Wirt Sikes

William Wirt Sikes (November 23, 1836 – August 18, 1883) was an American journalist and writer, perhaps best known today for his writings on Welsh folklore and customs.

He published two novels, The World's Broad Stage (serialized in the Toledo Blade) and One Poor Girl (1869).

Over the next few years Sikes produced a number of pieces on Welsh folklore, mythology, and customs, collected as British Goblins; Welsh Folk-Lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends, and Traditions (1880) and Rambles and Studies in Old South Wales (1881).

As "Burton Saxe" he wrote the dime novel The Black Hunter; or, The Cave Secret (American Tales #22, 1865).

In George Presbury Rowell's memoir Forty Years an Advertising Agent, he recalls a column in the New York Tribune, "wherein certain literary characters were reviewed in grades and classes, beginning with - I don't remember whom, Thackeray perhaps, and descending, as the editor expressed it, 'down to Wirt Sikes'".