The sourcing policy

Every page of mythology on this site rests on named, citable sources. This page is the policy in full: what is promised on every entry, how entries are verified, and what is never used.

Irish mythology survives because medieval scribes wrote it down and modern scholars translated it. Everything on this site traces back to that chain, and we show the chain on every page.

The rules we write by

Every story names its manuscript tradition and the published translations it draws on. Retellings are composed independently from the cited editions; we do not reproduce or closely paraphrase translations that are still in copyright, we cite and locate them. Where versions of a story conflict, we tell you, in the text, not in a footnote you’ll never find. Where something is a reconstruction or survives only in fragments, it is flagged as exactly that. Where a famous “ancient” story turns out to be a later invention, we publish the debunking rather than the invention.

Crowd-edited encyclopedias and anonymous discussion forums are never sources here. Not because they’re always wrong, but because a reference library has to stand on the primary record: the manuscripts, the scholarly editions, the named translators, and the documented folklore collections.

Two kinds of verified

Entries on this site carry one of two statuses, and we’d rather tell you which than pretend they’re the same:

Verified: the retelling has been checked line against line with an archived primary translation, and any corrections made in the process are noted in the entry.

Sources cited, verification scheduled: the entry names its sources and was written from them, and its full verification pass is in the queue. Specific details awaiting confirmation are marked in the text. Entries move to Verified as the programme works through the library, and each entry’s status is shown on the page.

No entry at either status contains invented mythology. The difference is the depth of checking, and we think you deserve to know it.

Corrections

Errors get fixed, visibly: corrected entries note what changed. If you spot something, write to us; serious readers are this library’s best editors.