Cultural Respect

The stories we write about are not orphans. They belong to living cultures, carried in living languages, studied and argued over by people who are here now. Sidhe Wolf treats that inheritance as inheritance, not as a mood board. This page sets out the commitments that follow from taking that seriously.

The languages are living, and they are not one language

There is no single “Celtic” language, and there is no single “Gaelic.” The relevant living languages are distinct, each with its own speakers, orthography, and body of tradition:

• Irish (Gaeilge) — the language of the aos sí, the bean sí, the Fianna, the Túatha Dé Danann.
• Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) — related to Irish but its own language, with its own tales and ballads.
• Manx (Gaelg) — the Gaelic of the Isle of Man, revived from the brink and spoken again today.
• Welsh (Cymraeg) — a Brythonic language, the language of the Mabinogi; not Gaelic at all.
• Cornish (Kernewek) and Breton (Brezhoneg) — the other Brythonic survivors, each with its own folklore.

Using “Gaelic” as a blanket for all of these, or “Celtic” as a synonym for “vaguely old and misty,” erases real distinctions and real communities. We name the specific language every time it matters.

Spelling and pronunciation are a form of respect

We use correct spellings, including diacritics — the síneadh fada in Irish and Scottish Gaelic (á, é, í, ó, ú), the Welsh circumflex (â, ê, î, ô, û, ŵ, ŷ) — because dropping them changes words and signals that the language is being treated as decoration. Sí is not “si”; sìth is not “sith.”

We also give pronunciation, because a name said wrongly is a small daily erosion of a language that has already survived enormous pressure to disappear. This is the impulse behind our Say It Right series. Pronunciation guidance is offered as respect and as help, never as gatekeeping — the point is to make it easier to say these words well, not to shame anyone for not already knowing.

We cite contemporary scholarship from within these cultures

Too much popular folklore writing quotes only long-dead antiquarians, as if the study of these traditions ended in 1900. It did not. There is vigorous present-day scholarship in Irish, Scottish, and Welsh folklore, mythology, and language, much of it by scholars from within those communities. We prioritise that work. When the current scholarly consensus has moved past a Victorian assumption, we follow the current consensus and say why.

We do not publish closed or initiatory practice as how-to

Some material is not ours — or yours — to hand out. Where a practice is closed or initiatory, belonging to a specific living community, lineage, or religious tradition that does not consent to public instruction, we do not write it up as a manual, even when fragments circulate elsewhere. We may describe, with sources, that such a practice exists and is held privately; we will not turn it into a tutorial. The distinction we hold throughout the site is between writing about a tradition and handing a reader someone else’s sacred thing to use. See our editorial standards for how this boundary is applied.

We do not blend traditions into one aesthetic without saying so

A great deal of harm to these cultures is done not by hostility but by flattening — pouring Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Norse, and invented material into a single “Celtic” or “witchy” aesthetic and serving it as one thing. When we draw a parallel across traditions, we label it as a parallel and show the evidence. When we discuss a modern syncretic or revival practice that deliberately combines sources, we name it as modern and syncretic rather than projecting it backwards. Blending can be a legitimate creative or devotional act; disguising a blend as a single ancient tradition is not.

If we get it wrong

We are not from every tradition we cover, and we will sometimes err. If you belong to one of these cultures and we have misspelled a word, misattributed a story, overstepped a boundary, or published something that should have stayed closed, please tell us through our contact page. Correcting the record — visibly, with a note — is part of keeping these stories properly, and a correction from within a tradition carries particular weight with us.