[7] The life of Ailbe is included in the Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae (VSH), a Latin collection of medieval Irish saints' lives compiled in the 14th century.

Sharpe's analysis of the Irish name-forms in the Codex Salamanticensis showed similarities between it and the Life of Saint Brigid, a verifiably 7th-century text, leading him to posit that nine (and possibly ten) of the lives were written much earlier, c. 750–850.

[10] He further proposed that this earlier Life of Ailbe in the Codex Salmanticensis was originally composed to further the cause of the Eóganacht Church of Emly.

[11] The later lives of the Dublin collection go further and make Ailbe the principal 'pre-Patrican' Saint of Ireland (the others are Ciarán of Saighir, Declan of Ardmore, Abbán of Moyarney and Ibar of Beggerin or Beggery Island)[12] The Dublin Life of Ailbe asserts that Munster was entrusted to him by Saint Patrick, while to similar effect, Ailbe is called a "second Patrick and patron of Munster" (secundus Patricius et patronus Mumenie) in the Life of Saint Declán of Ardmore.

[5] Ailbe was discovered in the forest by visiting Britons: these British foster parents were said to have planned to leave him in Ireland when they returned home but were constantly and miraculously unable to make the passage until they consented to take him with them.

It may well be, though, a reflection of the fact that many such obits (records of the date of death) of Irish saints were retrospectively added to the annals.

In Welsh traditions, he then fostered the boy[1] while serving as bishop of Menevia (present-day St David's) before leaving on a mission to convert southern Ireland.

He was also regarded as the founder of Llanailfyw or St Elvis in Pembrokeshire,[14][26] Late Welsh sources[27] give him a British ancestry.

This would make him a descendant of Guorthemir (Modern Welsh: Gwerthefyr; English: Vortimer the Blessed), and a cousin of saints David, Cybi, and Sadyrnin.

[1] Professor Pádraig Ó Riain suggests the cult of Saint Ailbe may have pre-Christian origins.

[28] The name Ailbe figures quite extensively in a context of Irish folk tale, with its likely origins mainly in pre-Christian pagan mythology.

An ‘Ailbe Grúadbrecc’, meanwhile, was the daughter of Cormac mac Airt (premier mythical Irish king) and a wife (as her sister Gráinne) of Finn (= literally, 'white') or Fionn mac Cumhaill in the Tochmarc Ailbe,[31] Echtrae Cormaic maic Airt[32] and "The Burning of Finn's House".

Albula as an old name for the Tiber and the legendary Alba Longa in Latium; the Germanic deities Albiahenae[42] the semi-divine prophetess, Albruna mentioned by Tacitus (Vulgar Latin Aurinia: Germania 8) or the spiritual or demonic beings from the Germanic world, which are represented in modern English by the word, 'elf';[43] the Alphito which was recorded as the name of an 'ogress' or 'nursery bugbear' and might well have been appropriate to an earlier strata of Greek gods;[44] and possibly the ‘R̥bhus’ of Indian mythology and the Rhig Veda.

There does, however, appear the root albi(i̭)o-, 'world' in the Brittonic Celtic languages: as seen for instance in Wesh elfydd, 'world, land'.