From: "Old Goat" <olgoat-AT-nebi.com> Subject: Re: Irish Travellers... Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 16:04:04 -0500 Thanks, Dave. Somehow I had a feeling you'd come through on this. old goat withdraw consent ----- Original Message ----- From: Dave Coull Subject: Re: Irish Travellers... Carp asked > Do you know anything about a group called > the "Irish Travellers?" 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
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