@juergen_hubert This tale (and a couple of others you shared recently) make me wonder about your definition of "folk tale". I would expect folk tales to be stories from an oral tradition and I expect written texts of folk tales to be faithful-ish recordings of the tales as they are or were told. This one, however, is taken from a written source which in turn has lifted the anecdote from medieval annals, which are a completely different genre with completely different conventions.

@juergen_hubert Even if you go by "Whatever appears in 19th century folk tale collections is a folk tale", it would probably be useful for your readers to have these tales flagged as probably not conforming to a narrower definition of "folk tale".

@dimllychlyngarw

While I see your point (and in fact, I have thought about this issue myself), if the Brothers Grimm had no problem with citing an adventure novel for their folk tale collection, I can err on the side of inclusion.

The question is a good one, but the answers can get murky. Sometimes I strongly suspect that a certain tale comes from a chronicle or a broadsheet, but I have no clear evidence. Should I exclude them? And who is to say that the accounts from such chronicles _aren't_ from folk tales?

Thus, my approach is to leave in all citations, and let the readers make their own conclusions.

@juergen_hubert If two pioneers of the field did something that would be considered bad practice nowadays, that doesn't mean you have to follow them

Not excluding any tales is a valid decision, but you should be transparent about it. And if you have reasons to doubt the provenance of a tale, just tell them so they have something to work with

@dimllychlyngarw

My full notes go into my books and Patreon pages. I put just the translations on my wiki.