Travellers' Rest

I have taken the radical step of including the following hyperlink in four different locations on this site. That's a measure of its significance to and for Irish Travellers in my estimation. I only wish I had known of it earlier.

Wow! I just ran across a RealAudio transcription of the April 24 - May 1, 1998 edition of "CounterSpin," a weekly radio show on National Public Radio. The program is one of the productions of FAIR, an organization to promote "Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting." Judging by it's condemnation of NBC and "Dateline" (and others) for their treatment of Travellers and the Romany, the organization lives up to its acronym. The specific URL for their Internet site where that transcription is located is:

If you don't have RealAudio as a "plug-in" for your browser, you might have to download it from that site to hear the audio (it's free and worth a few minutes of your time). There is an introduction on screen as well, though, that is worth reading on it's own merits if you are at all interested in exploring the constant cheap-shots fired by the media at ethnic minorities like the Travellers and the Romany.

I urge you to listen to this news report on NPR from CounterSpin, however you can.

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. Here are a few more:

1. How do crazy people go through the forest?
3. What did the fish say when he hit a concrete wall?
7. What do you call a boomerang that doesn't work?
8. What do you call cheese that isn't yours?
17. Why are there so many Smiths in the phone book?
18. Why do bagpipers walk when they play?
23. What kind of coffee was served on the Titanic?

The long awaited exchange of e-mails between myself and a Texas fraud cop has been posted on the Controversy page. He makes some good points and so do I, I think. The previous edition of that page (also about Law Enforcement and the Travellers) is archived and accessible from that page via the usual hypertext link. See the last paragraph below for some other planned additions to Controversy.

(06/03/99) The Controversy edition dedicated to Marriage Customs is now a work in progress, about one third completed. The incomplete version is posted and customarily linked to the current edition for your inspection. There is also a direct link just above. Take a look.

(06/11/99) A dissertation (polite word for rant) on under-aged brides and Irish Travellers has been added to the above page. In short: "Winifred" and "Bridget," yes, "Lolita," no!

(07/11/99) The "hot potato" (Endogamy and the Irish Travellers) has been picked up and dropped on that same page (Marriage Customs), which completes it.

1. They take the psycho path.
3. "Dam!"
7. A stick.
8. Nacho Cheese.
17. They all have phones.
18. They're trying to get away from the noise.
23. Sanka.

The first was of terrible family feuds among the Irish Travellers over there, which have resulted in several murders. This is not the forum to report any details of those feuds, or name family names, but that report might serve as an object lesson for us that, whatever our individual lifestyles, the Irish Traveller "clans" in America have far more in common to unite us than differences to divide us. There was at least one such feud early in our history here that went on for eighty some-odd years, I believe, starting not long after the Civil War, that was not settled (if then) until after World War Two. Again, I won't name names; why ask for trouble?

The second bit of bad news for our cousins in Ireland was the passing away of a country man who was a great friend to them, Victor Bewley, dead at 87 years of age. "Where shall we find his like again?" is a question often asked rhetorically at funerals. It's apparently not rhetorical in his case. He worked tirelessly for public programs that acknowledged the basic worth of Travellers as human beings while improving their standard of living materially and within the context of the Travelling Life. But unlike many, he not only gave his time, he gave his own money and even more, he opened his own home and business to our people in time of need. To those so inclined: please say a prayer, certainly not for such a soul, but for our families over there, who have one less friend in a land where those are few and far between.

Shelta:

Sometime in the next few months, there will be some amateurish exploration here of the development of the Cant, how old it is and what it might be able to tell us of the origins of the Irish Travellers. There are those who say that we don't care anything about our history; maybe that is so for many of us, and maybe not, but I think there are some of us who would like to know more about it. Surprisingly, many serious scholars disagree drastically about where we came from and just who and what we are.

What do Liechtenstein, Iceland and the Amish have to with the Irish Travellers? One clue: the answer will be showing up next month (July, 1999) on the Travellers/Controversy page. A second clue: the Controversy page will be expanded to four sections dealing with the following issues: Law Enforcement, the Media, 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.