In
this anthropologically based collection of academic
studies, Irish Travellers: Culture & Ethnicity,
I found, in my long-desired if elusive (at least
from me) secondhand copy, valuable information about
'indigenous commercial nomads' (aka 'tinkers' as
formerly known by many; emphatically not synonymous
with gypsies/Roma) via not reticent first-hand accounts
but wider panoramas within to explore nagging questions;
this was the first substantial anthology that attempts
to analyze sombre truth beneath panoplied hearsay.
Edited by May McCann, Séamás Ó
Síocháin, and Joseph Ruane (QUB: Institute
of Irish Studies, 1994), this gathers proceedings
from a 1991 conference. While over a decade old,
the comparative rarity of this book and the lack
of its wider knowledge among many concerned with
minority and marginalised issues within both an
Irish and European context makes any attention to
its contents still worthwhile within a nation changing
even more rapidly than when this publication originally
appeared.
Sinéad ní Shuinéar (who wrote
three Traveller entries in the 2004 Encyclopedia
of Ireland, gen. ed. Brian Lalor) tackles past,
competing, origin myths, demolishes them all, then
suggests three intriguing alternatives. Thomas Acton
denies any gypsy origin for Irish (and Scottish)
Travellers, but also goes further to deny continuity
to an earlier ethnically distinctive population
for English or Welsh 'romanies' either, after what
he argues was a extermination of any Indian-derived
people from early medieval times whom he believes
were killed off 1520-1600. Donald Kenrick places
Travellers within the context of other 'internally'
nomadic commercial and trading groups who have evolved
throughout early modern Europe. Judith Okely, whose
theories are discussed by many others in this volume,
dismisses much of the purportedly exotic origins
of nomadic groups in the British Isles as playing
into stereotypes foisted upon, also willingly manipulated,
by nomads taking on an often-donned disguise of
foreignness. (For more on current study of Roma
and Europe's nomads: http://www.gypsyloresociety.org
) The authors so far mentioned do agree, joined
by Patricia McCarthy later in the collection, that
the 'culture of poverty' thesis advanced in the
70s by Sharon & George Gmelch in their respective
and collective work (still in print and taught in
anthropology courses) cannot account for the true
economic and continuously fluid culture--yet one
having in common with Romany groups similar taboos
and mores--shared by Travellers.
Academics critique the previous scholarly approaches.
Dympna McLoughlin's rejection of ní Shuinéar's
clever and fresh arguments failed to convince me,
and could have been much better articulated, but
the gist of McLoughlin's objection is that Travellers
should not seek to claim a distinct identity. She
sees this as somehow strengthening a conservative
agenda rather than a collective unity that would
join Traveller activism with that of other oppressed
entities within Ireland suffering 'internal colonialism.'
Community worker Paul Noonan provides an anti-racist
account for Travellers' difficulties from the North--he
focuses largely on policy issues.
Other voices from Travellers join: John O'Connell
and Martin Collins agree with McCarthy who now rejects
the 'culture of poverty' Gmelch thesis. In closing,
Máirín Kenny reminds the audience
that even if Travellers reside in an area, there
still remains a fundamental distinction between
settled (she prefers 'sedentary; others use the
former term) people and Travellers. The latter always
carry within them a distinctive worldview. As settled
folks, on holiday, still feel as if they will soon
return home to customary patterns of a fixed place
and routine, so Travellers carry an idea of not
'to go' but 'to go on'--a major difference,
as Travellers forever, so argues more than one voice
in this anthology, cherish the thought as well as
the action of nomadism.
Alice
Binchy and Dónall P. Ó Baoill study
linguistic patterns to arrive at divergent answers
to the meaning behind Gammon/Cant/Shelta, the supposedly
"secret" language of Travellers. (Cant
is more diffused, Gammon clusters in southeast Ireland;
Shelta is a term still in vogue among 'gypsiologists,'
originating in 1882.) Binchy holds that this coded
language is used to cement intimate and personal
communication between Travellers, while distancing
them from the actions and identities of settled
people. She accepts that a few of its words may
stem from Middle Irish, thus implying a tenuous
continuity with a group far predating (as opposed
to the notion the Gmelches popularised) any Famine-era
conditions that would have led to the rise of a
numerically larger wandering array of the destitute
that would have swamped any earlier ethnically separate
band of wandering tradespeople. Ó Baoill
rejects any notion of Cant/Gammon/Shelta as distinctive,
finding that it merely serves as a linguistic 'register'
that follows English grammar and word order but
merely inserts fossilised and specialised vocabulary
into a pattern from the dominant language in Ireland.
He finds that what has been falsely asserted as
a language distinct from English is in danger of
extinction, and fails to grow or adapt neologisms
among the younger generations.
What all the essays have in common is a recognition
that the habitual mindset within which Travellers
survive makes them an identifiably distinct community
within Ireland, not on racial grounds or genetic
differences, but by choice. This fostered longing
to leave behind 'country people' for the road, ironically,
as Kenny notes, has been used against Travellers.
Marginalised although useful for and used by the
'dominant sedentary society,' these nomads have
been forced by the settled and the powerful to not
settle temporarily where formerly the law and custom
had allowed seasonal camps as the Travellers followed
their their trade and their wont. Now, as Kenny
finds, they are oppressed and forced to wander.
Kenny extends this into examining, albeit briefly,
the prejudice against nomadism within the majority
culture that long has presented urbanism and domestication
as an improvement on herding and roaming.
While Kenny diminishes the question of origins debated
by some of the academics as racially biased and
ignoring the present difficulties of the Travellers
in pursuit of a will-o'-the-wisp, I counter that
among any group that calls itself distinct, and
therefore its own ethnos apart from other societal
factions, the pursuit of such questions may not
reveal ready answers, especially among people so
rooted in the oral and evanescent rather than the
literate and documented. Still, as a descendant
of Irish Travellers--from whom my continuity has
been broken, for nobody who is half-Traveller is
regarded as one unless they choose to be, and this
ethnic link can be severed by a half-Traveller's
choice so that subsequent generations (such as me)
cannot return to their snipped origins and be accepted
as Travellers--such attention to where today's Travellers
might have come from, as well as the pressing needs
of where they are arriving at now in practical terms
of schooling, health care, and remunerative work,
make for a fascinating, if rather dry and theoretical
at times given the volume's provenance, account.
Such a collection has long been needed by any asking
for what truths lie behind so much of the myth and
supposition that the term and the person of the
Traveller evoke for so many settled people, Irish
or otherwise.
******
Ó
Baoill with John M. Kirk edited an expanded collection
originating from a second conference exploring in
2000, at QUB, Travellers and their Language
(Cló Ollscoil na Banríona, 2002: see
http://www.bslcp.com
for unfortunately pricey copies, given the state
of academic publishing), a necessary follow-up to
the 1994 conversation initiated, also including
Binchy and ní Shuinéar among its eight
academic papers as well as contributions from six
Travellers. While the collection investigates both
Ireland and Scotland, I will limit my review comments
to the Irish material. Surprisingly readable for
non-specialists outside anthropology, linguistics,
and 'Gypsyology', this collection concentrates upon
whether, as Binchy and Ó Baoill earlier differed,
Cant/Gammon (the two are differentiated by 'an anonymous
Traveller' who spoke, but she refuses to give concrete
evidence why this is so-a bit more about this later)
are a separate language or a 'register'of lexical
terms inserted into English sentences and word order.
This
contention-lexicon or 'register'?-- may appear arcane
to readers, yet it symbolises and reifies a debate
fundamental to both anthologies. Are Travellers
a distinctive ethnicity with a distinctive language,
or merely a sub-culture of itinerants who developed
a coded array of a few hundred words that they devised
to keep out of a stranger's earshot particularly
intimate concerns (from a 'country person' most
usually, but perhaps also to protect their conversation
from a suspect Traveller from another group)? The
scholars and speakers of Cant/Gammon in the second
volume seem to agree that Travellers comprise a
cohesive entity among whom this spoken secrecy evolves
not from deceit, but from intimacy, much as a minority
in many threatened situations concocts an argot
to cloak their messages from authorities or rivals.
Ó Baoill and Kirk in their introduction address
this need for protecting Cant/Gammon, even from
academic publication. The fear that police will
misuse the findings meant that certain words were
not printed, only glossed with their English equivalent
or excluded with an 'X'. While the Traveller-descended
part of me sympathises with this ambiguity, the
academic part of me trained then resists such obfuscation,
however well-intended. Certainly, if those in the
'buffer' world cannot study this code, then it is
up to the Travellers themselves to formulate the
sophisticated linguistic and cultural analyses with
which to confront the persistent questions about
its origins, function, survival, and future that
all involved in this conference and volume concur
is threatened by the dominant Anglophone society.
One area, for instance, receives only a footnote,
but I claim that it contains a valuable field of
comparison and contrast. The analogy with the state
of Irish among its native-born speakers makes for
an excellent and timely intersection with Cant/Gammon
studies, since creolisation appears in both under
the unrelenting pressure among younger users who,
under the constant switching between English and
the second language, begin to make the task easier
by adopting more English into the remaining patterns
and vocabulary of the gradually less-spoken method
of intimate communication, itself eroded by media,
integration, and assimilation. Máirín
Nic Eoin's use of post-colonial literary criticism
within an Irish-language context, Trén
bhFearann Breac ( Dublin:
Cois Life, 2005), is a new major work bringing
sustained and sophisticated discourse into a previously
neglected academic and cultural field. Diarmait
Mac Giolla Chríost in The Irish Language
in Ireland (Routledge, 2005; I have reviewed
this; a condensed version will appear in a future
issue of The Blanket.) carries substantial
sociological theories and public policy recommendations
into his survey so as not to let his work languish
on a library shelf, but to foment lasting change
among agencies and individuals charged with using
and fostering Irish today. It is to be hoped that
the two conference proceedings will spark further
research similarly for Cant/Gammon. Both Irish and
Shelta, no matter how defined, deserve intensive
analysis.
As
with Irish-speakers, Travellers too accept that
their culture remains only as vibrant as their language.
Its declining fluency among the younger cohort means
that both academic study and practical application
of Cant/Gammon race against an Anglo-American (for
it also has endured, cut off from the homeland post-Famine,
within Travellers largely in Southern and Midwestern
states) clock. Kirk and Ó Baoill close their
preface by urging Travellers to recognise the need
for scholarship on their language as well as cooperation
between speakers and students of Cant/Gammon. Yet
overcoming ingrained suspicions on the part of Travellers
towards outside manipulation of their treasured
and protected form of communication mean that even
for scholars, access will not soon come easily or
confidently given by its potential interpreters.
Fears
of its manipulation and appropriation, as voiced
by one Traveller in this book, emerge in abuse hurled
in Cant/Gammon at women in and visiting prison,
for example, a chilling use of the language against
its speakers by guards and police. Such situations
only worsen the fears that Travellers possess about
appropriation of Cant/Gammon by their oppressors.
Delicacy, as shown in the excisions in this anthology,
has been chosen as a short-term reaction, but in
the longer run, progress cannot continue without
cooperation of Travellers. The net is noted wryly
as a means by which Dr Binchy's own rarified and
rarely reproduced research was, by one diligent
American, extracted of its vocabulary on Cant/Gammon
and the matching lexicons posted on-line. Binchy
synthesises her earlier work, solidified by her
MA thesis and Oxford dissertation, into reiterating
that--what she refers to by the older term used
by early investigators as Shelta-this code builds
a barrier between 'us' and 'them'. Not out of contempt
or hostility, but out of pride and safety.
With Binchy's survey, its use as a small array of
largely trading terms may not qualify it among linguists
as a language, but she counters that it need not
be complicated, and that it sufficed in the commercial
contexts for which it emerged, mixing Irish and
English words into patterns making terms unrecognisable
to outsiders. Unlike its Scottish variety, the Irish
version did not borrow from Romany variants popular
among British 'gypsies' who overlapped in their
trade and contact with Travellers for many centuries;
in Ireland, it is debatable but there appears to
have been no substantial entry of Roma until very
recently, centuries after Shelta had been already
constructed.
I
wish ní Shuinéar had expanded her
1994 considerations into the origins of Cant/Gammon.
(See, however, Apocrypha
to Canon: Inventing Irish Traveller History,
expanding her theories about Traveller origins.)
Instead, her paper examines earlier 19-20c scholarship
on the language to find it all too wanting. Unfortunately,
no other sources can substitute for what she regards
as persistently misguided attempts to keep Travellers
apart from the more 'orientalised' and 'exotic'
Welsh and English 'gypsies'. Her comparisons of
modern Dubliners' unknowing English employment of
spoken strata originating in Irish make for intriguing
analogies; she stresses how also Traveller speakers
can not be necessarily conscious of how what they
speak is rooted in far older forms of speech. She
surmises that Travellers use what is a different
form completely of Hiberno-English--akin to how
Black English among African Americans denotes its
speakers no matter where in the country they are
raised; such a spoken substrate as Cant/Gammon still
awaits serious analysis.
A much-needed perspective from within the Irish
language comes from Micháel Ó hAodha.
He reminds the audience that they need not be embarrassed
about the predominance of 'back-formation' as a
disguising technique. This rather "reflects
the richness and antiquity of Shelta'. (57) Although,
as with ní Shuinéar's essay, I would
prefer to have read more about these origins--for
any ethnic group depends upon its past orientation
towards origin myths (and fact) as well as a direction
towards community continuity into the future-still,
his remarks about the previously higher literacy
among such Travellers as the Wards (whose Irish
surname means mac an bháird = son
of the poet/bard) and the prevalence of 'the lettered
class' of doctors and healers attributed to predecessors
of today's Travellers urge any investigator into
the community to remember that current levels of
schooling have not always been those among the predecessors
of their past. His detection of renewed pride among
younger Travellers and their wish that Cant/Gammon
not be kept from them as they perpetuate their heritage
make also heartening conclusions for his essay.
Marian
Browne's paper compares the language to Hiberno-English.
While she does not dismiss the speculation that
Cant/Gammon may have emerged from Irish-language
grammatical patterns, she concurs that in its present
form, it blends a non-English lexicon with Hiberno-English
syntax. Ricca Edmondson and Níall Ó
Murchadha relate how American, Irish, and Scottish
Cant has been attempted to be reconstructed from
the limited fieldwork undertaken, with the complicated
help (and not mere hindrance as prejudice would
assert) of clergy, teachers, and police, some of
whom guided the investigators towards contacts scattered
over great distances, defying conventional means
of communication as they linked together via technologically
sophisticated as well as timelessly simple methods.
They agree with Binchy that while Cant/Gammon may
have intentionally bamboozled outsiders, it also
cemented bonds between its users. Ellen McDonagh,
Jimmy Power, and an anonymous Traveller provide
first-hand reactions to the scholarship presented
at the conference. Richard
J Waters adds from an American Traveller viewpoint
his own critique of earlier research and a reminder
from within the community to open up within reason
the treasure of Cant/Gammon for further research
and preservation. He points intriguingly back to
its ancient Indo-European etymological roots and
the early traders known to us as the Beaker Folk,
while at the same time urging the restoration and
perpetuation of these remnants of communication
that may go back not centuries but millennia. Waters'
own independent scholarship, in my opinion, is precisely
what editors Kirk and Ó Baoill urge: from
within as well as beyond Travellers own experiences,
strengthened by academic foundations, a truer knowledge
of Cant/Gammon awaits.
Mary
Burke delves into literary representations of Cant/Gammon,
ranging from Victorian scholars (dovetailing with
ní Shuinéar's essay) into 20c work
from writer Juanita Casey (of English Romany/Irish
Traveller parentage), Bryan MacMahon's undercover
assumption of posing as a Traveller through his
own disguise, Maurice Walsh's romanticised depictions,
and the Tuam band The Saw Doctors' own incorporation
of Traveller terms (even the name of their group)
into their lyrics. Tuam playwright Tom Murphy and
especially the Carlow-born 'hybrid' (who I might
add labels himself in an author's note as 'a third-generation
Gypsy') John F McDonald's novel Tribe reveal
changing adaptations by Travellers as their formerly
protected linguistic and communal spaces have become
opened at least in part to the 'country people'.
Burke's notion of an 'alternative geography' (I
thought of Bruce Chatwin's popularisation in Songlines
of the aboriginal Australian strategies of tracing
connections across a landscape) for Travellers meshes
well with her challenge that Cant/Gammon represents
the refusal of this language to fall into binary
English-or-Gaelic comparisons, in its fluid and
musical existence that transcends and frustrates
the printed page.
Certainly,
as I have earlier addressed, inability of a reader
to enter fully into the bracketed, glossed, or absent
language of Cant/Gammon in this anthology due to
Traveller caution and pride presents a post-modern,
as well as subversive, predicament for any 'buffer'
wishing to colonise this contested realm for a safely
Anglophonic, hegemonically literate space. Notions
of space and time, without sounding romantic, differ
among competing languages and cultures. For 21c
Ireland, the dogged survival of Travellers and their
speech reminds us of the revolutionary nature of
those who resist and frustrate the dominant, the
powerful, and the rigid. Such a message resonates
with The Blanket's own project. I wish this
review article spurs readers towards awareness of
the crossover potential-without discounting innate
and impermeable barriers-for recognition of republican
and Traveller claims within long-contested Irish
cultural-political terrain.
