Ralston, WILLIAM RALSTON SHEDDEN

Ralston, WILLIAM RALSTON SHEDDEN, Russian scholar and folklorist, was born in 1828 of Scotch ancestry—his surname originally Shedden. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge (1846-50); was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1862, but never practised; and from 1853 to 1875 held a post in the library of the British Museum. He four times visited Russia; in 1886 was elected a corresponding member of the St Petersburg Imperial Society of Sciences; and besides many review and magazine articles, and a translation of his friend Turguenieff's Liza (1869), published Kriloff and his Fables (1869), Songs of the Russian People (1872), Russian Folk-tales (1873), and Early Russian History (1874), the last his Ilchester lectures at Oxford. He was also a splendid raconteur. He died in London, 6th August 1889.