ENID, a city and the county-seat of Garfield county, Oklahoma, U.S.A., about 55 m. N.W. of Guthrie. Pop. (1900) 3444; (1907) 10,087 (355 of negro descent); (1910) 13,799. Enid is served by the St Louis & San Francisco, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé, and the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific railways, and by several branch lines, and is an important railway centre. It is the seat of the Oklahoma Christian University (1907; co-educational). Enid is situated in a flourishing agricultural and stock-raising region, of which it is the commercial centre, and has various manufactures, including lumber, brick, tile and flour. Natural gas was discovered near the city in 1907. Enid was founded in 1893 and was chartered as a city in the same year.
ENIGMA (Gr. αἴνιγμα), a riddle or puzzle, especially a form of verse or prose composition in which the answer is concealed by means of metaphors. Such were the famous riddle of the Sphinx and the riddling answers of the ancient oracles. The composition of enigmas was a favourite amusement in Greece and prizes were often given at banquets for the best solution of them (Athen. x. 457). In France during the 17th century enigma-making became fashionable. Boileau, Charles Rivière Dufresny and J.J. Rousseau did not consider it beneath their literary dignity. In 1646 the abbé Charles Cotier (1604-1682) published a Recueil des énigmes de ce temps. The word is applied figuratively to anything inexplicable or difficult of understanding.
ENKHUIZEN, a seaport of Holland in the province of North Holland, on the Zuider Zee, and a railway terminus, 11½ m. N.E. by E. of Hoorn, with which it is also connected by steam tramway. In conjunction with the railway service there is a steamboat ferry to Stavoren in Friesland. Pop. (1900) 6865. Enkhuizen, like its neighbour Hoorn, exhibits many interesting examples of domestic architecture dating from the 16th and 17th centuries, when it was an important and flourishing city. The façades of the houses are usually built in courses of brick and stone, and adorned with carvings, sculptures and inscriptions. Some ruined gateways belonging to the old city walls are still standing; among them being the tower-gateway called the Dromedary (1540), which overlooks the harbour. The tower contains several rooms, one of which was formerly used as a prison. Among the churches mention must be made of the Zuiderkerk, or South church, with a conspicuous tower (1450-1525); and the Westerkerk, or West church, which possesses a beautifully carved Renaissance screen and pulpit of the middle of the 16th century, and a quaint wooden bell-house (1519) built for use before the completion of the bell-tower. There are also a Roman Catholic church and a synagogue. The picturesque town hall (1688) contains some finely decorated rooms with paintings by Johan van Neck, a collection of local antiquities and the archives. Other interesting buildings are the orphanage (1616), containing some 17th and 18th century portraits and ancient leather hangings; the weigh-house (1559), the upper story of which was once used by the Surgeons’ Gild, several of the window-panes (dating chiefly from about 1640), being decorated with the arms of various members; the former mint (1611); and the ancient assembly-house of the dike-reeves of Holland and West Friesland. Enkhuizen possesses a considerable fishing fleet and has some shipbuilding and rope-making, as well as market traffic.
ENNEKING, JOHN JOSEPH (1841- ), American landscape painter, was born, of German ancestry, in Minster, Ohio, on the 4th of October 1841. He was educated at Mount St Mary’s College, Cincinnati, served in the American Civil War in 1861-1862, studied art in New York and Boston, and gave it up because his eyes were weak, only to return to it after failing in the manufacture of tinware. In 1873-1876 he studied in Munich under Schleich and Leier, and in Paris under Daubigny and Bonnat; and in 1878-1879 he studied in Paris again and sketched in Holland. Enneking is a “plein-airist,” and his favourite subject is the “November twilight” of New England, and more generally the half lights of early spring, late autumn, and winter dawn and evening.
ENNIS (Gaelic, Innis, an island; Irish, Ennis and Inish), the county town of Co. Clare, Ireland, in the east parliamentary division, on the river Fergus, 25 m. W.N.W. from Limerick by the Great Southern & Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 5093. It is the junction for the West Clare line. Ennis has breweries, distilleries and extensive flour-mills; and in the neighbourhood limestone is quarried. The principal buildings are the Roman Catholic church, which is the pro-cathedral of the diocese of Killaloe; the parish church formed out of the ruins of the Franciscan Abbey, founded in 1240 by Donough Carbrac O’Brien; a school on the foundation of Erasmus Smith, and various county buildings. The abbey, though greatly mutilated, is full of interesting details, and includes a lofty tower, a marble screen, a chapter-house, a notable east window, several fine tombs and an altar of St Francis. On the site of the old court-house a colossal statue in white limestone of Daniel O’Connell was erected in 1865. The interesting ruins of Clare Abbey, founded in 1194 by Donnell O’Brien, king of Munster, are half-way between Ennis and the village of Clare Castle. O’Brien also founded Killone Abbey, beautifully situated on the lough of the same name, 3 m. S. of the town, possessing the unusual feature of a crypt and a holy well. Five miles N.W. of Ennis is Dysert O’Dea, with interesting ecclesiastical remains, a cross, a round tower and a castle. Ennis was incorporated in 1612, and returned two members to the Irish parliament until the Union, and thereafter one to the Imperial parliament until 1885.