concepts and an antidote to the American-dominated popular music of the time. However, it wasn't until 1956 and the advent of the skiffle craze that the British folk revival crossed over into the mainstream and connected with British youth culture. Skiffle renewed popularity of folk music forms in Britain and led directly to the progressive folk movement and the attendant British folk club scene. Among the leading lights of the progressive folk movement were Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, who would later form the folk rock band Pentangle in the late 1960s. Other notable folk rock artists with roots in the progressive folk scene were Donovan, Al Stewart, John Martyn and Paul Simon.


title: Folk rock

text: Beginning in 1964 and lasting until roughly 1966, a wave of British beat groups, including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Dave Clark Five, Gerry & the Pacemakers, The Kinks, and Herman's Hermits amongst others, dominated the U.S. music charts. These groups were all heavily influenced by American rock 'n' roll, blues, and R&B—musical genres they had been introduced to via homegrown British rock 'n' roll singers, imported American records, and the music of the skiffle craze. These UK groups, known collectively as the British Invasion, reintroduced American youth culture to the broad potential of rock and pop music as a creative medium and to the wealth of musical culture to be found within the United States.


title: Folk rock

text: Of particular importance to the development of folk rock by the British Invasion were the subtle folk influences evident in such Beatles' compositions as "I'll Be Back", "Things We Said Today", and "I'm a Loser", with the latter song being directly inspired by folk singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. In the opinion of Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, writers who attempt to define the origins of folk rock "don't realise that the Beatles were responsible as far back as 1963". He cites "She Loves You" as one of the first examples where the Beatles introduced folk chord changes into rock music and so initiated the new genre. These songs were all influential in providing a template for successfully assimilating folk-based chord progressions and melodies into pop music. This melding of folk and rock 'n' roll in the Beatles' music became even more explicit during 1965, with the release of "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away", a folk-derived song with introspective lyrics, again influenced by Dylan. Although the Beatles themselves utilized folk as just one of many styles evident in their music, the underlying folk influences in a number of their songs would prove to be important to folk rock musicians attempting to blend their own folk influences with beat music.


title: Folk rock

text: The effect that the music of these British bands, and the Beatles in particular, had on young Americans was immediate; almost overnight, folk—along with many other forms of homegrown music—became passé for a large proportion of America's youth, who instead turned their attention to the influx of British acts. The influence of these acts also impacted on the collegiate folk and urban folk communities, with many young musicians quickly losing interest in folk music and instead embracing the rock 'n' roll derived repertoire of the British Invasion. Future members of many folk rock acts, including the Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, the Lovin' Spoonful, the Mamas & the Papas, and Buffalo Springfield, all turned their backs on traditional folk music during 1964 and 1965 as a direct result of the influence of the Beatles and the other British Invasion bands. Author and music historian Richie Unterberger has noted that the Beatles' impact on American popular culture effectively sounded the death knell for the American folk music revival.


title: Folk rock

text: In addition to The Beatles, the two British groups that were arguably the most influential on the development of folk rock were the Animals and the Searchers. The Animals released a rock interpretation of the traditional folk song "The House of the Rising Sun" in the U.S. in August 1964. The song reached number 1 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 singles chart and stayed there for three weeks, selling over a million copies in just five weeks in the U.S. The band's arrangement of "The House of the Rising Sun", which transmuted the song from an acoustic folk lament to a full-bore electric rock song, would go on to influence many folk rock acts but none more so than Dylan himself, who cited it as a key factor in his decision to record and perform with an electric rock band in 1965.


title: Folk rock

text: The Searchers were influential in popularizing the jangly sound of the electric twelve-string guitar. Many musicians in the collegiate and urban folk movements were already familiar with acoustic twelve-string guitars via the music of folk and blues singer Lead Belly. However, the Searchers' use of amplified twelve-strings provided another example of how conventional folk elements could be incorporated into rock music to produce new and exciting sounds. The Beatles' lead guitarist, George Harrison, also influenced this trend towards jangly guitars in folk rock with his use of a Rickenbacker twelve-string guitar on the Beatles' mid-1960s recordings. This relatively clean, jangly sound—without distortion or other guitar effects—became a cornerstone of folk rock instrumentation and was used in many American folk rock records made during 1965 and 1966.


title: Folk rock

text: Although folk rock mainly grew out of a mix of American folk revival and British Invasion influences, there were also a few examples of proto-folk rock that were important in the development of the genre. Of these secondary influences, Unterberger has cited the self-penned, folk-influenced material of San Francisco's the Beau Brummels as arguably the most important. Despite their Beatlesque image, the band's use of minor chords, haunting harmonies, and folky acoustic guitar playing—as heard on their debut single "Laugh, Laugh"—was stylistically very similar to the later folk rock of the Byrds. Released in December 1964, "Laugh, Laugh" peaked at number 15 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in early 1965, while its similarly folk-flavored follow-up, "Just a Little", did even better, reaching number 8 on the U.S. singles chart. The high-profile success of the Beau Brummels' music was important in demonstrating that a hybrid of folk and rock could potentially be translated into mainstream commercial success.


title: Folk rock

text: Pre-dating the Beau Brummels' commercial breakthrough by almost two years, singer-songwriter Jackie DeShannon's April 1963 single "Needles and Pins" marked, according to Unterberger, the earliest appearance of the ringing guitar sound that would become a mainstay of early folk rock. This use of cyclical, chiming guitar riffs was repeated on DeShannon's late 1963 recording of her own composition "When You Walk in the Room". The following year, both songs would become hits for the Liverpudlian band the Searchers, who chose to place even greater emphasis on the jangly guitar playing in the songs. In addition, a number of DeShannon's songs from the period, including "When You Walk in the Room", displayed a greater degree of lyrical maturity and sensuality than was usual for pop songs of the time. This heightened degree of emotional introspection was inspired by her love of Bob Dylan's folk songwriting and represents one of the first attempts by an American artist to absorb folk sensibilities into rock music.


title: Folk rock

text: In the UK, the folk group the Springfields (featuring Dusty Springfield) had been releasing folk-oriented material featuring full band arrangements since the early 1960s, including renditions of "Lonesome Traveler", "Allentown Jail", and "Silver Threads and Golden Needles". Although these records owed more to orchestral pop than rock, they were nonetheless influential on up-and-coming folk rock musicians on both sides of the Atlantic. In mid-1965, folk singer-songwriter Donovan was also experimenting with adding electrified instrumentation to some of his folk and blues-styled material, as evidenced by songs such as "You're Gonna Need Somebody on Your Bond" and "Sunny Goodge Street". In spite of his folky persona and repertoire, Donovan himself had always considered himself a pop star, rather than a folk singer. As a result, he had been thinking of a way in which to introduce folk styled acoustic guitars and socially conscious lyrics into pop music for several years prior to his 1965 breakthrough as a recording artist. By January 1966, he had recorded the self-penned hit "Sunshine Superman" with a full electric backing band.


title: Folk rock

text: Other bands and solo artists who were blurring the boundaries between folk and rock in the early 1960s include Judy Henske, Richard and Mimi Fariña, and the Mugwumps, the latter of which were a New York band featuring future members of the Lovin' Spoonful and the Mamas & the Papas. Also of note are the Australian band the Seekers, who had relocated to England in 1964 and reached number 1 on the UK Singles Chart with "I'll Never Find Another You" in February 1965. Unterberger has noted that, although it was not strictly a folk song, "I'll Never Find Another You" was heavily influenced by Peter, Paul and Mary and featured a cyclical, twelve-string guitar part that sounded similar to the guitar style that Jim McGuinn of the Byrds would popularize later that same year.


title: Folk rock

text: There are also a few antecedents to folk rock present in pre-British Invasion American rock 'n' roll, including Elvis Presley's 1954 cover of the Bill Monroe bluegrass standard "Blue Moon of Kentucky"; Buddy Holly's self-penned material, which strongly influenced both Dylan and the Byrds; Ritchie Valens' recording of the Mexican folk song "La Bamba"; Lloyd Price's rock 'n' roll adaptation of the African-American folk song "Stagger Lee" (originally recorded by Mississippi John Hurt in 1928); Jimmie Rodgers' rock 'n' roll flavored renditions of traditional folk songs; and the folk and country-influenced recordings featured on the Everly Brothers' 1959 album "Songs Our Daddy Taught Us".


title: Folk rock

text: The moment when all of the separate influences that served to make up folk rock finally coalesced into an identifiable whole was with the release of the Byrds' recording of Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man". The term "folk rock" was coined by the U.S. music press to describe the band's sound in June 1965, at roughly the same time as "Mr. Tambourine Man" peaked at number 1 on the "Billboard" chart. Within three months it had become the first folk rock smash hit, reaching number 1 on both the "Billboard" Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart. The single's success initiated the folk rock boom of 1965 and 1966, during which a profusion of Byrds-influenced acts flooded the American and British charts. In particular, the Byrds' influence can be discerned in mid-1960s recordings by acts such as the Lovin' Spoonful, Barry McGuire, the Mamas & the Papas, Simon & Garfunkel, Jefferson Airplane, the Turtles, We Five, Love, and Sonny & Cher.


title: Folk rock

text: It was during the rehearsals at World Pacific that the band began to develop the blend of folk music and Beatles-style pop that would characterize their sound. However, this hybrid was not deliberately created; it evolved organically out of some of the band members' own folk music roots and their desire to emulate the Beatles. The band's folk influences, lack of experience with rock music forms, and Beatleseque instrumentation all combined to color both their self-penned material and their folk derived repertoire. The band themselves soon realized that there was something unique about their music and, with Dickson's encouragement, they began to actively attempt to bridge the gap between folk and rock.


title: Folk rock

text: Mr. Tambourine Man's blend of abstract lyrics, folk-influenced melody, complex harmonies, jangly 12-string Rickenbacker guitar playing, and Beatles-influenced beat, resulted in a synthesis that effectively created the subgenre of folk rock. The song's lyrics alone took rock and pop songwriting to new heights; never before had such intellectual and literary lyrics been combined with rock instrumentation by a popular music group.


title: Folk rock

text: Dylan's material would provide much of the original grist for the folk rock mill, not only in the U.S. but in the UK as well, with many pop and rock acts covering his material in a style reminiscent of the Byrds. Their reworking of "Mr. Tambourine Man", along with the Animals' rock interpretation of "The House of the Rising Sun" (itself based on Dylan's earlier cover), helped to give Dylan the impetus to start recording with an electric backing band.


title: Folk rock

text: As the 1970s dawned, folk rock evolved away from the jangly template pioneered by the Byrds, but their influence could still be heard in the music of bands like Fairport Convention and Pentangle. The Byrds themselves continued to enjoy commercial success with their brand of folk rock throughout 1965, most notably with their number 1 single "Turn! Turn! Turn!". By the start of 1966, however, the group had begun to move away from folk rock and into the new musical frontier of psychedelic rock. The folk rock sound of the Byrds has continued to influence many bands over the years, including Big Star, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, R.E.M., the Long Ryders, the Smiths, the Bangles, the Stone Roses, and Teenage Fanclub, among others.


title: Folk rock

text: Five days before the Byrds entered Columbia Studios in Hollywood to record his song "Mr. Tambourine Man", Bob Dylan completed the recording sessions for his fifth album, "Bringing It All Back Home". Of the eleven tracks on the album, seven featured Dylan backed by a full electric rock band, in stark contrast to his earlier acoustic folk albums. Dylan's decision to record with an electric backing band had been influenced by a number of factors, including the Beatles' coupling of folk derived chord progressions and beat music, the Byrds' rock adaptation of "Mr. Tambourine Man", and the Animals hit cover of "The House of the Rising Sun".


title: Folk rock

text: "Bringing It All Back Home" was released on 22 March 1965, peaking at number 6 on the "Billboard" Top LPs chart and #1 on the UK Album Chart. The album's blend of rhythm and blues-derived rock and abstract, poetic lyrics was immediately influential in demonstrating that intelligent lyrical content could be wedded with rock 'n' roll. The songs on the album saw Dylan leaving folk music far behind. Even with this folkier, acoustic material, Dylan's biting, apocalyptical, and often humorous lyrics went far beyond those of contemporary folk music, particularly the folk-protest music with which he had been previously associated.


title: Folk rock

text: On 20 July 1965, Dylan released the groundbreaking "Like a Rolling Stone", a six-minute-long scathing put-down, directed at a down-and-out society girl, which again featured Dylan backed by an electric rock band. Released just as the Byrds' cover of "Mr. Tambourine Man" topped the charts in the United States, the song was instrumental in defining the burgeoning folk rock scene and in establishing Dylan as a bona fide rock star, rather than a folksinger. "Like a Rolling Stone" managed to reach the Top 5 on both sides of the Atlantic. Five days after the release of "Like a Rolling Stone", on 25 July 1965, Dylan made a controversial appearance at the Newport Folk Festival, performing three songs with a full band. He was met with derisive booing and jeering from the festival's purist folk music crowd, but in the years since the incident, Dylan's 1965 Newport Folk Festival appearance has become widely regarded as a pivotal moment in the synthesis of folk and rock.


title: Folk rock

text: Dylan followed "Like a Rolling Stone" with the wholly electric album "Highway 61 Revisited" and the non-album single "Positively 4th Street", which itself has been widely interpreted as a rebuke to the folk purists who had rejected his new electric music. Throughout 1965 and 1966, hit singles like "Subterranean Homesick Blues", "Like a Rolling Stone", "Positively 4th Street", and "I Want You" among others, along with the "Bringing It All Back Home", "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Blonde on Blonde" albums, proved to be hugely influential on the development and popularity of folk rock. Although Dylan's move away from acoustic folk music served to outrage and alienate much of his original fanbase, his new folk rock sound gained him legions of new fans during the mid-1960s. The popularity and commercial success of the Byrds and Bob Dylan's blend of folk and rock music influenced a wave of imitators and emulators that retroactively became known as the folk rock boom.


title: Folk rock

text: Although he started out as a jazz musician, the young, African-American Columbia Records producer Tom Wilson became known as the "mid-wife of folk-rock" for his seminal work behind the scenes. As Bob Dylan's producer during the key transitional albums "The Times They Are A-Changin", "Another Side of Bob Dylan", and "Bringing It All Back Home", he was a key architect of Dylan's electric sound. He is perhaps even better known, however, for first discovering Simon & Garfunkel at the tail end of the folk movement and then transforming them into folk-rock superstars with the unauthorized rock remix that made a number one hit out of their previously underappreciated song, "The Sound of Silence".


title: Folk rock

text: Music critic Richie Unterberger has noted that the commercial success of the Byrds' cover version of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man", along with Dylan's own contributions to the genre on the albums "Bringing It All Back Home", "Highway 61 Revisited", and "Blonde on Blonde", initiated an explosion of emulators and imitators. Their success led record producer Tom Wilson to add electric guitar, bass, and drums overdubs to "The Sounds of Silence", a song which had been recorded by the folk duo Simon & Garfunkel in 1964 and first released on their album "Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.". The reissued single rose to number 1 on the "Billboard" pop chart in late 1965, became a hit around the world, and set the duo on one of the most successful careers in pop and rock music. Simon and Garfunkel have been described as "folk-rock's greatest duo, and one whose fame and influence would persist well beyond folk-rock's heyday."


title: Folk rock

text: One of the first bands to craft a distinctly American sound in response to the British Invasion was the Beach Boys; while not a folk rock band themselves, they directly influenced the genre and at the height of the folk rock boom in 1966 had a hit with a cover of the 1920s West Indian folk song "Sloop John B", which they had learned from the Kingston Trio, who had learned it from the Weavers.


title: Folk rock

text: Much of the early folk-rock music emerged during a time of general global upheaval, the Vietnam War, and new concerns for the world by young people. In the United States, the heyday of folk rock was arguably between the mid-sixties and the mid-seventies, when it aligned itself with the hippie movement and became an important medium for expressing radical ideas. Cities such as San Francisco, Denver, New York City and Phoenix became centers for the folk rock culture, playing on their central locations among the original folk circuits. The "unplugged" and simplified sound of the music reflected the genre's connection to a critical view of a technological and consumerist society. Unlike pop music's escapist lyrics, arguably a fantasy distraction from the problems in life, folk artists attempted to communicate concerns for peace, global awareness, and other touchstones of the era. Bands whose music was significantly folk rock in sound during the mid-to-late 1960s included Donovan, the Lovin' Spoonful, the Mamas & the Papas, the Youngbloods, Love, and, in their early years, Jefferson Airplane.


title: Folk rock

text: In the mid-1960s, singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot began moving his folk songs into a folk-rock direction with recordings such as the percussion-driven "Black Day in July" about the 1967 Detroit riot. He would rise to top the charts in the 1970s with a number of his folk-rock recordings such as "Sundown" and "Carefree Highway" and eventually become known as a folk-rock legend. Some artists who originally produced with a harder edged rock sound found the ability to communicate more easily and felt more genuine in this method of delivery. In this category was Cat Stevens, who began in London much like the Byrds did in the United States but toned down the sound more frequently with acoustic instruments. He performed songs that contained concern for the environment, war, and the future of the world in general. The Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell won many Grammy Awards with her folk rock/pop songs.


title: Folk rock

text: British folk rock developed in Britain during the mid to late 1960s by the bands Fairport Convention, and Pentangle. It uses traditional British music and self-penned compositions in a traditional style, and is played on a combination of traditional and rock instruments. This incorporation of traditional British folk music influences gives British folk rock its distinctly British character and flavour. It evolved out of the psychedelia-influenced folk rock of British acts such as Donovan, the Incredible String Band, and Tyrannosaurus Rex, but was also heavily influenced by such American folk rock bands as the Byrds, Love, and Buffalo Springfield. British folk rock was at its most significant and popular during the late 1960s and 1970s, when, in addition to Fairport and Pentangle, it was taken up by groups such as Steeleye Span and the Albion Band.


title: Folk rock

text: Steeleye Span, founded by Fairport Convention bass player Ashley Hutchings, was made up of traditionalist folk musicians who wished to incorporate electrical amplification, and later overt rock elements, into their music. This, in turn, spawned the conspicuously English folk rock music of the Albion Band, a group that also included Hutchings. In Brittany folk rock was developed by Alan Stivell (who began to mix his Breton, Irish, and Scottish roots with rock music) and later by French bands like Malicorne. During this same period, folk rock was adopted and developed in the surrounding Celtic cultures of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, and Cornwall, to produce Celtic rock and its derivatives.


title: Folk rock

text: A subgenre originally arising from the early 1960s folk and country-influenced music of singer-songwriter artists such as Bob Dylan and Bobby Bare, as well as from folk revivalist vocal groups like the Kingston Trio. During the late 1960s, many folk rock artists including Dylan, Ian and Sylvia, and the Byrds began to incorporate a strong country influence into their music, drawing heavily on Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, and Buck Owens amongst others, resulting in the concurrent offshoot of country rock. This successful blending of country, folk and rock styles led to pioneering country folk records by folk-influenced singer-songwriters such as John Denver and Neil Young during the 1970s. Country folk music usually displays a softer, more "laid-back" feel than the majority of country music and is often complemented by introspective lyrics, thus preserving its folk singer-songwriter roots. Since the 1970s, the country folk subgenre has been perpetuated by artists including John Prine, Nanci Griffith, Kathy Mattea, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Iris DeMent.


title: Folk rock

text: A subgenre of folk rock that combines traditional Celtic instrumentation with rock rhythms, often influenced by a wide variety of pop and rock music styles. It emerged from the electric folk music of the late 1960s and was pioneered by bands such as Horslips, who blended Gaelic mythology, traditional Irish music and rock. The British singer-songwriter Donovan was also influential in developing Celtic rock during the late 1960s, with his albums "The Hurdy Gurdy Man", "Barabajagal", and "Open Road", the latter of which actually featured a song entitled "Celtic Rock".


title: Folk rock

text: The subgenre was further popularised in 1973 by Thin Lizzy, who had a hit with "Whiskey in the Jar", a traditional Irish song performed entirely in the rock idiom. Throughout the 1970s, Celtic rock held close to its folk roots, drawing heavily on traditional Celtic fiddle, pipe, and harp tunes, as well as traditional vocal styles, but making use of rock band levels of amplification and percussion. In the 1980s and beyond, Celtic rock was perpetuated by bands such as the Pogues, the Waterboys, Runrig, Black 47, and the Prodigals. A more recent folk rock band based in England is the BibleCode Sundays. Celtic rock is also popular in Spain where bands such as Celtas Cortos have had a large following since the early 1990s.


title: Folk rock

text: Medieval folk rock developed as a subgenre of electric folk from about 1970 as performers, particularly in England, Germany and Brittany, adopted medieval and renaissance music as a basis for their music, in contrast to the early modern and nineteenth century ballads that dominated the output of Fairport Convention. This followed the trend explored by Steeleye Span, and exemplified by their 1972 album "Below the Salt". Acts in this area included Gryphon, Gentle Giant and Third Ear Band. In Germany Ougenweide, originally formed in 1970 as an acoustic folk group, opted to draw exclusively on High German medieval music when they electrified, setting the agenda for future German electric folk. In Brittany, as part of the Celtic rock movement, medieval music was focused on by bands like Ripaille from 1977 and Saga de Ragnar Lodbrock from 1979. However, by the end of the 1970s almost all of these performers had either disbanded or moved, like Gentle Giant and Gryphon, into the developing area of progressive rock. In the 1990s, as part of the wider resurgence of folk music in general, new medieval folk rock acts began to appear, including the Ritchie Blackmore project Blackmore's Night, German bands such as In Extremo, Subway to Sally or Schandmaul and English bands like Circulus.


title: Folk rock

text: In Britain the tendency to electrify brought several progressive folk acts into rock. This includes the acoustic duo Tyrannosaurus Rex, who became the electric combo T. Rex. Others, probably influenced by the electric folk pioneered by Fairport Convention from 1969, moved towards more traditional material, a category including Dando Shaft, Amazing Blondel, and Jack the Lad, an offshoot of northern progressive folk group Lindisfarne, who were one of the most successful UK bands of the early 1970s. Examples of bands that remained firmly on the border between progressive folk and progressive rock were the short lived (but later reunited) Comus and, more successfully, Renaissance, who combined folk and rock with elements of classical music.


title: Folk rock

text: Folk metal is a fusion genre of heavy metal music and traditional folk music that developed in Europe during the 1990s. It is characterised by the widespread use of folk instruments and, to a lesser extent, traditional singing styles (for example, Dutch Heidevolk, Danish Sylvatica and Spanish Stone of Erech). It also sometimes features soft instrumentation influenced by folk rock.


title: Folk rock

text: The earliest folk metal bands were Skyclad from England, Cruachan from Ireland and Mago de Oz from Spain. Skyclad's debut album "The Wayward Sons of Mother Earth" was released in 1991 and would be considered a thrash metal album with some folk influences, unlike Cruachan's early work which embraced the folk element as a defining part of their sound. It was not until 1994 and 1995 that other early contributors in the genre began to emerge from different regions of Europe and beyond. Among these early groups, the German band Subway to Sally spearheaded a different regional variation that over time became known as medieval metal. Despite their contributions, folk metal remained little known with few representatives during the 1990s. It was not until the early 2000s when the genre exploded into prominence, particularly in Finland with the efforts of such groups as Finntroll, Ensiferum, Korpiklaani, Turisas, and Moonsorrow.


title: Folk rock

text: The music of folk metal is characterised by its diversity with bands known to perform different styles of both heavy metal music and folk music. A large variety of folk instruments are used in the genre with many bands consequently featuring six or more members in their regular line-ups. A few bands are also known to rely on keyboards to simulate the sound of folk instruments. Lyrics in the genre commonly deal with fantasy, mythology, paganism, history and nature.


title: Peace symbols

text: A number of peace symbols have been used many ways in various cultures and contexts. The dove and olive branch was used symbolically by early Christians and then eventually became a secular peace symbol, popularized by a "Dove" lithograph by Pablo Picasso after World War II. In the 1950s the "peace sign", as it is known today (also known as "peace and love"), was designed by Gerald Holtom as the logo for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), a group at the forefront of the peace movement in the UK, and adopted by anti-war and counterculture activists in the US and elsewhere. The symbol is a super-imposition of the semaphore signals for the letters "N" and "D", taken to stand for "nuclear disarmament", while simultaneously acting as a reference to Goya's "The Third of May 1808" (1814) (aka "Peasant Before the Firing Squad").


title: Peace symbols

text: The use of the olive branch as a symbol of peace in Western civilization dates at least to 5th century BC Greece. The olive branch, which the Greeks believed represented plenty and drove away evil spirits, was one of the attributes of Eirene, the Greek goddess of peace. Eirene (whom the Romans called Pax), appeared on Roman Imperial coins with an olive branch.


title: Peace symbols

text: The Roman poet Virgil (70–10 BC) associated "the plump olive" with Pax and he used the olive branch as a symbol of peace in his "Aeneid":


title: Peace symbols

text: The Romans believed there was an intimate relationship between war and peace. Mars, the god of war, had another aspect, Mars Pacifer, Mars the bringer of Peace, who is shown on coins of the later Roman Empire bearing an olive branch. Appian describes the use of the olive-branch as a gesture of peace by the enemies of the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus in the Numantine War and by Hasdrubal of Carthage.


title: Peace symbols

text: Poets of the 17th century associated the olive branch with peace. A Charles I gold coin of 1644 shows the monarch with sword and olive branch. Throughout the 18th century, English coins show Britannia with a spear and olive branch.


title: Peace symbols

text: The Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, contains an allegorical painting by James Thornhill, "Peace and Liberty Triumphing Over Tyranny" (1708–1716), depicting King William III and Queen Mary (who had enacted the English Bill of Rights) enthroned in heaven with the Virtues behind them. Peace, with her doves and lambs, hands an olive branch to William, who in turn hands the cap of liberty to Europe, where absolute monarchy prevails. Below William is the defeated French king, Louis XIV.


title: Peace symbols

text: In January 1775, the frontispiece of the "London Magazine" published an engraving of Peace descending on a cloud from the Temple of Commerce, bringing an olive branch to America and Britannia. In July that year, the American Continental Congress adopted the "Olive Branch Petition" in the hope of avoiding a full-blown war with Great Britain.


title: Peace symbols

text: On the Great Seal of the United States (1782), the olive branch denotes peace, as explained by Charles Thomson, Secretary to Congress: "The Olive branch and arrows denote the power of peace & war which is exclusively vested in Congress."


title: Peace symbols

text: The use of a dove as a symbol of peace originated with early Christians, who portrayed baptism accompanied by a dove, often on their sepulchres.


title: Peace symbols

text: The New Testament compared the dove to the Spirit of God that descended on Jesus during his baptism. Christians saw similarities between baptism and Noah's Flood. The First Epistle of Peter (composed around the end of the first century AD) said that the Flood, which brought salvation through water, prefigured baptism. Tertullian (c. 160 – c. 220) compared the dove, who "announced to the world the assuagement of divine wrath, when she had been sent out of the ark and returned with the olive branch, to the Holy Spirit who descends in baptism in the form of a dove that brings the peace of God, sent out from the heavens".


title: Peace symbols

text: At first the dove represented the subjective personal experience of peace, the peace of the soul, and in the earliest Christian art it accompanies representations of baptism. By the end of the second century (for example in the writing of Tertullian) it also represented social and political peace, "peace unto the nations", and from the third century it began to appear in depictions of conflict, such as Noah and the Ark, Daniel and the lions, the three young men in the furnace, and Susannah and the Elders.


title: Peace symbols

text: The dove appears in Christian inscriptions in the Roman catacombs, sometimes accompanied by the words "in pace" (Latin for "in peace"). For example, in the Catacomb of Callixtus, a dove and branch are drawn next to a Latin inscription NICELLA VIRCO DEI OVE VI XIT ANNOS P M XXXV DE POSITA XV KAL MAIAS BENE MERENTI IN PACE, meaning "Nicella, God's virgin, who lived for more or less 35 years. She was placed [here] 15 days before the Kalends of May [17 April]. For the well deserving one in peace." In another example, a shallow relief sculpture shows a dove with a branch flying to a figure marked in Greek as "ΕΙΡΗΝΗ" (Eirene, or Peace). The symbol has also been found in the Christian catacombs of Sousse, Tunisia (ancient Carthage), which date from the end of the first century AD.


title: Peace symbols

text: The Christian symbolism of the olive branch, invariably carried by the dove, derives from Greek usage and the story of Noah in the Hebrew Bible. The story of Noah ends with a dove bringing a freshly plucked olive leaf (Hebrew: עלה זית "alay zayit"), a sign of life after the Flood and of God's bringing Noah, his family and the animals to land. Rabbinic literature interpreted the olive leaf as "the young shoots of the Land of Israel" or the dove's preference for bitter food in God's service, rather than sweet food in the service of men. and neither represented peace in Jewish thought, but the dove and olive branch acquired that meaning in Christianity.


title: Peace symbols

text: Before the Peace of Constantine (313 AD), in which Rome ceased its persecution of Christians following Constantine's conversion, Noah was normally shown in an attitude of prayer, a dove flying toward him or alighting on his outstretched hand. According to Graydon Snyder, "The Noah story afforded the early Christian community an opportunity to express piety and peace in a vessel that withstood the threatening environment" of Roman persecution. According to Ludwig Budde and Pierre Prigent, the dove referred to the descending of the Holy Spirit rather than the peace associated with Noah. After the Peace of Constantine, when persecution ceased, Noah appeared less frequently in Christian art.


title: Peace symbols

text: In the fourth century, St. Jerome's Latin Bible translated the Hebrew ""alay zayit"" in the Noah story as ""ramum olivae"", ("olive branch"), possibly reflecting the Christian equivalence between the peace brought by baptism and peace brought by the ending of the Flood. By the fifth century, St Augustine confirmed the Christian adoption of the olive branch as a symbol of peace, writing that, "perpetual peace is indicated by the olive branch (Latin: "oleae ramusculo") that the dove brought with it when it returned to the ark."


title: Peace symbols

text: Medieval illuminated manuscripts, such as the Holkham Bible, showed the dove returning to Noah with a branch. Wycliffe's Bible, which translated the Vulgate into English in the 14th century, uses "a braunche of olyue tre with greene leeuys" ("a branch of olive tree with green leaves") in Gen. 8:11. In the Middle Ages, some Jewish manuscripts, which were often illustrated by Christians, also showed Noah's dove with an olive branch, for example, the Golden Haggadah (about 1420).


title: Peace symbols

text: English Bibles from the 17th-century King James Bible onwards, which translated the story of Noah direct from Hebrew, render the Hebrew "'aleh zayit" as "olive leaf" rather than "olive branch", but by this time the association of the dove with an olive branch as a symbol of peace in the story of Noah was firmly established.


title: Peace symbols

text: The broken rifle symbol is used by War Resisters' International (WRI) and its affiliates but predates the foundation of WRI in 1921. The first known example of the symbol is in the masthead of the January 1909 issue of "De Wapens Neder" (Down with Weapons), the monthly paper of the International Antimilitarist Union in the Netherlands. In 1915 it appeared on the cover of a pamphlet, "Under det brukne Gevær" (Under the Broken Rifle), published by the Norwegian Social Democratic Youth Association. The (German) League for War Victims, founded in 1917, used the broken rifle on a 1919 banner.


title: Peace symbols

text: In 1921, Belgian workers marching through La Louvrière on 16 October 1921, carried flags showing a soldier breaking his rifle. Ernst Friedrich, a German who had refused military service, founded the Anti-Kriegs Museum in Berlin, which featured a bas-relief broken rifle over the door. The Museum distributed broken-rifle badges, girls' and women's brooches, boys' belt buckles, and men's tie pins.


title: Peace symbols

text: In 1933, during a period in which there was widespread fear of war in Europe, the Women's Co-operative Guild began the practice of distributing white poppies as an alternative to the red poppies distributed by the Royal British Legion in commemoration of servicemen who died in the First World War. In 1934 the newly formed Peace Pledge Union (PPU), which was the largest British peace organization in the inter-war years, joined in distributing white poppies and laying white poppy wreaths "as a pledge to peace that war must not happen again". In 1980, the PPU revived the symbol as a way of remembering the victims of war without glorifying militarism.


title: Peace symbols

text: Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947), a Russian artist, cultural activist, and philosopher, founded a movement to protect cultural artifacts. Its symbol was a maroon-on-white emblem consisting of three solid circles in a surrounding circle. It has also been used as a peace banner. In 1935 a pact initiated by Roerich was signed by the United States and Latin American nations, agreeing that "historic monuments, museums, scientific, artistic, educational and cultural institutions" should be protected both in times of peace and war.


title: Peace symbols

text: The Banner of Peace symbol has ancient origins. Perhaps its earliest known example appears on Stone Age amulets: three dots, without the enclosing circle. Roerich came across numerous later examples in various parts of the world, and knew that it represented a deep and sophisticated understanding of the triune nature of existence. But for the purposes of the Banner and the Pact, Roerich described the circle as representing the totality of culture, with the three dots being Art, Science, and Religion, three of the most embracing of human cultural activities. He also described the circle as representing the eternity of time, encompassing the past, present, and future. The sacred origins of the symbol, as an illustration of the trinities fundamental to all religions, remain central to the meaning of the Pact and the Banner today.


title: Peace symbols

text: The symbol now known internationally as the "peace symbol" or "peace sign", or alternatively as the nuclear disarmament symbol, or the CND symbol (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) originates as a symbol representing the threat of nuclear annihilation used in British anti-nuclear activism from 1958. It was widely adopted in the American anti-war movement in the 1960s and was re-interpreted as generically representing world peace. It was still used, however, in its original anti-nuclear context by activists opposing nuclear power, in the 1980s.


title: Peace symbols

text: The symbol was designed by Gerald Holtom (1914–1985) for the British nuclear disarmament movement. Holtom, an artist and designer, presented it to the Direct Action Committee on 21 February 1958 where it was "immediately accepted" as a symbol for a march from Trafalgar Square, London, to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire on 4 April. Holtom's design was adapted by Eric Austen (1922–1999) to ceramic lapel badges. The original design is in the Peace Museum in Bradford, England.


title: Peace symbols

text: The symbol is a super-imposition of the flag semaphore for the characters "N" and "D", taken to stand for "nuclear disarmament".


title: Peace symbols

text: This observation was made as early as 5 April 1958 in the "Manchester Guardian". In addition to this primary genesis, Holtom additionally cited as inspiration Francisco Goya's painting "The Third of May 1808" (1814):


title: Peace symbols

text: I was in despair. Deep despair. I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya's peasant before the firing squad. I formalised the drawing into a line and put a circle round it.


title: Peace symbols

text: Ken Kolsbun, a correspondent of Holtom's, says that the designer came to regret the symbolism of despair, as he felt that peace was something to be celebrated and wanted the symbol to be inverted. Eric Austen is said to have "discovered that the 'gesture of despair' motif had long been associated with 'the death of man', and the circle with 'the unborn child'.


title: Peace symbols

text: The symbol became the badge of CND, and wearing it became a sign of support for the campaign urging British unilateral nuclear disarmament. An account of CND's early history described the image as "a visual adhesive to bind the [Aldermaston] March and later the whole Campaign together ... probably the most powerful, memorable and adaptable image ever designed for a secular cause".


title: Peace symbols

text: Not copyrighted, trademarked or restricted, the symbol spread beyond CND and was adopted by the wider disarmament and anti-war movements. It became widely known in the United States in 1958 when Albert Bigelow, a pacifist protester, sailed a small boat fitted with the CND banner into the vicinity of a nuclear test. Buttons with the symbol were imported into the United States in 1960 by Philip Altbach, a freshman at the University of Chicago. Altbach had traveled to England to meet with British peace groups as a delegate from the Student Peace Union (SPU) and, on his return, he persuaded the SPU to adopt the symbol.


title: Peace symbols

text: Between 1960 and 1964, they sold thousands of the buttons on college campuses. By 1968, the symbol had been adopted as a generic peace sign,


title: Peace symbols

text: In 1970, two US private companies tried to register the peace symbol as a trade mark: the Intercontinental Shoe Corporation of New York and Luv, Inc. of Miami. Commissioner of Patents William E. Schuyler Jr, said that the symbol "could not properly function as a trade mark subject to registration by the Patent Office".


title: Peace symbols

text: Gerald Holtom had originally considered using a Christian cross symbol within a circle, but he was dissuaded by several priests who expressed reservations towards using the cross on a protest march. Holtom's symbol was nevertheless compared to the Christian cross symbol, as well as to the death rune (the inverted ᛘ rune associated with death in early 20th century esotericism).


title: Peace symbols

text: In 1968, the anti-Communist evangelist Billy James Hargis described the symbol as a "broken cross", which he claimed represented the antichrist. Hargis' interpretation was taken up by a member of the John Birch Society, Marjorie Jensen, who wrote a pamphlet claiming the symbol was equivalent to "a symbol of the devil, with the cross reversed and broken" supposedly known as "the crow's foot or witch's foot". In June 1970, "American Opinion", the journal of the John Birch Society, published an article which compared the symbol to a supposed "broken cross" claimed to have been "carried by the Moors when they invaded Spain in the 8th century". The newsletter of the National Republican Congressional Committee of 28 September 1970 on its question page made the comparison to a design of a "death rune" in a wreath published by the German Nazi party as representing (heroic) death, in 1942. "Time" magazine in its 2 November 1970 issue made note of these comparisons, pointing out that any such resemblance was "probably coincidental".


title: Peace symbols

text: The international peace flag in the colours of the rainbow was first used in Italy on a 1961 peace march from Perugia to Assisi organized by the pacifist and social philosopher Aldo Capitini (1899–1968). Inspired by the peace flags used on British peace marches, Capitini got some women of Perugia hurriedly to sew together coloured strips of material. The march has been repeated many times since 1961, the most recent in 2010. The original flag was kept by Capitini's collaborator, Lanfranco Mencaroni, at Collevalenza, near Todi. In 2011, plans were announced to transfer it to the Palazzo dei Priori in Perugia.


title: Peace symbols

text: The flag commonly has seven rainbow-colored stripes with the word PACE (Italian for "peace") in the center. It has been explained as follows:


title: Peace symbols

text: In the account of the Great Flood, God set the rainbow to a seal the alliance with man and nature, promising that there will never be another Flood. The rainbow thus became a symbol of Peace across the earth and the sky, and, by extension, among all men.


title: Peace symbols

text: The flag usually has the colours violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red from top to bottom, but some have the violet stripe below the blue one (as in the picture at the right) or a white one at the top. A picture of Capitini's first peace flag, carried by Anna Capitini and Silvana Mencaroni, shows the colours red, orange, white, green, violet, indigo, and lavender.


title: Peace symbols

text: In 2002, renewed display of the flag was widespread with the "Pace da tutti i balconi" ("Peace from every balcony") campaign, a protest against the impending war in Iraq planned by the United States and its allies. In 2003, the Italian newspaper "Corriere della Sera" reported leading advertising executives saying that the peace flag had become more popular than the Italian national flag. In November 2009, a huge peace flag, 21m wide by 40m long, was made in Lecce, Salento, by young members of "GPACE – Youth for Peace – Give Peace a Chance Everywhere".


title: Peace symbols

text: One of the first coins to be minted was the croeseid. It depicted the Lydian Lion and Hellenic Bull, representing the peaceful alliance between Croesus and the dynasty of Agamemnon enthroned in Cyme. This alliance had been sealed through two royal marriages, Hermodike I c. 800 BC to the Phrygian king Midas and Hermodike II c. 600 BC to Alyattes of Lydia. Alyattes was Croesus' father and Hermodike II was likely his mother. When he came to power, Croesus minted the first coin depicting two animals. The roaring lion – symbol of Lydia – and the bull – symbol of Hellenic Zeus (from the Seduction of Europa) – are facing each other in truce; Note that hunting lions attack from the rear, not face-to the horns. The imagery of a predator and prey lying down together in peace is reflected in other ancient literature, e.g. "...the calf and the lion and the yearling together..." c. 700 BC (Isaiah 11:6, see above). The croeseid symbolism of peace between the Greeks of Asia Minor, Lydians and later Persians (under Cyrus the Great) persisted long after Croesus' death – until Darius the Great introduced new coins c. 500 BC.


title: Peace symbols

text: The union of Phrygia and Lydia with Aeolian Greeks resulted in regional peace, which facilitated the transfer of ground-breaking technological skills into Ancient Greece; respectively, the phonetic written script and the minting of coinage (to use a token currency, where the value is guaranteed by the state). Both inventions were rapidly adopted by surrounding nations through further trade and cooperation and have been of fundamental benefit to the progress of civilization.


title: Peace symbols

text: The V sign ( in Unicode) is a hand gesture, palm outwards, with the index and middle fingers open and all others closed. It had been used to represent victory during the Second World War. During the 1960s in the US, activists against the Vietnam War and in subsequent anti-war protests adopted the gesture as a sign of peace.


title: Peace symbols

text: The crane, a traditional symbol of luck in Japan, was popularized as a peace symbol by the story of Sadako Sasaki (1943–1955), a girl who died as a result of the atomic bomb exploding over Hiroshima in 1945. According to the story, popularized through the book "Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes", in the last stages of her illness she started folding paper cranes, inspired by the Japanese saying that one who folded a thousand origami cranes was granted a wish. This made an impression in people's minds. As a result, she is remembered on every 6 August, which is an annual peace day for people all over Japan.


title: Peace symbols

text: The Japanese Peace Bell is a United Nations peace symbol. Cast on 24 November 1952, it was an official gift of the Japanese people to the United Nations on 8 June 1954. The symbolic bell of peace was donated by Japan to the United Nations at a time when Japan had not yet been officially admitted to the United Nations. The Japanese Peace Bell was presented to the United Nations by the United Nations Association of Japan.


title: Peace symbols

text: A wordmark of the three words, Hebrew word "shalom" (Hebrew: ), together with the Arabic "salaam" (Arabic: ) and the English word "peace" has been used as a peace symbol in the Middle East. "Shalom" and "salaam" mean "peace" and are cognates of each other, derived from the Semitic triconsonantal of "S-L-M" (realized in Hebrew as "Š-L-M" and in Arabic as "S-L-M"). The symbol has come to represent peace in the Middle East and an end to the Arab–Israeli conflict. Wall plaques, signs, T-shirts, and buttons are sold with only those words.


title: Strabismus

text: Strabismus is a vision disorder in which the eyes do not properly align with each other when looking at an object. The eye that is focused on an object can alternate. The condition may be present occasionally or constantly. If present during a large part of childhood, it may result in amblyopia, or lazy eyes, and loss of depth perception. If onset is during adulthood, it is more likely to result in double vision.


title: Strabismus

text: Strabismus can occur due to muscle dysfunction, farsightedness, problems in the brain, trauma or infections. Risk factors include premature birth, cerebral palsy and a family history of the condition. Types include esotropia, where the eyes are crossed ("cross eyed"); exotropia, where the eyes diverge ("lazy eyed" or "wall eyed"); and hypertropia or hypotropia where they are vertically misaligned. They can also be classified by whether the problem is present in all directions a person looks (comitant) or varies by direction (incomitant). Diagnosis may be made by observing the light reflecting from the person's eyes and finding that it is not centered on the pupil. This is known as the Hirschberg reflex. Another condition that produces similar symptoms is a cranial nerve disease.


title: Strabismus

text: Treatment depends on the type of strabismus and the underlying cause. This may include the use of glasses and possibly surgery. Some types benefit from early surgery. Strabismus occurs in about 2% of children. The term comes from the Ancient Greek word (""), meaning 'a squinting'. Other terms for the condition include "squint" and "cast of the eye". "Wall-eye" has been used when the eyes turn away from each other.


title: Strabismus

text: When observing a person with strabismus, the misalignment of the eyes may be quite apparent. A person with a constant eye turn of significant magnitude is very easy to notice. However, a small magnitude or intermittent strabismus can easily be missed upon casual observation. In any case, an eye care professional can conduct various tests, such as cover testing, to determine the full extent of the strabismus.


title: Strabismus

text: Symptoms of strabismus include double vision and eye strain. To avoid double vision, the brain may adapt by ignoring one eye. In this case, often no noticeable symptoms are seen other than a minor loss of depth perception. This deficit may not be noticeable in someone who has had strabismus since birth or early childhood, as they have likely learned to judge depth and distances using monocular cues. However, a constant unilateral strabismus causing constant suppression is a risk for amblyopia in children. Small-angle and intermittent strabismus are more likely to cause disruptive visual symptoms. In addition to headaches and eye strain, symptoms may include an inability to read comfortably, fatigue when reading, and unstable or "jittery" vision.


title: Strabismus

text: People of all ages who have noticeable strabismus may experience psychosocial difficulties. Attention has also been drawn to potential socioeconomic impact resulting from cases of detectable strabismus. A socioeconomic consideration exists as well in the context of decisions regarding strabismus treatment, including efforts to re-establish binocular vision and the possibility of stereopsis recovery.


title: Strabismus

text: One study has shown that strabismic children commonly exhibit behaviors marked by higher degrees of inhibition, anxiety, and emotional distress, often leading to outright emotional disorders. These disorders are often related to a negative perception of the child by peers. This is due not only to an altered aesthetic appearance, but also because of the inherent symbolic nature of the eye and gaze, and the vitally important role they play in an individual's life as social components. For some, these issues improved dramatically following strabismus surgery. Notably, strabismus interferes with normal eye contact, often causing embarrassment, anger, and feelings of awkwardness, thereby affecting social communication in a fundamental way, with a possible negative effect on self esteem.


title: Strabismus

text: Children with strabismus, particularly those with exotropia, an outward turn, may be more likely to develop a mental health disorder than normal-sighted children. Researchers have theorized that esotropia (an inward turn) was not found to be linked to a higher propensity for mental illness due to the age range of the participants, as well as the shorter follow-up time period; esotropic children were monitored to a mean age of 15.8 years, compared with 20.3 years for the exotropic group.