“A few Irish Travelers emigrated to America during the Potato Famine of the mid-19th century. Their 7,000-10,000 descendants still speak the secret Traveler language, a dialect alternately known as Shelta, Gammon, or Cant, which includes elements of Irish Gaelic, English, Greek, and Hebrew.”
Yo! Wazzup, homie yrwyddgrug?
My girlfriend is doing her workstudy program with the Traveller community in and around Dublin.
Chris
Peter Kennedy’s giant song book has songs of the travelers and some basic vocabulary.
I was surprised by article referring to those specific Traveling Folk on the East Coast as Irish as they are usually referred to as Scottish Travelers. But the article claimed they were Catholic so I dunno…And its the first I ever heard of PRE-CELTIC origins. I had always understood that Scots travelers had some Rom words in there (from East Euro gypsies)…
60 minutes or 20/20 did a feature about the bunch in the Carolinas/West Virginia, all driving identical white pickups with campers and doing the driveway sealer scam, but said they were Scottish.
“Come all ye tramps and hawkers lads” might be about Traveling Folk.
And while we’re talking about it, didya notice everybody wants to nail that gal, while the one who drowned her kids in the bathtub was offered by sympathy by NOW and stuff. what is up with that?
Mickey: Degs. D’ya like degs?
Tommy: Dykes?
Mickey: Wha?
Woman: Yeh, degs.
Mickey: Degs, ye like degs?
Tommy: Oh! Dogs! Sure. I like caravans better.
I have found some media reports to be surprisingly bigoted. No doubt the Travelers, Gypsies, et al, have done their share of troublemaking, but there has been a societal repulsion for nomadic peoples for so long, that just being a member of such an ethnic group seems to make one evil in the public’s eyes. In an age of “Political Correctness” we can still hold one’s ethnicity and cultural background against anybody who happened by lot to be born a nomad. You’re automatically considered a superstitious barbaric horsethief.
A little history of the treatment of the Gypsies, another wandering people, “In 1726, Charles VI passed a law that any male Gypsy found in the country was to be killed instantly, while Gypsy women and children had their ears cut off, and were whipped all the way to the border. Gypsy hunting was a common sport; in 1826, Freiherr von Lenchen displayed his trophies publicly: the severed heads of a Gypsy woman and her child. In 1835, a Rheinish aristocrat entered into his list of kills ‘A Gypsy woman and her suckling babe.’” (quote from The Pariah Syndrome).
Let us be careful. Let us treat all men with dignity. Let us hold all innocent until proven otherwise.
That little blurb was actually pretty mild. The Irish Travelers are considered by most or all American police departments as a major nuisance. Bogus or shoddy home improvement scams are the principal occupation of the males, whereas the women engage heavily in confidence scams and outright thievery. As a general rule, their crimes are mostly ‘soft’ crimes involving deception as opposed to the more violent crimes favored by other types of gangs.
What makes them especially tough to deal with is that they are, like true Gypsies, all related by blood and culture, so they’re particularly difficult to infiltrate. Beyond that, they’re mostly transients and seldom stay long in one area. In their ‘home’ areas, they tend to be law-abiding, confining their illegal activities to their intinerant lives. For that reason, law enforcement tends to treat them more as a nuisance than an overt threat.
Here is a message board that is going off on this -
http://www.acmepet.com/club/bboard/naar/messages/1071.html
And you think C&F get’s off topic once in a while!!! This is appears to be a pet discussion list…geesh
Here is another link for info on the Travellers
Walden’s note reminded me that I have often thought of a parallel of the European Gypsies to North American native people. In neither case can the victorious prevailing culture accept or absorb their cultural practices, most of which seem to pre-date landed agriculture. So they are often reduced to theivery or self-destruction cause they just dont/can’t/won’t/maybe shouldn/t fit in to the new scheme.
Extermination is the usual practice (as evidenced above) unless some form of enlightened ethos is present. But even then, it never seems to really work because the solution is too impractical for our system of things and property…
When I lived in India, there was a group of Banjaras, or nomads, who had formerly migrated from South India up into one of the Central Asian republics (USSR at that time). The govt. tried to settle them in housing and modern political realities made their formerly casual border crossing into a political crisis..But they were basically gypsies, with theivery, prosititution etc as their professions.
Oh, sorry CraigMc… i did spin. But I did mention music, at first…
[ This Message was edited by: The Weekenders on 2002-09-25 16:17 ]
Gosh folks,
This is, as far as I can tell, a really racist, bigotted thread going on.
It is simply impossible - and just plain wrong - to brand an entire ethnic group or social group as this or that, especially as something bad, because of the actions of some within that group. Imagine if people went around saying “People from New Hampshire are murderers, thiefs and liers”, just because there are people in NH who HAVE murdered, stolen and lied. That would be just plain stupid. It’s just as ignorant to brand all the Travellers/nomadic peoples as liers, prostitutes, criminals and thief. This sort of lumping of a huge group into one category, be it a good category or a bad one, is just plain wrong.
My two cents, take it or leave it,
Chris
Speaking of Gypsies. I was reading an article with a description of American Gypsies from perhaps the first half of the 19th Century. Anyway, it mentioned them playing an instrument similar to a banjo. Anyone know what this might have been?
At the link that Craig Mc noted, is a sublink to entertainers and circus folk that is fascinating. I couldnt really spend time there, (i’m at “work”) but you might find yer answer there.
Because I studied Gold Rush musicians a bit, I wonder if some of them might have been travelers after seeing info at that site.
[ This Message was edited by: The Weekenders on 2002-09-25 17:07 ]
On 2002-09-25 16:37, ChrisLaughlin wrote:
Gosh folks,
This is, as far as I can tell, a really racist, bigotted thread going on.
I just want to apologize to anyone who feels this thread was not a good idea. I saw the MSN article, and wondered what other people thought about the article. I didn’t mean to start anything unpleasant.
Please note that the MSN article is under the “Slate” section, meaning (to my knowledge) it is primarily an opinion article.
[ This Message was edited by: avanutria on 2002-09-25 17:13 ]
On 2002-09-25 17:13, avanutria wrote:
I just want to apologize to anyone who feels this thread was not a good idea.
Actually I’d been thinking about having a thread on the Travellers, since the news story broke.
<Font](http://chiffboard.mati.ca/faq.php#rpp%22%3E%3CFont) size=2>Reasonable ~ Person
[ This Message was edited by: Walden on 2002-09-25 17:27 ]
It is simply impossible - and just plain wrong - to brand an entire ethnic group or social group as this or that, especially as something bad, because of the actions of some within that group.
Gee-wiz let’s be honest. I don’t think this is bigoted or racist thread. I think it’s fair and perfectly fine to discuss certain groups as long as we all agree these are stereotypes based on our experiences. I think most people simply find the Irish Travelers intriguing.
Part of my line goes to a group of Scottish Travelers that immigrated to Ireland in the 1800’s.
Any group has specific characteristics and a culture.
Chris,
Why else would your girlfriend choose to study them? I would never call her inflammatory names for following her interests.
Craig - “Snatch” was a great movie! (Ok, maybe more entertaining than memorable, but that’s great too).
Philo
IMO, this thread is a bad idea only because I seriously doubt anyone here is talking from experience regarding this topic.
I’ll make just a few comments based on having some actual insight regarding the subject - I used to date a woman who had at one time (prior) been part of the Traveller “Family” here in the U.S., so I learned about them from an insider, long before 60 minutes or any other media coverage could have biased me. Keep in mind that I’m part Irish and part Scottish, so if anything, I’d have reason NOT to take a biggoted stance.
Chris, Chuck is correct: The “Irish Travellers” here in the states, the one’s that are the subject of the thread that was started, are in fact, people who make their living by taking advantage of others, quite often the elderly, by means of various scams - quite heinous, if you ask me. BTW, this is not to say this is the case with other similar or dissimilar nomadic peoples elsewhere in the world.
The current media coverage is then factual, and doesn’t seem any more biggoted to me than if they were reporting on mafia activity - Clearly we all know that that the “Mafia” are not an accurate representation of Italians in general, and very few would get upset and start screaming about bigotted media coverage if this woman were some “Mob” wife, and the media reported about Mob activity as related backround information - That’s not coverage about Italians per se, that’s coverage about documented criminal activity, and it’s the same here with the Travellers. The police aren’t making this stuff up, they have to take reports from the poor folks who get ripped off by these people, which happens on a regular basis.
I honestly don’t see what purpose this thread will serve - What’s to be gained by having a bunch of people with no actual experience or insight throwing around uneducated, speculative opinions?
Wait a minute, so sorry, I forgot…This is the Chiff and Fipple message board - Carry on then! 
Loren
Craig -
My girlfriend is not studying them - she’s working with the Traveller community to help them out educationally, financially, legally and otherwise because they’ve been totally disenfranchised for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and because people continue to perpetuate the unfounded myth that when one is born a Traveller he or she is automatically predisposed to prostitution, violence, thievery, dishonesty and any other number of unpleasent traits.
Chris
On 2002-09-25 16:37, ChrisLaughlin wrote:
Gosh folks,
This is, as far as I can tell, a really racist, bigotted thread going on.
It is simply impossible - and just plain wrong - to brand an entire ethnic group or social group as this or that, especially as something bad, because of the actions of some within that group.
Just two comments, Chris, and not in the spirit of argument. In reverse order:
1; We’re not talking about an entire ethnic group here, but a small and specific subset of people of Irish ancestry which makes its way through preying on others. So many of us here share at least some Irish ancestry that bigotry in this case is a questionable conclusion.
2: My comments were based on very specific experience in almost twenty years of police employment as a civilian data processing specialist and manager - including working off and on with organized crime and criminal intelligence analysis units and data. Every major police organization in the US and Canada treats the Irish Travellers as a criminal entity, along with gangs and internal terrorist groups. As such, analysts are assigned to track and predict their movements and to share intelligence about anticipated future movements. The files are very thick. This is not because they’re Irish, or Roman Catholic, or because they speak a private language. It is because a very large percentage of them are thieves and con artists.
The Italian-American Anti-defamation Society aside, some Americans of Italian descent make their living through organized crime. To say so is hardly a case of anti-Italian bigitry - just simple fact. The same argument applies to the Irish Travellers.
Chris,
Short answer:
No one said anyone was predisposed to anything but just speaking in general terms about the overall culture of the Irish Travelers.
Long answer:
I think what your girlfriend is doing is awesome and I myself find it interesting. I just think that we need to be careful when throwing around words like racist and biggot. I think people on this board can have a reasonable discussion about particular group of people without having someone throw around accusations.
I highly doubt anyone would feel the need to study or work with the Irish Travelers if they didn’t have certain characteristics, culture or customs that distinguished them from others. I think people should be allowed to discuss those differences even if they are bad. How can anyone help them without understanding what makes them different overall from other social groups? Obviously any social group on closer inspection is a collection of individuals that can be as different from one another as any two individuals can be.
I would just appreciate people giving others on this board the benifit of the doubt and not stifle an interesting cultural discussion with allegations that those involved in said discussion feel they are racially superior.
[ This Message was edited by: CraigMc on 2002-09-25 22:33 ]