  As in statistical physics, the concept of universality plays an important,
albeit qualitative, role in the field of comparative mythology. Here we apply
statistical mechanical tools to analyse the networks underlying three iconic
mythological narratives with a view to identifying common and distinguishing
quantitative features. Of the three narratives, an Anglo-Saxon and a Greek text
are mostly believed by antiquarians to be partly historically based while the
third, an Irish epic, is often considered to be fictional. Here we show that
network analysis is able to discriminate real from imaginary social networks
and place mythological narratives on the spectrum between them. Moreover, the
perceived artificiality of the Irish narrative can be traced back to anomalous
features associated with six characters. Considering these as amalgams of
several entities or proxies, renders the plausibility of the Irish text
comparable to the others from a network-theoretic point of view.
