Travellers' Rest

A parish priest was passing through the main doors to his church one Sunday morning, just before Mass, and noticed an eight year boy from his Sunday School class. He was looking at a bronze plaque on the wall and seemed frightened.

"Well, Tommy, at your age you shouldn't be thinking about this, but it lists the people from this parish who have died in the service."

The boy said, even a little more nervously, "That's what I thought, Father. But which one mostly, the ten o'clock or the noontime?"

In what I had thought to be the closing edition of this page, I wrote the following:

"To those descendants of Travellers who have e-mailed me, looking to establish some connection with family roots: I wish that I could have been less discouraging without being completely unrealistic."

I am happy to say that there is an excellent source of historical data for Travellers of all the clans. His name is Matt Salo and he comes from a different sort of people himself (his folks came from Finland). He has spent many years collecting general information on Travellers and other nomads (mostly Kippeens, it seems, but a lot of us too) to preserve oral history for their and our descendants.

His information mostly depends on census information, immigration entries, ships' crossing lists, newspapers etc. and the more precise the information you can provide on when and where your ancestors arrived in America or were born or baptized or married, the more precise and complete the information you will get back (at least it worked that way for me). I've heard of the man and have known about the organization he contributes research to for some years and they can be trusted. As a matter of fact, he sent me a list of known Irish Traveller family names on his own that was so damn complete it had me remembering people I had forgotten fifty years ago.

The official name of the organization that Matt volunteers his services to, (along with his wife, Sheila) is the Gypsy Lore Society. That society has been around for over one hundred years and their name is an honored one. He's considering a more encompassing title for a Web site, however, to reflect that Traveller Lore is of great interest to them as well. (:>D)

Is that why I bring up "Australia?" No, they probably have enough troubles already. I'm talking about Australians in general here. If you believe the myths, Australia was settled by one warden (named Mel Gibson, I think) and a hundred thousand hard-bitten, whiskey-swilling ax murderers and murderesses. If one of their ancestors turns out, in fact, to have been a mere pickpocket, Australians can have their license to swig Fosters beer and call each other "mate" revoked.

One of these days, a century or two down the pike, Travellers in the USA will be just a group of successful mainstream families with an "attitude." Our descendants will then have to overlook the fact that our felony conviction rate is historically somewhere between the Amish and maybe the Mormons. They'll think of our ancestors and ourselves and feel proud that they came from such a tough and stubborn people; a people who lived a hard life and followed hard trades as extinct in that far off day as the tinsmith's craft that we once practiced in the Old Country is today. If the blood runs true, those descendants will be hard, shrewd workers who take easily to the roving life and find it hard to work for anyone but themselves.

They'll need a few things the roving life does not now easily provide: more education, for one, to go along with their intelligence. And some things Travellers can readily provide: the Cant to speak among their own, and the story of the Travelling People, which is truly known only to us collectively. But as long as it is known only as an oral tradition, most of it is lost, as it must be, with the passing away of the old among us each year. To some extent, we are like a culture that is diffusing into the future and deliberately discarding our past at the same time.

I recently read an essay (that's what I call it, anyway) written to accompany a particular set of Tarot cards by one of the Kippeen (a Gypsy, to the country people). In it, he wrote:

"We pass like the wind on the lake of the world without leaving a mark. And yet, without us nothing would be the same. Always thrown out, always hunted. Despised and envied. And always unknown... "

It's not really fair of me to quote just that paragraph because it sounds so negative, and his entire essay is anything but negative; in fact, it is magnificent. I do not use that adjective very often, especially about writing. It is named "Preface to TZIGANE TAROT (Tarot of the Roms)," by Tchalai, and I very much recommend your reading the whole piece at: http://www.romani.org/rtchalai.html

Why do I quote that particular passage? Because too many people only believe the negative stereotypes about Travellers of all kinds, not just Gypsies. I am not only talking only about country people in this regard. I've gotten a few e-mail protests from some Travellers, as well, who felt that any public discourse concerning us would have to turn out badly, and it was readily apparent that the principal reason for that negativity was because the protesting Traveller simply couldn't think of any positive (to an outsider) attributes for the Life themselves.

Well, I can. I think of the Irish Travellers, in particular, as family rather than as a lifestyle or occupation and I'm proud of all of the family that I know personally. I have known them to build chapels and fix up churches for free, raise their kids morally straight, stand on their own two feet and have the strongest family ties of any group I have ever encountered. There are few people who are more generous or better friends in adversity. We also know how to have a damned fine time together. The concerns expressed by those Travellers I only know electronically seem to run along the same lines as those I know personally. Then why should I assume that the rest are any different? Why should you?

I had sworn that I was through with adding to this site, except perhaps for the fiction and poetry. But despite my good intentions, or because of writer's block, I find myself wanting to address several issues __controversial issues. So I have added a new page to the Travellers section, titled Controversy. I guess if it has arrived it's not a true "coming" attraction, but it will be updated periodically and archived like this page, so there will be a lot more of it yet to come.

My guess is that Controversy will mostly be unsettling to Travellers, who generally prefer no publicity even to good publicity; because I intend to take on some of the topics that we hate to hear about in the media and open them up to the light of sweet reason: the lies, the misconceptions, the truth, and what Paul Harvey calls "The Rest of the Story."

As in the past, I hope to get mostly messages of interest and support from Travellers and country people alike who appreciate straight information; though I also expect a few e-mails calling me a reff and asking me impolitely to disappear. Be warned: all of the latter have been answered and will be answered politely and with a care to find out what's bothering the complainant, leading to further, friendlier and more informative exchanges of e-mail. So don't bother to insult me unless you are better at it than most; you will most likely just become a friendly acquaintance, which is what you would have been looking to avoid at all costs. But, if you must, you might as well start now by e-mailing: