[1][2] Lucas was born in 1911 to an Austrian father and Irish mother, and lived for most of his life in Dublin.
[2] During his career, Lucas wrote extensively on topics ranging from bog-wood, Insular metalwork, church history, and early medieval folk-life topics such as agricultural techniques such as trapping, snaring and ploughing, food (including pre-potato Irish diets)[2] and clothes.
[3] In the early 1960s, he collaborated with Séamus Ó Duilearga, the chair of the Irish Folklore Commission, to create and circulate a questionnaire on the uses of hay, rushes, and straw.
It was sent to 150 people, and from the results, Lucas embarked on an extensive collecting programme in the NMI for objects made of these materials.
[4] He was closely involved with the Irish Folklore Commission, and in 1976 a bibliography of his published works was compiled by archaeologist Etienne Rynne (1932–2012) in Folk & Farm: Essays in Honour of A. T.