Lhuyd (Edward)
- d. 1709
- authors, scholars
(fl. second half of the 17th century)
Rev. John Beaton, episcopalian minister of Kilninian, Mull; second son of John Beaton (1594-1657); physician and head of medical family
See more Arthur BrownlowBrownlow (Arthur)
(1645–1712)
Anglo-Irish landowner at Lurgan (Co. Armagh) whose collection of Irish manuscripts attracted the attention of Edward Lhuyd in 1699.
See more Edmund GibsonGibson (Edmund)
(1669–1748)
British clergyman and antiquary, who became bishop of Lincoln (in 1716) and London (in 1723). He produced an English translation of William Camden’s Britannia (1695) which included much additional material, with help from other scholars, such as Edward Lhuyd.
See more William GwavasGwavas (William)
(1676–1741/2)
British barrister, Cornish-language scholar and collector.
See more William NicolsonNicolson (William)
(1655–1727)
English churchman and antiquary.
See more Eóin Ó GnímhÓ Gnímh (Eóin)
(fl. c. 1700)
Agniv (Ai)
descendant of a dispossessed family of hereditary poets to the Ó Néill family of Clandeboy. He is primarily known for having sold a number of Irish manuscripts to Edward Lhuyd during the latter's tour through Ireland in 1699/1700.
See more Roderic O'FlahertyO'Flaherty (Roderic)
(1627/30–1716/18)
Ó Flaithbheartaigh (Ruaidhrí Óg)
Roderic(k) O'Flaherty / Ruaidhrí (Óg) Ó Flaithbheartaigh, Irish nobleman, historian and collector of manuscripts; author of Ogygia seu rerum Hibernicarum chronologia (1685).
See more David Parry [d. 1714]Parry (David) ... d. 1714
(1682?–1714)
Welsh scholar from Cardigan, who assisted Edward Lhuyd on his travels in Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Brittany, and became keeper of the Ashmolean in Oxford.
See more Moses WilliamsWilliams (Moses)
(1685–1742)
Welsh scholar, antiquarian and clergyman.
See more
This article considers how gentry antiquarian communities in later Stuart Cornwall and south-west Wales constructed distinctive local identities. It focuses on four case studies: William Scawen, the West Penwith coterie, Edward Lhuyd and the Teifi Valley group. These antiquaries conceived of the Cornish and the Welsh as ‘ancient Britons’ and established them as historically and culturally distinct from the English, usually through reference to their indigenous languages. However, the reception of their work among wider landed society was shaped by the vitality of each respective language (with still-ubiquitous Welsh contrasting with near-extinct Cornish). By exploring the relationship between intellectual culture and identity formation, the article contributes to a broader understanding of the various and overlapping identities that permeated the British archipelago.
This article discusses Edward Lhwyd's visit to Cornwall in 1700, drawing on his correspondence to demonstrate the support he received from Cornish scholars and antiquarians, his itinerary and fieldwork methodology, his treatment of the Cornish language, and the manuscript materials available to him.
Includes chapters on Edward Lhuyd and his Glossography (1707).
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.
In 1698 Humfrey Wanley examined a manuscript at Gresham College, which had been described as a history of Pictland in the Pictish language. The book (now British Library, MS Arundel 333) contains titles to this effect added in the late sixteenth century, but, as Wanley realised, its texts are Irish medical translations from Latin, made at the beginning of the sixteenth century. A longer note about Pictish provinces, added by the same hand, and the identity of the writer are investigated; the hand is that of the owner of the book, Lord William Howard, rather than the historian William Camden as was thought in the past. Wanley’s correction appears in William Nicolson’s Scottish Historical Library in 1702 and in correspondence between himself and Edward Lhuyd in the same year. In 1702 Lhuyd discovered the englynion in the Cambridge copy of Juvencus, exchanging views with Wanley and others on this and further manuscripts containing early Brittonic words. Between 1702 and 1707 Lhuyd developed a theory that the Juvencus manuscript was written in the land of the Picts and that its Welsh verses, the oldest monuments of Hen Brythoneg, were in the Pictish language. He saw himself as uncovering both linguistic and manuscript evidence for British writing across the full range of British territory from south to north, Brittany to Caledonia. Lhuyd’s idea that Pictish was similar to British was followed by Innes, but modern Pictish scholarship has not recognised that the idea goes back so early.
Edward Lhuyd's (1660-1709) Archaeologia Britannica (Oxford 1707), was intended to be a study of early British history together with copies of some of the original source material. The only volume to appear, entitled Glossography, printed glossaries and grammars of the Celtic languages and lists of Irish and Welsh manuscripts, and it set out the principles of phonetic changes and correspondences so that linguistic and written evidence for the relationships of the first (Celtic) inhabitants of the British Isles could be evaluated. The antiquity of the evidence was of prime importance. Lhuyd sought the 'very ancient' written sources which would bridge the gap between the post-Roman inscriptions and the medieval Welsh manuscripts which he had seen. Humphrey Wanley (1672-1726), the Old English scholar, drew his attention to the Lichfield gospel book and two Latin manuscripts at the Bodleian Library which contained Welsh glosses and Lhuyd himself discovered the Cambridge Juvencus manuscript. These were the oldest forms of Welsh which he had seen. He analysed the palaeography, the orthography and vocabulary of these witnesses, and although he was not able fully to comprehend these records, he was able to begin to describe the characteristics of the British insular hand and to define some of the features which distinguished Old Welsh from Middle Welsh.
This paper examines three aspects of Lhuyd's work on Irish megalithic tombs: (i) the context of his famous account of Newgrange is assessed and is shown to have a more complex background than hitherto assumed; (ii) using several complementary pieces of evidence, Lhuyd's classification of British megalithic tombs is outlined and discussed, and it is shown to have been used by him to describe megaliths encountered on his Irish tour; (iii) an examination of Lhuyd's Additions to Gibson's edition of Camden's Britannia of 1695 is used to illustrate his ideas on the function, origin and chronology of megalithic tombs. Antiquarian studies of Irish megalithic tombs after Lhuyd are discussed in the context of his contribution.
