The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #64952   Message #1066783
Posted By: ard mhacha
06-Dec-03 - 01:14 PM
Thread Name: Folklore: Black Irish: Etymological Consensus?
Subject: RE: Folklore: Black Irish: Etymological Consensus?
There where few if any survivors from the Armada, those that did make it ashore were killed by the natives, Sir Richard Bingham Governor of Connaught had any natives executed who gave refuge to the Spanish.
The only known Spaniards who were ransomed were Don Luis de Cordova and his nephew this after a long negotiation.

Captain Francisco Cuellar after many narrow escapes, made his way to Scotland
[aided by Irish Chieftains McClancy, O Rourke, and O Neill].

Cuellar eventually made it back to Spain, he being the only one who lived to tell the tale.

Only in North-West Ireland, where the Irish Chieftains had retained some independence of English rule, did those hapless Spaniards receive some shelter.
In Mayo, Galway, Clare and Kerry, the Irish were so fearful of their English overlords that no aid was given to the exhausted survivors.

An English offical recorded, "Spaniards drowned 5,600, Spaniards slain and executed 1,000.

The people on this thread should look elsewhere as for the reason for their dark complexions, certainly it has nothing to do with any of the poor wretches that met such a terrible fate along Ireland`s western shore. Ard Mhacha.