What's New
A short, easy-to-keep-up page for bulletins.
Any questions or comments? Please e-mail them to: Travellers' Rest
Joke:
What about Ken Starr, now?
Did you hear the news that he's asked the Justice Dept. to appoint him special persecutor over
the proposed Xerox-Wurlitzer merger. He'd like to make sure that there's no unauthorized use of any reproductive
organs. (:>D)
As promised, here's a continuation of the correspondence with a Young Rom in Norway:
Munya Naia Dick!
Today I visited the WhatsNew and saw the open letter to Irish Travellers. The language of your people are just so beautiful, that's why you must preserve it, as well as your own culture, lifestyle etc.! To many travelling peoples are now loosing their identity, and become integrated among the settled peoples of the world, and that is really sad! If, or when, you make a dictionary of Cant; can I buy it too?!
Have you seen the web-site with Traveller Gammon from Ireland? The address is: http://www.pitt.edu/~alkst3/Lexicon.html
Earlier you told me that American *Pavees*
*Many Irish Travellers in Ireland call themselves "Pavees."
(do you mind that I use that term; it so much easier?!) like Country&Western Music! I likeit very much myself! Are there any famous Pavee musicians?
Bahi & Munya Cess!______________
(Response below)
Munya cess to you too _______
No, you might as well not use the word "Pavee." Why not use *"IATs"* for short instead, as I do. "Pavee" just means "sell" or"merchants" to us. Once upon a time we used "Minkars," but I think that's been long forgotten here.
* Irish-American Travellers (us)
Boy, it's been a rush with this new web site. I never realized just how many IATs are on line. There are hundreds and some of them have been communicating with me over the last couple of days. There's been some reaction against developing a lexicon of the IAT Cant at all, much less a public one. I think it's going to be a long, uphill battle to get an authoritative text done on it but if my family allows any publication (it's their decision) I'll be happy to e-mail you a copy. It's not likely to be the size of The Bible.
I even got a few compliments on my fiction skills, notably about the IAT wake (pre-burial rite) in the first chapter of "Canadian Shield" (Fiction 1). We are aficionados of wakes and (a compliment for) a good depiction of a genuine IAT wake is as good as a seal of approval from the public health authorities on a ham or a side of beef.
A number of Travellers in Ireland are and have been famous in the musical field. The best-known contemporary IT musicians are the Furey Brothers.
I've got to run now; getting tired.
Bahi & Munya naia.
Dick Waters
E-mail:
I just received the e-mail below and thought I'd check with you all on the unlikely chance that any of us can help this gentleman:
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 98 20:04:24 UT
From: "FRANK GLANZ" <FEGlanz@classic.msn.com>
Message-Id: <UPMAIL03.199811112122080164@classic.msn.com>
To: webmaster@travellersrest.org
Subject: my grandfather
My grandfather went to the USA as a young man in the 1860's & 1870's from Donegal Ireland. The young men from this part of Donegal (Kilcar) were given a Horse and a pack, I believe, from another Irishman. I think his name was Johnson but I do not know what his name was in Gaelic. My grandfather then travelled around with some of his pals selling things from horseback. His name was John Hegarty. He returned to Donegal in the 1890's, married and had a family. He died aged 84 in 1932.Is there any way I can find out more about about his time in America?
Rose:
Not to get too melancholy, I've been thinking lately about the name "Rose" and some of the women of our family who have borne that name. There is a poem dedicated to the memory of beautiful Roses who have passed this way among us, on the main Poetry Page now.
On the road:
A story for Ann, who traveled to such a gathering:
Now I won't say that I overheard this personally but once upon a time two nuns got on a crowded chartered bus, headed for a big Christian gathering. As luck would have it, the only two seats left on the bus were on the aisle and ten rows apart. The smaller nun, sitting in front, started to work on a crossword puzzle. The other passengers were mostly Nondenominational from rural areas and intensely curious about them. You all know how nosy those Nondenominationals can get.
After a few minutes, the little nun turned around in her seat and asked in a loud voice, "Pardon me, Sister. Do you know a four letter word ending in "I,T," that is commonly found in the bottom of bird cages?"
Everyone in the bus turned to stare at the other nun.
She got flustered at all the fascinated onlookers, huffed a little and said, "I wouldn't
have the faintest idea of what that could be, Sister."
All heads had turned together to stare at the first nun again when a man in the back spoke up.
"That would be 'G, R, I, T,' Sister."
"Thank you, sir."
Everyone relaxed. For a minute.
"Pardon me, Sister," the first inquired again.
"Yes?"
"Do you have an eraser?"
The Cant
A little new business here. There's a little bit of encouragement to update and record the Cant and there's a little bit of gentle opposition to the thought, even though it's not really a new idea and has been done a few times in the last 125 years that I know of. (No, I'm not really that old). So we're still batting that notion around. I'd really appreciate hearing from more of you on the subject.
Here's a new thought: How about a regular listing on this page of some of the old Cant words from Ireland, the ones that have been forgotten and are not in use in America? Practical words. Just one or two a week. Anybody interested?
As an introduction to that list of lost (in the USA) Cant words, I'd like to quote from a scholar of nomadic and other languages, the first outsider to my knowledge who made a study of the Cant in Ireland as well as America. After more than twenty years of off and on study of our language, Charles Godfrey Leland wrote in 1899:
"It is one of the awfully mysterious arcana of human stupidity that there should have existed for a thousand years in Great Britain a cryptic language __the lost language of the Bards__ which no scholar ever heard of. . . . For even yet there is hardly a scholar who knows of its existence __of the fifth British Celtic tongue."
Sometime between 1876 and 1880, Dr. Leland interviewed an Irish Traveller in Philadelphia, PA, named
Owen McDonald. Does that name sound familiar? It does to me. More next week.
NEXT WEEK HERE:
I'll also post some poetry by Yeats that reminds me of the Travellers a bit, and later on some by Synge, to see if you feel the same way.
Any questions or comments? Please e-mail them to: Travellers' Rest
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