I just ran into a similar situation; and I found that it is indeed possible to map a collection of strings.
Note that you’ll have to map those strings as value objects.
This is what I have:
public class Chapter
{
private ISet<string> _synonyms = new HashedSet<string>();
public ReadOnlyCollection<string> Synonyms
{
get { return new List<string>(_synonyms).AsReadOnly(); }
}
}
Mapping:
<class name="Chapter" table="Chapter">
<set name="Synonyms" table="ChapterSynonyms">
<key column="ChapterId" />
<element column="ChapterCode" type="string" />
</set>
</class>