Travellers' Rest

There is a list of conundrums making the e-mail rounds these days, from which I have borrowed a few. If I knew whom ultimately to thank for them, I would. Their original item numbers have been left in and the corresponding answers are given below the following paragraph.

11. What do you get from a pampered cow?
12. What do you get when you cross a snowman with a vampire?
13. What has four legs, is big, green, fuzzy, and if it fell out of a tree would kill you?
14. What lies at the bottom of the ocean and twitches?

An anthem:

Oh yes, we are the Travellers of this land,
those who stride out to an older chant,
obeying our ancient spirit's command,
"mishlee the thoaber, thaari the Cant."

Not for us were the country man's ways,
nor for any other to be deemed our master,
we'd go where we wish, at our own pace,
fast as we wished and surely no faster.

Scant welcome had we on the byroads of Erin,
and of late even America forsakes our hand;
the lies now pursue us beyond toleration
and freedom for nomads is sought to be banned.

The Life can never be fettered and numbered,
nor lines and borders e'er enslave our band;
our people will never by chains be encumbered.
Oh yes, we are the Travellers of this land.

11. Spoiled milk.
12. Frostbite.
13. A pool table.
14. A nervous wreck.

Shelta Lexicon:

There is now an English to Shelta Lexicon, in addition to the regular one, linked to the present Travellers/Shelta page. It is sorted by the English translation rather than the Shelta equivalent for a greatly increased ease of use. My apologies to serious students and scholars for the omission of Cant words, or those Shelta words which resemble the Cant too closely, but the language belongs to all of the Irish Travellers and their consensus is that it should remain as closely held as possible.

I do not agree with this personally, but will not disregard their feelings in the matter; although much of the Cant has been previously published over the years in one venue or another. I hereby propose some sort of contest where the entrants fill in as many of the Cant words as they know and we'll all see who gets the most. All I can afford to grant the winner is "bragging rights."

What do Liechtenstein, Iceland and the Amish have to with the Irish Travellers? One clue: the answer will be showing up next month on the Travellers/Controversy page. A second clue: the Controversy page will be expanded to three sections dealing with the following issues: Law Enforcement, Marriage Customs, and Education. Needjaish karab meidjeel, soobyas, akhiver (until) duilsha'v (you've) djoud my thaari; I promise that you will be informed and you may even be pleasantly surprised at what I have found and failed to find.

By the way, the Cant words that are translated in parentheses above are from the old Cant, no longer in use here (to my knowledge, at any rate). They, and the better part of a thousand others, can be found in the English to Shelta and Shelta to English lexicons linked through the Travellers page on this site. My phonetic spelling of Cant words may seem strange at first, as in "djoud." The "dj" represents a hard "j" or soft "g" sound and the "oud" is pronounced as in "loud." There is a pronunciation guide at the end of each lexicon which aims to standardize Shelta; so that each word, as spoken, can have only one spelling using the normal alphabet, and vice-versa, unlike the confusion in "plain" English.