Macaire

MACAIRE, a French chanson de geste. Macaire (12th cen tury) and La Reine Sibille (14th century) are two versions of the story of the false accusation brought against the queen of Charle magne, called Blanchefleur in Macaire and Sibille in the later poem. Macaire is only preserved in the Franco-Venetian geste of Charlemagne (Bibl. St. Mark ms. fr. xiii.). La Reine Sibille only exists in fragments, but the tale is given in the chronicle of Alberic Trium Fontium and in a prose version. Macaire combines two legends: that of the unjustly repudiated wife and that of the dog who detects the murderer of his master. (For the former motive see GENEVIEVE OF BRABANT.) The second is found in Plutarch, Script. moral., where a dog, like Aubri's hound, stayed three days without food by the body of its master, and subse quently attacked the murderers, thus leading to their discovery. The duel between Macaire and the dog is paralleled by an inter polation by Giraldus Cambrensis in a ms. of the Hexameron of St. Ambrose. Aubri's hound received the name of the "dog of Montargis," because a representation of the story was painted on a chimney-piece in the chateau of Montargis in the 15th cen tury. The tale was early divorced from Carolingian tradition, and Jean de la Taille, in his Discours notable des duels (1607), places the incident under Charles V.

See Macaire (1866), edit. Guessard in the series of Anc. poetes de la France; P. Paris in Hist. litt. de la France, vol. xxiii. (1873) L. Gautier, Epopees francaises, vol. -iii. (2nd ed., 188o) ; G. Paris, Hist. poet. de Charlemagne (i865) ; M. J. G. Isola, Storie nerbonesi, vol. i. (Bologna, 1877) ; F. Wolf, Ober die beiden . . . Volksbiicher von der K. Sibille u. Huon de Bordeaux (Vienna, 1857) ; and Ober die neuesten Leistungen der Franzosen (Vienna, 1833).

McALESTER,

a city of Oklahoma, U.S.A., no m. S.E. of Oklahoma City, on federal highway 73 ; county seat of Pittsburg county. It is served by the Missouri-Kansas-Texas, the Pitts burg County, and the Rock Island railways. Pop. (1920) 10,632

(78% native white and 17% negroes), 11,804 in 1930 by Federal census. It is the trade centre for an agricultural and coal-mining region; does a large wholesale and jobbing business; and has railway shops and other manufacturing industries. Its cotton gins and compresses handle 30,00o bales in a normal year, and the county mined nearly a million tons of coal in 1926. There is a beautiful Masonic temple in the city. It is the seat of the State penitentiary, and headquarters for United States Army officers and officials of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The water supply is impounded in three lakes, one of which (5 m. from the city) is the largest in the state (2,400 ac.) and a popular resort for fishing and camping. Settlement began in 1885. In 1906 the city of South McAlester (incorporated 1899) and the town of Mc Alester were consolidated, and in 1919 a commission-manager form of government was adopted.

McALLEN,

a city of Hidalgo county, Texas, U.S.A., in the south-eastern part of the state, 6 m. from the International Bridge over the Rio Grande at Reynosa (Mexico), on Federal highway 96, the "main street" of the region, which runs from Brownsville (6o m. S.E.) to the western boundary of the county (2o m. W.) through most of the important towns of the Lower Rio Grande Valley. It is served by the Missouri Pacific and the Southern Pacific railway systems. Pop. (1920) 5,331 (5o% foreign-born white, largely from Mexico), 9,074 in 193o by the Federal census.

A two-acre central plaza, palm-lined streets, poinsettias, ebonies, and other semi-tropical trees and shrubs, add charm to a well planned city. It is the trading and shipping centre for an irrigated district devoted to citrus culture, especially grapefruit. When the city was chartered in 1911 most of the site was a desert of mesquite and cactus. By 1928 the assessed valuation of property was $6,785,000; building permits for the year 1927 represented values amounting to $2,170,500; and bank deposits on August 1, 1928, totalled