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Well I think you may find Irish "Travellers" different, uness they've become "civilised" in the past 50 years.. The name "travellers" was coined in the 1950's when the new Irish Government's belated sense of social responsibility arose, and they tried to get the kids into schools so that they might have a better start in life. Also to medical care. I think it was J.A. Costello's Government. I met Costello at a private hotel in Donegal, where he and his family were having a holiday, and I was playing in the Orchestra, and we had a few chats about it. He was incognito, and they actually refused him admission to the dining room one night because he wasn't in a dinner suit. I saw it, as we were playing dinner music. Around summier of 1952. I was only a kid, but an IRISH politician would talk to ANYBODY.
We always knew them as "Tinkers" ("travellers" was only a euphemism used by themselves only)and you had to lock up your chicken houses and be prepared for call after call to your door from very dirty women in shawls, holding a couple of kids, begging for a little food "for the childer". If you actually gave them some food, say, like bread and cheese, they could be seen to throw it away as they left the front door. I SAW it myself. What they were after was the "easy" thing, a little money instead of the trouble of going to prepare food.
This money went on BOOZE. There were certain places, a bulge off the roadside, a little crossroads, and other places where they ALWAYs camped, with tents and little caravans, an occasional old car, something like gypsy encampments, full of smell, dirt and worse. One was about 150 yards away around the corner from my late brother's upscale home in Templeogue, and the neighbourhood spent years trying to get rid of them, without success. They'd turn their ponies and goats loose to wander around the neighbourhood ruining the gardens etc. The police meant nothing to them.
The governments had failures for many years, they gave them council house, and they kept them full of rubbish, they kept coal and wood in the baths, etc and lived in the front or back garden. They would stink out a whole neighbourhood.
It took many years to civilize them.
We always knew them as "Tinkers" ("travellers" was only a euphemism used by themselves only)and you had to lock up your chicken houses and be prepared for call after call to your door from very dirty women in shawls, holding a couple of kids, begging for a little food "for the childer". If you actually gave them some food, say, like bread and cheese, they could be seen to throw it away as they left the front door. I SAW it myself. What they were after was the "easy" thing, a little money instead of the trouble of going to prepare food.
This money went on BOOZE. There were certain places, a bulge off the roadside, a little crossroads, and other places where they ALWAYs camped, with tents and little caravans, an occasional old car, something like gypsy encampments, full of smell, dirt and worse. One was about 150 yards away around the corner from my late brother's upscale home in Templeogue, and the neighbourhood spent years trying to get rid of them, without success. They'd turn their ponies and goats loose to wander around the neighbourhood ruining the gardens etc. The police meant nothing to them.
The governments had failures for many years, they gave them council house, and they kept them full of rubbish, they kept coal and wood in the baths, etc and lived in the front or back garden. They would stink out a whole neighbourhood.
It took many years to civilize them.
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