Two myths should, perhaps, be dealt with here: the story, spread by the English almost from the Armada year, that the Spaniards who came ashore were spontaneously murdered by the Irish for their clothes and arms and jewellery; and the legend, persistent in the west, that black eyes and hair, aquiline profiles and swarthy cheeks show the blood of the Spaniards who came ashore from the Armada ships and stayed. Not infrequently the wild Irish did relieve their unbidden guests of their valuables. Perhaps, now and then, a throat was cut. But there is only one recorded instance of the killing of Spanish castaways by Irish not directly in English pay, and it aroused general reprobation. Usually the Irish sheltered the Spaniards, supplied their necessities, and, whenever they could, helped them out of the realm. Several hundred Spaniards did so escape, mostly to Scotland. They thought they had left few if any of their countrymen behind. Perhaps here and there some castaway found a roof and a wife in a friendly village, but not enough, surely, to have any effect on the look of the people as a whole. If one sees, time and again, the same physical types in Connaught and in Galicia, it must be for some other reason.

Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish A…, loc. 829