Myth: The Irish were oppressed for 800 years.
Truth: It was more like 400. Ireland was finally conquered in 1603.
Myth: The Gaelic overlords were visionary leaders of a proud, free people before the English wrecked the system.
Truth: The 16th-century Irish peasant was the worst-off in Europe. The Gaelic overlords were reducing the peasants to total subservience.
Myth: The overlords were part of a racially pure Gaelic Catholic family.
Truth: Inter-marriage was common from the earliest centuries. Even the greatest of the Irish nobles, O'Neill of Tyrone and O'Donnell of Tyrconnell, contracted "mixed" marriages, the former Anglo-Irish, the latter Scottish.
Myth: The medieval church was predestined to triumph over the Reformation, and handed down intact the Catholic faith as practised today.
Truth: The Ulster church was particularly resistant to Rome. The clergy was engaged in warfare, illegitimacy and concubinage and there was little sense of sin. Neither "native" nor "settler" would have had any clearly defined sense of religious identity before 1641.
Myth: The loss of the land - in the Ulster Plantation and the Cromwellian Settlement - was the source of all Catholic woes.
Truth: The "churls" or under-tenants probably fared a good deal better under the new dispensation in the short term. Ultimately, mismanagement of the new rent and money economy (and drink in a few cases) by the remaining Gaelic lords was to cause more loss of land than actual dispossession.
Myth: Ulster suffered as grievously under Cromwell and his settlement as the rest of the country.
Truth: It suffered less, probably because the amount of land left in old Irish hands had dramatically declined as a result of sales.
Myth: The Penal Laws forbade the practice of Catholicism and outlawed Mass.
Truth: The Catholic church flourished in this period; it was not unlawful to say Mass and Catholic marriages celebrated by a priest were recognised by the state (unlike Presbyterian marriages at the time). Mass houses went up, cemeteries continued to be shared by Catholic and Protestant. The folklore of priests killed at Mass-rocks is largely unproven.
Myth: The hedge schools symbolise the story of Catholic persecution and the endurance of a superior culture.
Truth: The hedge schools were where the poor, Catholic and Protestant, came to learn English. Most poor children of both persuasions who received any education in the 18th century received it in hedge schools - often together.
Myth: Ulster suffered as much in the Great Famine as the rest of the country. Protestants had plenty to eat.
Truth: Ulster suffered less than the rest. The Ulster landlords generally behaved better and the population declined by 16 per cent, compared to 20 per cent for the country as a whole. Protestants certainly suffered. Throughout the famine, one third of the population of Lisnaskea workhouse was Protestant.