Lebor Gabala Erenn (The Book of the Taking of Ireland)

R. A. Stewart Macalister's edition and translation of Lebor Gabala Erenn, the medieval Irish Book of Invasions, is a primary text presenting the traditional mythological history of Ireland's successive legendary settlements, prepared by an Irish Texts Society scholar working directly from the surviving manuscripts. As the standard critical edition, it carries real authority for the text's actual wording and manuscript variation, work still cited by specialists in early Irish literature. It is a compilation itself, assembled by medieval Christian scribes weaving older pagan mythological material into a biblical historical framework, so it should be read as that later synthesis rather than as an unmediated record of pre-Christian Irish belief, a distinction scholars of early Ireland treat as central to using the text responsibly.