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Traveller and Roma Collection at the University of Limerick |
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Irish Travellers are an indigenous minority or ethnic group who make up less than 1% of the population in Ireland. They number approximately 28,000 people in the Republic of Ireland and 1500 in Northern Ireland. There are also large Irish Traveller communities in Britain and North America. Their family structure, nomadism, employment patterns and language are all distinctive and have ensured their survival as a minority group on the margins of Irish mainstream society for generations. There is little information or research available on the question of Traveller origins and a range of theories have been put forward by scholars including the possibility that they are the descendants of travelling bards who were joined by families who “took to the road” because of eviction, war, famine and the social upheaval that was a consequence of colonisation. Travellers are synonymous with self-employment, occupational flexibility and nomadism. In the nineteenth century tinsmithing was a trade that was particularly associated with Travellers. This gave rise to the sobriquet “tinker” which is now often used only in a derogatory sense. Tinsmithing was only one trade that was synonomous with Travellers however. They are also horse-dealers and recyclers and are synonymous today with activities such as market trading, scrap collection, tarmacking, the resale of secondhand goods, tree-topping and landscaping. Historically, Travellers have been largely invisible among the Irish poor but their language, known as Cant or Gammon, shows evidence of bardic influences, indicating that some of their ancestors may have belonged to bardic families that played in a central role in Gaelic culture prior to the imposition of colonisation. The fact that Travellers is how the group refers to themselves is indicative of the importance of travelling or nomadism in Traveller culture.
Hyland, John [editor] Do you know us at all? Irish Travellers A Heritage Ahead : Cultural Action and Travellers Helleiner, J. Irish Travellers : Racism and the Politics of Culture The Light Within : Images of Traveller Life and Culture Kirk, J.M. and Ó Baoill, D.P. (editors) Travellers and their Language External Links: The Travellers of Ireland (Patrin) |
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