Merry-Lwyd

My attention has been called to an inquiry in No. 11. p. 173., as to the origin and etymology of the Merry-Lwyd, still kept up in Wales. I believe that all these mummings may be traced to the disguisings which formed so popular an amusement in the Middle Ages, and that the name applied in Wales to this remnant of our ancient pastimes is nothing more than a compound of our English adjective "merry" and a corruption of the Latin word "Ludi," which these masquings were formerly termed. Strutt, in his *Sports and Pastimes*, Book iii. chap. 13., speaks of Christmas Spectacles in the time of Edward…