The Irish Tinkers
Title | The Irish Tinkers PDF eBook |
Author | George Gmelch |
Publisher | |
Pages | 236 |
Release | 1985 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN |
Irish Travellers
Title | Irish Travellers PDF eBook |
Author | Sharon Bohn Gmelch |
Publisher | Indiana University Press |
Pages | 221 |
Release | 2014-10-23 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0253014611 |
Anthropologists George and Sharon Gmelch have been studying the quasi-nomadic people known as Travellers since their fieldwork in the early 1970s, when they lived among Travellers and went on the road in their own horse-drawn wagon. In 2011 they returned to seek out families they had known decades before—shadowed by a film crew and taking with them hundreds of old photographs showing the Travellers' former way of life. Many of these images are included in this book, alongside more recent photos and compelling personal narratives that reveal how Traveller lives have changed now that they have left nomadism behind.
Irish Travellers, Tinkers No More
Title | Irish Travellers, Tinkers No More PDF eBook |
Author | Alen MacWeeney |
Publisher | |
Pages | 136 |
Release | 2007 |
Genre | History |
ISBN |
The slow passing of an itinerant culture in Ireland
The Travellers
Title | The Travellers PDF eBook |
Author | Birte Kaufmann |
Publisher | Kettler verlag |
Pages | 0 |
Release | 2016 |
Genre | Documentary photography |
ISBN | 9783862065813 |
- An objective exploration of an often-maligned community that exists on the fringes of societyIn Ireland, around 25,000 people still live in temporary settlements in the style of itinerant workers, far removed from the amenities of Western civilization. Moving from place to place in mobile homes without electricity or running water, the largest Catholic minority of the country are faced with many prejudices. Strangely out of step with 21st-century lifestyle, they stick to their seemingly outdated traditions while also trying to find a new identity that fits in with modern society. Even in the present day, this ambiguity continues to define life for the traveller community, whose livelihood depends on horse breeding and hunting and who keep their own language alive as part of their insular culture. In 2011, the photographer Birte Kaufmann cautiously began to make contact with the travelling community, earning their trust and on some occasions living with them. For her portrayal of this unknown world, she needed to be in close contact with the families in order to capture their particular character and to avoid the usual stereotypes. Without a doubt, Birte Kaufmann's combination of reportage and documentary photography hits the right note and offers impressive insights into the Irish travellers' extraordinary world.
Irish Tinkers
Title | Irish Tinkers PDF eBook |
Author | |
Publisher | |
Pages | 128 |
Release | 1976 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN |
Travellers and Their Language
Title | Travellers and Their Language PDF eBook |
Author | John M. Kirk |
Publisher | Queen's University of Belfast |
Pages | 212 |
Release | 2002 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN |
'Tinkers'
Title | 'Tinkers' PDF eBook |
Author | Mary Burke |
Publisher | OUP Oxford |
Pages | 344 |
Release | 2009-07-16 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 0191570613 |
The history of Irish Travellers is not analogous to that of the 'tinker', a Europe-wide underworld fantasy created by sixteenth-century British and continental Rogue Literature that came to be seen as an Irish character alone as English became dominant in Ireland. By the Revival, the tinker represented bohemian, pre-Celtic aboriginality, functioning as the cultural nationalist counter to the Victorian Gypsy mania. Long misunderstood as a portrayal of actual Travellers, J.M. Synge's influential The Tinker's Wedding was pivotal to this 'Irishing' of the tinker, even as it acknowledged that figure's cosmopolitan textual roots. Synge's empathetic depiction is closely examined, as are the many subsequent representations that looked to him as a model to subvert or emulate. In contrast to their Revival-era romanticization, post-independence writing portrayed tinkers as alien interlopers, while contemporaneous Unionists labelled them a contaminant from the hostile South. However, after Travellers politicized in the 1960s, more even-handed depictions heralded a querying of the 'tinker' fantasy that has shaped contemporary screen and literary representations of Travellers and has prompted Traveller writers to transubstantiate Otherness into the empowering rhetoric of ethnic difference. Though its Irish equivalent has oscillated between idealization and demonization, US racial history facilitates the cinematic figuring of the Irish-American Traveler as lovable 'white trash' rogue. This process is informed by the mythology of a population with whom Travelers are allied in the white American imagination, the Scots-Irish (Ulster-Scots). In short, the 'tinker' is much more central to Irish, Northern Irish and even Irish-American identity than is currently recognised.