HECKMONDWIKE, an urban district in the Spen Valley parliamentary division of the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, 8 m. S.S.E. of Bradford, on the Lancashire & Yorkshire, Great Northern, and London & North-Western railways. Pop. (1901), 9459. Like the town of Dewsbury, on the south-east, it is an important centre of the blanket and carpet manufactures, and there are also machine works, dye works and iron foundries. Coal is extensively wrought in the vicinity.
HECTOR, in Greek mythology, son of Priam and Hecuba, the husband of Andromache. Like Paris and other Trojans, he had an Oriental name, Darius. In Homer he is represented as an ideal warrior, the champion of the Trojans and the mainstay of the city. His character, is drawn in most favourable colours as a good son, a loving husband and father, and a trusty friend. His leave-taking of Andromache in the sixth book of the Iliad, and his departure to meet Achilles for the last time, are most touchingly described. He is an especial favourite of Apollo; and later poets even describe him as son of that god. His chief exploits during the war were his defence of the wounded Sarpedon, his fight with Ajax, son of Telamon (his particular enemy), and the storming of the Greek ramparts. When Achilles, enraged with Agamemnon, deserted the Greeks, Hector drove them back to their ships, which he almost succeeded in burning. Patroclus, the friend of Achilles, who came to the help of the Greeks, was slain by Hector with the help of Apollo. Then Achilles, to revenge his friend’s death, returned to the war, slew Hector, dragged his body behind his chariot to the camp, and afterwards round the tomb of Patroclus. Aphrodite and Apollo preserved it from corruption and mutilation. Priam, guarded by Hermes, went to Achilles and prevailed on him to give back the body, which was buried with great honour. Hector was afterwards worshipped in the Troad by the Boeotian tribe Gephyraei, who offered sacrifices at his grave.
HECUBA (Gr. Ἑκάβη), wife of Priam, daughter of the Phrygian king Dymas (or of Cisseus, or of the river-god Sangarius). According to Homer she was the mother of nineteen of Priam’s fifty sons. When Troy was captured and Priam slain, she was made prisoner by the Greeks. Her fate is told in various ways, most of which connect her with the promontory Cynossema, on the Thracian shore of the Hellespont. According to Euripides (in the Hecuba), her youngest son Polydorus had been placed during the siege of Troy under the care of Polymestor, king of Thrace. When the Greeks reached the Thracian Chersonese on their way home Hecuba discovered that her son had been murdered, and in revenge put out the eyes of Polymestor and murdered his two sons. She was acquitted by Agamemnon; but, as Polymestor foretold, she was turned into a dog, and her grave became a mark for ships (Ovid, Metam. xiii. 399-575; Juvenal x. 271 and Mayor’s note). According to another story, she fell to the lot of Odysseus, as a slave, and in despair threw herself into the Hellespont; or, she used such insulting language towards her captors that they put her to death (Dictys Cretensis v. 13. 16). It is obvious from the tales of Hecuba’s transformation and death that she is a form of some goddess to whom dogs were sacred; and the analogy with Scylla is striking.
HEDA, WILLEM CLAASZ (c. 1504-c. 1670), Dutch painter, born at Haarlem, was one of the earliest Dutchmen who devoted himself exclusively to the painting of still life. He was the contemporary and comrade of Dirk Hals, with whom he had in common pictorial touch and technical execution. But Heda was more careful and finished than Hals, and showed considerable skill and not a little taste in arranging and colouring chased cups and beakers and tankards of precious and inferior metals. Nothing is so appetizing as his “luncheon,” with rare comestibles set out upon rich plate, oysters—seldom without the cut lemon—bread, champagne, olives and pastry. Even the commoner “refection” is also not without charm, as it comprises a cut ham, bread, walnuts and beer. One of Heda’s early masterpieces, dated 1623, in the Munich Pinakothek is as homely as a later one of 1651 in the Liechtenstein Gallery at Vienna. A more luxurious repast is a “Luncheon in the Augsburg Gallery,” dated 1644. Most of Heda’s pictures are on the European continent, notably in the galleries of Paris, Parma, Ghent, Darmstadt, Gotha, Munich and Vienna. He was a man of repute in his native city, and filled all the offices of dignity and trust in the gild of Haarlem. He seems to have had considerable influence in forming the younger Frans Hals.
HEDDLE, MATTHEW FORSTER (1828-1897), Scottish mineralogist, was born at Hoy in Orkney on the 28th of April 1828. After receiving his early education at the Edinburgh academy, he entered as a medical student at the university in that city, and subsequently studied chemistry and mineralogy at Klausthal and Freiburg. In 1851 he took his degree of M.D. at Edinburgh, and for about five years practised there. Medical work, however, possessed for him little attraction; he became assistant to Prof. Connell, who held the chair of chemistry at St Andrews, and in 1862 succeeded him as professor. This post he held until in 1880 he was invited to report on some gold mines in South Africa. On his return he devoted himself with great assiduity to mineralogy, and formed one of the finest collections by means of personal exploration in almost every part of Scotland. His specimens are now in the Royal Scottish Museum at Edinburgh. It had been his intention to publish a comprehensive work on the mineralogy of Scotland. This he did not live to complete, but the MSS. fell into able hands, and The Mineralogy of Scotland, in 2 vols., edited by J. G. Goodchild, was issued in 1901. Heddle was one of the founders of the Mineralogical Society, and he contributed many articles on Scottish minerals, and on the geology of the northern parts of Scotland, to the Mineralogical Magazine, as well as to the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He died on the 19th of November 1897.