Edward Lhwyd (c.1660–1709): Folklorist

Abstract

Edward Lhwyd's ambitious Archaeologia Britannica project, for which he undertook an extensive tour of the Celtic-speaking regions of Britain and Brittany from 1697 to 1701, was to include “A Comparison of the Customes and Traditions of the Britains with those of other Nations.” Though this part of the Archaeologia was not written, some of the data that were collected survive. Lhwyd's comments on the material reveal that as an antiquary his primary interests were historical and lay in customs and rites as survivals, rather than in narrative; as an experimental scientist he was consistently sceptical of traditional or popular explanations of phenomena. Edward Lhwyd was the first systematically to record Welsh folklore, and the geographical breadth of his collecting, his structured approach, and his critical responses make him the foremost pioneer in the field.