"The Walking People" - resource novel, Irish Travelers; Migration, NY.

To visit Ireland is to see great poverty in various communities, encampments, but without the formal designation of Travelers to set them apart. How is an outsider to determine the background of the people there - indigenous-Irish-Norse/Irish; or the traditional tinker, Traveler. We did not see real Traveler wagons. Business thrives for the cushy rubber-tire, waterproof clip clops, however.

Tourist "Gypsy" Wagon, Ireland

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Tourists can rent these caricature wagons with the slow horse plodding from town to town and back again- my aunt caught pneumonia that way some years ago, we think - but that must get dull. Does the isolationist slow ride do any justice to the lives that were lived in wagons, and in community.

The Irish and Scottish nomadic groups do not refer to themselves as "Gypsies." The groupings are distinct, see overview of the Rom, the Romnichel and Hungarian-Slavic nomadic groups, traditionally thought of as "Gypsies," and then the Irish and Scottish "Travelers." See The Gypsy Lore Society at ://www.gypsyloresociety.org/cultureintro.html/.

For a glimpse into the lives of the Irish Travelers, read the novel, "The Walking People," by Mary Beth Keane, see review by Jonathan Yardley May 10, 2009, at ://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/08/AR2009050801409.html/

The book does not hold interest intensely once the characters leave Ireland; but there find a cultural retrospective, the story of an Irish mid-20th Century tinker boy, a member of the Travelers. The "tinker boy" and two Catholic farm girls cross paths, have ups and downs, and migrate, with families' knowledge, and the girls' mother's approval, all together to New York. They settle in their various ways, and he becomes part of the great digs beneath Manhattan to New Jersey for water tunnels and the like, below the subways. Electricity had not yet come to the west country areas, in the 1950's. Most interesting for us was the Irish part, and the first few years in New York. No spoilers to be given here.

Then hear and see the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem (complete with Irish Aran sweaters that are not Traveler in origin, see ://clanarans.com/ca/catalog/) sing, "The Whistling Gypsy Rover" at ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ0kAZJy_3o&feature=related/. Here are the lyrics: ://www.thebards.net/music/lyrics/Gypsy_Rover.shtml/. This next version is too polished. Go if you must to://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_egTUhbfD0/.

Ah, the ideal - then the reality. As in looking at any lifestyle, any set of issues, any people.