Our sources and method
This page exists so you can decide whether to trust the rest of the site. It describes where the Irish comes from, what we will not do, and what is still unfinished.
The rule everything else follows
No Irish text is published without a citation. Not “usually”, and not “where available”. A saying that we cannot tie to a source does not get a page here, however well known it is. And some very well-known ones do not have pages, because we went looking and could not find a source.
This is enforced mechanically rather than by good intentions. The collection lives as one file per saying in a public repository, and an automated check refuses to build the site if any published saying is missing a citation. The same check refuses text that has been mangled in transit, a dropped or corrupted síneadh fada is not a typo in Irish, it is a different word.
Two tiers, said out loud
Every published saying shows its source. What kind of shelf that source sits on varies, and the page tells you rather than making you guess. A canonical saying is cited to a dictionary, a folklore archive, an academic or government publication, or a published book. A popular saying is one in wide genuine use whose earliest print attestation we have not pinned down. It is cited to a reputable published use, and its page carries a note saying exactly that. The tier is derived from the citations, never hand-assigned, and where scholarship is unsettled the page says so in plain sight. We think a stated uncertainty is worth more than a confident silence.
The source canon
In rough order of preference:
- Foclóir Gaeilge–Béarla (Ó Dónaill, 1977): the standard modern Irish–English dictionary, and the primary orthographical authority for Irish since publication. Proverbs sit inside entries under their key word.
- English–Irish Dictionary (de Bhaldraithe, 1959): useful for blessing and greeting formulae approached from the English side.
- The National Folklore Collection (dúchas.ie). The Schools’ Collection and related archives.
- Government of Ireland published Irish-language material.
- A Miscellany of Irish Proverbs (T. F. O’Rahilly, 1922), a historical collection, used with care: see the note on spelling below.
What else can be a source, and what cannot
For the popular tier, a citation may also be a reputable website, a songbook or hymnal, a news archive, or a published collection, a real published use with a name and a URL or page number, quoted exactly. What still cannot be a source: anonymous quote-aggregation pages, greeting-card copy, Pinterest, tattoo galleries, and AI output. These are where corrupted Irish propagates from; finding a wording on one of them is evidence that it needs checking, not evidence that it is right. Our own other pages are not a source either: agreeing with ourselves is agreement, not verification.
Spelling, and the 1922 problem
Irish spelling was reformed in the 1940s and 50s. O’Rahilly’s 1922 collection is in the older orthography, which uses letter forms modern Irish does not. A record here always carries modern standard spelling. Where a historical source is cited, the original spelling is preserved inside the citation so you can see what the book actually prints. Modernising someone else’s spelling is an editorial act, so it is done as a visible one: the reading is confirmed by a person against the page image, the citation records the manuscript spelling, and the record’s own page carries a note saying the spelling was modernised.
What is ours, and therefore unsourced
Three things on every record page are written by us, and we would rather say so:
- The word-for-word rendering. Ours, to show the mechanics of the Irish.
- The natural English meaning. Ours. Dictionary glosses informed it but are often terser or older-sounding than a reader needs.
- The pronunciation guide. Ours, approximate, and written for English speakers. It is not phonetic transcription and it is not a substitute for a native speaker. Recorded audio is planned and will be human-recorded only. Synthesised or cloned Irish speech is prohibited on this site permanently, which is a rule we wrote down before we had any audio at all.
The review gate
A saying can be in the collection without being on the site. Records sit at draft while a real question hangs over them, and drafts get no page at all, hidden or otherwise. Where two sources give different wordings, or scholarship is unsettled, the question does not silently block a saying forever: it becomes a note rendered on the record’s own page, so you can see the state of the evidence exactly as we do.
Right now 92 sayings are published. Anything held back, and every open question, is public in the project’s issue tracker.
Built on: Ó Dónaill, Foclóir Gaeilge–Béarla · The Schools’ Collection, National Folklore Collection UCD · Foclóir Nua Béarla–Gaeilge · Government of Ireland · T.F. O’Rahilly, A Miscellany of Irish Proverbs (1922). Derived from the citations themselves: a source appears here only while a published record cites it.
Citations by source type
- dictionary: 80
- folklore archive: 9
- government: 8
- other: 4
- book: 2
We are short of folklore-archive citations and know it. The Schools’ Collection is only full-text searchable where it has been transcribed, so a great deal of it is effectively invisible to us for now.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, it is wrong in public and in a file with a name. Corrections are welcome and we would rather have them than not.