RAFF, JOACHIM, musical composer of the Wagner School, born at Lachen, in Switzerland; began life as a schoolmaster; was attracted to music; studied at Weimar; lived near Liszt, and became Director of the Conservatorium at Frankfort-on-Main; his works include symphonies, overtures, with pieces for the violin and the piano (1822-1882).

RAFFLES, SIR THOMAS STAMFORD, English administrator, born in Jamaica; entered the East India Company’s service, and rose in it; became Governor of Java, and wrote a history of it; held afterwards an important post in Sumatra, and formed a settlement at Singapore; returned to England with a rich collection of natural objects and documents, but lost most of them by the ship taking fire (1781-1826).

RAFN, KARL CHRISTIAN, Danish archaeologist, born in Fuenen; devoted his life to the study of northern antiquities; edited numerous Norse MSS.; executed translations of Norse literature; wrote original treatises in the same interest, and by his researches established the fact of the discovery of America by the Norsemen in the 10th century (1796-1864).

RAGGED SCHOOLS, a name given to the charity schools which provide education and, in most cases, food, clothing, and lodging for destitute children; they receive no Government support.  The movement had its beginning in the magnanimous efforts of John Pounds (d. 1839), a shoemaker of Portsmouth; but the zeal and eloquence of Dr. GUTHRIE (q. v.) of Edinburgh greatly furthered the development and spread of these schools throughout the kingdom.

RAGLAN, FITZROY SOMERSET, LORD, youngest son of the Duke of Beaufort; entered the army at sixteen; served with distinction all through the Peninsular War; became aide-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington, and his military secretary; lost his right arm at Waterloo; did diplomatic service at Paris in 1815, and held afterwards a succession of important military posts; was appointed commander-in-chief of the British forces in the Crimea, and was present at all the engagements till attacked by cholera, aggravated by a repulse and unjust reflections on his conduct of the war, he sank exhausted and died (1788-1855).

RAGMAN ROLL, the name given to a record of the acts of fealty and homage done by the Scottish nobility and gentry in 1296 to Edward I. of England, and of value for the list it supplies of the nobles, gentry, burgesses, and clergy of the country at that period.  The original written rolls of parchment have perished, but an abridged form is extant, and preserved in the Tower of London.

RAGNAROeK, in the Norse mythology the twilight of the gods, when it was predicted “the Divine powers and the chaotic brute ones, after long contest and partial victory by the former, should meet at last in universal, world-embracing wrestle and duel, strength against strength, mutually extinctive, and ruin, ‘twilight’ sinking into darkness, shall swallow up the whole created universe, the old universe of the Norse gods”; in which catastrophe Vidar and another are to be spared to found a new heaven and a new earth, the sovereign of which shall be Justice.  “Insight this,” says Carlyle, “of how, though all dies, and even gods die, yet all death is but a Phoenix fire-death, and new birth into the greater and the better as the fundamental law of being.”