Travellers' Rest

I received a special e-mail this week, one I have been waiting over three years for. Oh, there have been e-mails aplenty about Travellers, and from Travellers, over 2,000 and 1,000 respectively, counting my responses. And all but a handful have been complimentary about this site or, at the least, constructive. Two or three from Irish Travellers, at the beginning, were critical simply because neither I nor this site had yet proven our value and my mother's people are rightly scornful of self-announced prophets and other sorts of loudmouth. As to whether we have proven our value by this time, well that's still an open question, I suppose; still I believe that I've at least demonstrated that my intentions are honorable, such facts that I possess are straight facts, and such facts that I do not possess are freely admitted.

What kind of message would be so special then, that I would look for it in vain for three years? It's simple: hate mail. The Internet is a medium for literate users and literate bigots tend to lie low, sacrificing overt aspersions for rarefied aspirations. So this e-mail is a rare treat indeed, ugly yet eloquent as if it were the call of a sentinel crow and crows were an endangered species. Unfortunately bigotry is nowhere near in danger of disappearing so let this message serve as an alarm to all. If it seems to apply only to Travellers today, rest assured other minorities will feel its sting tomorrow; such hatred knows no bounds. Here it is:

Will wonders never cease! I see that a semi-educated Traveller has started a website. Of course, just like the Travellers I've had the misfortune to run across, your site is a lying sack of shit!

Why do you even try to pretend that there are honest members among your clan?? There is no such thing as an honest Traveller, and you know it. Your entire ethnic minority(as you call it-what a joke)is nothing more than a sick society of inbred, ignorant, child molesting, thieving degenerates. You people exist by stealing, scamming and robbing the weakest members of society. The trusting and unsuspecting elderly people of this nation.

If you people are honest, why the fake ID's? Why all the secrecy? I'll tell you why, it's because 99% of every dollar brought in by you illiterate, inbred morons is stolen, in one way or another.

I'm sure hell is packed with your kind worthless trash. Enjoy that air conditioning in your fancy pickup, travelling man... The afterlife is going to get mighty damn hot! (At least you'll be among family)

It would be pointless to dispute this man's e-mailed contentions here; they are all covered in the Controversy section and anyhow the stench of his odium serves as its own best indictment. Let this message also help serve to remind us all, far better than any sermonizing on my part, about the conditions that Travellers face on a daily basis.