The origins of the travellers

paky

In Colm Lennon's book 16th Century Ireland it says that Irish people lived a semi nomadic lifestyle during that period.
Taking this into account, it seems to be the case that the travellers don't have a specific origin. From what i gather, the travellers provided a social role in ireland up until the end of the 19th century and early 20th century. This role consisted of trading with rural communites mainly in the west of ireland and operating in metal work. It seems like the travelling communitys role in irish society became obsolete as society modernised. This effected the travelling community by isolating them from the rest of society.
In the programme blood of the travellers, an old lady was narrating her youth when she said that her children use to socialise with settled children, and farmers and travellers would be friendly to one another, and this she said was around the 1930s.
SO my theory is is that travellers are not in anyway distinct from Irish people and their only claim to any identity is the fact that they live a nomadic lifestyle which was once a practice of most Irish people at one time. In modern times, the fact that large elements of the travelling community engage in criminal activity is the fact that their community failed to adapt to a modern lifestyle where they could contribute positively to society. And this is the reason the travelling community is viewed as a separate entity

CDfm

Whenever I have seen this before the history seems very scant. When do they first appear in Irish historical documents.

From James II on for a few hundred years there were deportations and white slavery etc. So if they came thru that and survived they obviously had some survival skills.

dubhthach

CDfm wrote: »

Whenever I have seen this before the history seems very scant. When do they first appear in Irish historical documents.

From James II on for a few hundred years there were deportations and white slavery etc. So if they came thru that and survived they obviously had some survival skills.

I posted a brief overivew of results from "Blood of the Travellers" program in the following post:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=76507355&postcount=233

They reckoned the potential separation between the two populations was between 500-800 years ago.

Aside from that in Medieval Ireland you had what were known as Creaghts, these were nomadic herds of cattle with the associated family who own them. Here's an article about the "Creaghts of Ulster" published originally in Illustrated Dublin Journal, Volume 1, Number 35, May 3, 1862

http://www.libraryireland.com/articles/CreaghtsUlsterIDJ/

BBC History page about the Demise of Gaelic life also talks about the Creaghts of Ulster:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/plantation/ireland_before/ib06.shtml

An example of an artistoicratic family who followed this nomadic lifestyle is the Clan Muircheartaigh Uí Conchobhair

... the earliest, most aristocratic and best documented example of increasing nomadism in the northern half of Ireland in the late middle ages. ... In spite of the fact that they were a very numerous branch of the O'Conor family, who supplied five kings to the throne of Connacht, they seem to have vanished away in the early fifteenth century, never to be heard of again.

(A Lost Tribe - The Clan Murtagh O'Conors, Katherine Simms, pp. 1–22, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, volume 53, 2001)

Of course traditionally in most of Gaelic Ireland you had the practise of going boolying. This actually continued up until field enclosure in the 19th century. Where you would have two houses potentially and you would "migrate" between the two with your herd. Semi-nomadic.

CDfm

We know the didn't have a written culture but they show up in the US circa 1760

http://sciway3.net/clark/freemoors/travellers.html

Then you have this from History Ireland in 2004 by Sinéad ní Shuinéar with Michael McDonagh

To date, circular logic has ensured that no qualified researchers have taken up the challenge of researching Traveller history, on the grounds that there isn’t any. We need scholars who can chase up, read and interpret original source materials, particularly in Irish (no one has done this so far). A grounded alternative to politically motivated statements about what Traveller history ‘must’ have been is long overdue.


http://www.historyireland.com/volumes/volume12/issue4/features/?id=114362

And this conference paper

http://eprints.nuim.ie/1087/1/IrishTravellersSOS.pdf

They really tell me nothing at all.

slowburner

One of the things that has struck me about this community is the degree to which they 'never give in' - would I be right in saying that the term 'never jack' is used?
It would be most interesting to think about how this quality of resistance might act as a historical indicator of the enigma of travellers' origins.
It certainly seems to be a distinctive part of the traveller ethos.

CDfm

There also were non Romany Traveller's in England , Scotland & Wales too.

Maslow's hierarchy of need that at its very basic you need shelter and food in Ireland with heat being next.

So what do we really know at the earliest points that they were recorded how they lived , where and what type of shelter there was.

slowburner

CDfm wrote: »

There also were non Romany Traveller's in England , Scotland & Wales too.

Maslow's hierarchy of need that at its very basic you need shelter and food in Ireland with heat being next.

So what do we really know at the earliest points that they were recorded how they lived , where and what type of shelter there was.

If only we knew where the earliest points were.

dubhthach

With regards to Creaghts I found the following reference to a academic paper:

NOMADRY IN MEDIEVAL IRELAND: THE ORIGINS OF THE CREAGHT OR CAORAIGHEACHT

KATHARINE SIMMS

ABSTRACT. The Irish word caoraigheacht, Hiberno-English `creaght', signified a herd of miscellaneous livestock with its attendants, grazing or passing through other people's lands, with or without the landowner's permission. The term has not been noted as occurring earlier than the late fourteenth century, and from this period onwards the leaders of such herds could be members of either the Irish or the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. A creaght could be formed by the settled population of a district temporarily displaced in time of war, moving as a train of refugees, or aggressive migrants, under the leadership of their own chief. There were also certain classes within society- landless nobles, wandering poets or mercenary soldiers-who were accustomed to migrate from one landlord to another, with their band of followers and livestock. It is suggested that an increase in this class of landless noblemen and the warfare associated with the Tudor reconquest combined with an existing pattern of transhumance to bring about the situation in 1610 where society in mid-Ulster was perceived as being organised in creaghts or `herds' rather than into villages.

KEYWORDS: society (late medieval), aristocracy, pastoralism, nomadry, migration, transhumance, booleying, trespass, Irish law, creaght, caoraoigheacht, imirce.

Katharine Simms, Department of Medieval History, 3143 Arts Building, Trinity College, IE-Dublin 2

6178 words Peritia 5 (1986) 379-91 Cork and Galway ISSN O332-1592

CDfm

But didn't Sinéad ní Shuinéar dismiss a lot of that.

I suppose I am looking for a bit of nuts and bolts revisionism and it seems to be sparse.

dubhthach

CDfm wrote: »

But didn't Sinéad ní Shuinéar dismiss a lot of that.

I suppose I am looking for a bit of nuts and bolts revisionism and it seems to be sparse.

Hadn't even heard of Sinéad Ní Shuinéar from a quick google I see the following in History Ireland:
Apocrypha to canon: inventing Irish Traveller history*
http://www.historyireland.com/volumes/volume12/issue4/features/?id=114362

I then see the following letters taking task with that article.
http://www.historyireland.com/volumes/volume13/issue1/letters/?id=113782

Either way if I google: Sinéad ní Shuinéar Creaght
I don't really get any valid responses so I don't know if she has written about them. Here article above mentions Transhumance which survived in parts of west of Ireland until the late 19th century in the form of Boolying

An interesting report I've come across is:
North, K.E. et al. (2000) The origins of the Irish Travellers and the genetic structure of Ireland. Annals of Human Biology, 27(5): 453-465.
http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/030144600419297?journalCode=ahb

Unfortunatley it's behind a paywall. Though I do find a forum post containing it's contents here:
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7929

5. Conclusion

The turbulent history of Ireland, with its waves of invasions and immigrations, offers an unique opportunity to examine population structure in relation to biological variation and population history. In this study, three main conclusions can be made. First, these analyses support Crawford's (1975) hypotheses concerning the Irish origins and genetic affinity of the Travellers. Judging from the .R-matrix analyses, the Travellers are undoubtedly of Irish ancestry, due to their proximity to the centroid. Furthermore, the Travellers clustered with several heterogeneous counties in Ireland, including Wexford and Westmeath. Therefore, these data support that the origin of the Travellers was not a sudden event; rather a gradual formation of populations. Indeed, the Travellers probably originated with craftsmen and artisans forced to leave their monasteries (Crawford 1975). Later, their population grew as they were joined by various Irish groups that were forced to leave their homes because of various calamities and political upheavals (i.e. the potato famine and the repression of British occupation) (Crawford 1975). However, the timing of the Traveller origin is not certain and may have predated the historical period (e.g. Ni Shuinear 1996).

Second, our analyses suggest that at the level of the country, the major influence on population structure was population history. Although our analyses suggest that Ireland is genetically homogeneous, several distinct subpopulations were identified that may have been formed because of historical gene flow. These findings further confirm that the hierarchical level of analysis has an important impact on the results of studies of the population structure of Ireland (Relethford et al. 1997, North et al. 1999). Indeed, recent research by North and colleagues identified different spatial patterns of biological variation, depending on the level of analysis (North et al.)

Third, the .R-matrix analyses support Relethford and Crawford's (1995) hypothesis concerning the distinctiveness of the midland counties due to Viking influence. In this analysis, the midland counties clustered with Norway.

sensibleken

paky wrote: »

In Colm Lennon's book 16th Century Ireland it says that Irish people lived a semi nomadic lifestyle during that period.
Taking this into account, it seems to be the case that the travellers don't have a specific origin. From what i gather, the travellers provided a social role in ireland up until the end of the 19th century and early 20th century. This role consisted of trading with rural communites mainly in the west of ireland and operating in metal work. It seems like the travelling communitys role in irish society became obsolete as society modernised. This effected the travelling community by isolating them from the rest of society.
In the programme blood of the travellers, an old lady was narrating her youth when she said that her children use to socialise with settled children, and farmers and travellers would be friendly to one another, and this she said was around the 1930s.
SO my theory is is that travellers are not in anyway distinct from Irish people and their only claim to any identity is the fact that they live a nomadic lifestyle which was once a practice of most Irish people at one time. In modern times, the fact that large elements of the travelling community engage in criminal activity is the fact that their community failed to adapt to a modern lifestyle where they could contribute positively to society. And this is the reason the travelling community is viewed as a separate entity

urgh, I was with you until the last paragraph. Im so sick of this, my girfriend is a traveller and everyone of her family contribute positively to society. her mother and sisters are nurses and othesr work on camp sites in the summer and work abroad in winter. they just have to keep the fact that they are travellers silent because of the daily generalised shíte people come out with. yeah theres criminality, as there is in the limerick community, the working class community.

CDfm

I think Sinéad ní Shuinéar original point in 2004 is that there is a lot of work to be done in the area and a real absence of material.

there has not been anything like a project for a county or whatever.

lots of theories