From: "Dave Coull" <coull2-AT-btinternet.com>
Subject: Re: Irish Travellers...
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 21:35:17 +0100




Carp asked Goat


> Do you know anything about a group called
> the "Irish Travellers?"


and Goat replied


> Not any first hand knowledge, no.  Our bretheren/cisterns
> in the UK might have some.


I'm not an expert on the Irish Travellers, but I do know
a fair bit about the Travellers here in Scotland, and 
I believe the Travellers in both countries have close 
links and similar origins.Here in Scotland, your actual
Roma gypsies are virtually unknown. Travellers here 
are mostly the descendants of dispossessed clans. That 
is, centuries ago they possessed clan lands, but they were 
on the losing side in some war, were dispossessed of their 
lands, and subsequently became nomadic. So you get Travellers 
called, for instance, Stewart (the Appin Stewarts were dispossessed 
because of their part in Jacobite uprisings). One of the people
very active in the same anti-poll-tax group as me was a Traveller
called Henry Stewart. You also get names like Black and White. 
In fact, the Travellers used these two names interchangeably
   -   Black means as much, or as little, as White. (By the way,
the singer/TV game presenter Cilla Black   -   a natural redhead
   -   was originally called Cilla White.) At one time it was illegal 
to have the name "MacGregor". So if you were called MacGregor, 
you might change your name to something more acceptable. 
But if you spoke only Gaelic and knew very few words of English, 
what would you change your name to? The answer is, either 
Black or White.

Travellers in Scotland get called, or used to get called,
"Tinks" or "Tinkies". This comes from "tinker" but
is far more derogatory. In my class at our village school 
there was a lad from a Traveller family called Wullie White. 
They were settled in our village by that time, having given 
up the nomadic lifestyle. Wullie's grandmother, Betsy White, 
wrote a book about her life, growing up as one of a Traveller
family on the road, called  "The Yellow On The Broom".
You can probably find this book on the web.


> From what little I do know they are gadji "gypsies" with a lot
> of familial ties who follow a (semi)nomadic lifestyle and run
> various scams on the "straight world."


That's certainly not the whole story, but there's a lot of truth
in what Goat says.


> AFAIK, they are a tiny minority in Eire


They are a tiny minority in Scotland too.

A good source for stuff on the Irish Travellers would be 
the Irish anarchist grouping, Workers Solidarity Movement. 
I know for a fact that the  WSM  have published stuff 
about the Irish Travellers in the past. The  WSM's archive
of articles they have published in their magazine, or
in pamphlets, in the past, is available on their web site.

http://www.more.at/anarchism


Dave Coull