The Irish mostly sheltered Spanish castaways rather than murdering them

Evidence

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 Armada, 829

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle exists on how victors rewrite atrocities as the victims’ spontaneous barbarism.
• XREF: Debunks the persistent Irish ‘Spanish blood’ myth sometimes repeated in popular genealogy. — connects to: The Irish mostly sheltered Spanish castaways and helped them escape — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 829; The Lord Deputy ordered all Spanish castaways in Ireland killed — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 828; An important reason why the English were able to defeat the Armada was that the wind blew the Spanish ships northwards, celebrated on a medal inscribed ‘God Blew and they were Scattered’. — God blew and they were scattered (+4 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 829