Ruth Lewis

Ruth, Lady Herbert Lewis, OBE ( Caine; 29 November 1871 – 26 August 1946) was an English temperance movement activist of Manx descent and collector of Welsh folk songs. She published collections of Welsh folk songs, and was a key member of the Welsh Folk-Song Society in the first half of the 20th century.

Early life and education

Ruth Caine was born in Liverpool, the daughter of William Sproston Caine and Alice Brown Caine. Her father was a Member of Parliament, and her maternal grandfather was Baptist minister Hugh Stowell Brown (1823–1886). She had two older sisters, Hannah (1869–1951) and Dorothea (1870–1953), and two brothers, David and William Caine (author). Ruth Caine attended Miss Mallison's School in Liverpool, then Clapham High School for Girls after her father was elected as an MP in 1880 and the family moved to London. She later attended Newnham College, Cambridge, between 1890–1893 but as Cambridge did not award degrees to women at the time, she was granted a master's degree in 1906 by Trinity College Dublin as one of the so-called Steamboat Ladies.

Folk music After she married John Herbert Lewis, a Welsh politician, she moved to Wales, learned to speak Welsh, and committed herself to learning Welsh culture. Her determination to assimilate into Welsh culture "o galon, er nad o waed"’ (‘at heart, if not by blood’) was met with respect, to the extent that at the 1912 National Eisteddfod of Wales she was welcomed into the Gorsedd of Bards under the Bardic name of Caerwen. She and other Society members collected wax cylinder recordings of Welsh-language traditional songs, and published a journal of their findings, having been inspired by "all their wild beauty & pathos". and at the British Library. Other materials relating to Lady Herbert Lewis are at Bangor University, the National Library of Wales and Flintshire Record Office.

Both of her children, Kitty Idwal Jones and Dr. Herbert Mostyn Lewis, carried on her work and served terms as president of the Welsh Folk-Song Society.