David MacRitchie

Born in 1851 and active in Scotland's learned societies, David MacRitchie built a reputation as a folklorist, antiquary, and writer interested in the origins of traditional stories and ancient peoples. He is especially remembered for arguing that legends of fairies may have grown from memories of a real, earlier population in the British Isles.

His books explored subjects including the Picts, British prehistory, and Romani history, and titles such as The Testimony of Tradition and Ancient and Modern Britons show how widely he ranged across folklore and early anthropology. Although many of his ideas are now seen as speculative, they were influential enough to keep his name in discussions of folklore history.

MacRitchie died in 1925. Today he is usually read not as a final authority, but as a vivid example of how late 19th- and early 20th-century writers tried to connect myth, history, and ethnology.