MacEdward Leach (1892-1967) was an American folklorist, whose work "greatly influenced the development of folklore as an academic discipline".
Later in life he sometimes gave his birth date as 1896, seemingly to avoid forced retirement.
[1] Leach graduated with a MA from Johns Hopkins University in 1917: his master's thesis was on the legend of the Holy Grail.
[2] He then researched for a doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania: studying under the Americanist, Cornelius Weygandt and anthropologist, Frank Speck.
[3] Leach completed his doctorate, which dealt with the use of Celtic tradition in literature, in 1930.
[4] Leach was married twice, first to Alice May (Maria) Doane, with whom he had a son, Donald.
[5] After the completion of his doctorate Leach developed and taught courses on folklore within the University of Pennsylvania's Department of English.
[6] By 1959 Leach had developed a doctoral program in folklore and folklife - the second in the United States.
[4] Early in his career, Leach carried out fieldwork in the Southern mountain regions of the United States, as well as in the John Crow Mountains in Jamaica.
Later in life, mostly likely influenced by his Cape Breton born first wife,[1] Leach carried out four collecting trips to Atlantic Canada.
[8] Leach was regarded as a charismatic lecturer who established the University of Pennsylvania as a well-respected site for the academic study of folklore and had an enormous impact on the folklorists he taught.
[9] One obituary credited him with being "a key man in the revolutionizing of the teaching of folklore in the United States".
[3] MacEdward Leach spent his entire career at the university, retiring in 1966.
His successor as Chair of the Folklore department was Don Yoder.
[6] Leach served as both Secretary-Treasurer (1943–1960) and President (1961–1962)[10] of the American Folklore Society (AFS).
He has been credited with an enormous impact on the Society, having "almost single-handedly nurtured that organization from near collapse to vigor".
[11] His impact as an administrator included promoting the growth of local American folklore societies to aid the AFS and generating revenue for the AFS by creating a Bibliographical and Special Series of publications.
Folk Ballads and Songs of the lower Labrador Coast.
In Folklore and Society: Essays in Honor of Benjamin A. Botkin.
"Superstitions of South Scotland from a Manuscript of Thomas Wilkie."
Leach, MacEdward and Glassie, Henry (1968) A guide for collectors of oral traditions and folk cultural material in Pennsylvania.
The Terror of Quidi Vidi Lake: and other Newfoundland ghost poems.