Migrants and Cultural Memory Migrants and Cultural Memory: The Representation of Difference Edited by Mícheál Ó hAodha Migrants and Cultural Memory: The Representation of Difference, Edited by Mícheál Ó hAodha This book first published 2009 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2009 by Mícheál Ó hAodha and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-1114-9, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-1114-9 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ............................................................................................... vii Mícheál Ó hAodha Chapter One................................................................................................. 1 Irish Travellers and “Country People”: Folk Narrative and the Construction of Social Identity Fionnuala Carson Williams Chapter Two.............................................................................................. 19 Extracts from “The Turn of the Hand”: A Memoir from the Irish Margins Mary Warde Chapter Three............................................................................................ 27 An Brief Exploration of Shelta and some of it’s Historical Functions Zara Power Chapter Four.............................................................................................. 37 Irish-American Travellers: Some Historical Representations Yann Ryan Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 47 Polish Gypsies: Aspects of the Roma Socio-Cultural Experience Marek Isztok and Joanna Talewicz-Kwiatkowska Chapter Six................................................................................................ 57 Irish Travellers and the Legacy of the Stereotype: Some Considerations Tony Ryan Chapter Seven............................................................................................ 67 The Music of the Rainey’s Rediscovered: A Priceless Aspect of Irish Culture David Ryan vi Table of Contents Chapter Eight............................................................................................. 75 Modernity, Diversity and the Question of a Shared Past: Two Irish Traveller Women Share Their Thoughts Maria Rieder Chapter Nine.............................................................................................. 85 Public Policy and Irish Travellers: Exclusionary Policies and Approaches Eleanor Carey Chapter Ten ............................................................................................... 97 Some Notes on Johnny Doran: The Irish Traveller and Uilleann Piper Extraordinaire David Tuohy and Mícheál Ó hAodha Contributors............................................................................................. 109 INTRODUCTION This volume is an exploration of the image that is the Traveller/Gypsy, the nomad, the migrant and the outsider/“Other” within the frame of articulation that is European representational culture. It is another small addition to the burgeoning subject areas that are Migration/Diaspora Studies and Irish Studies. The global flows of mass-migration and mass- media dissemination that are a commonplace today have overcome centuries-old physical divides as evidenced between diverse peoples and cultural groups. They have also created innovative spaces for the exploration of issues relating to cross-cultural and identity representation. Academics, cultural analysts, writers and artists all increasingly work in transnational and transcultural spaces, spaces which Arjun Appadurai (2001)has referred to as "imagined worlds" (2001, 329). These new creative spaces are environments where alliances and allegiances coalesce, dissolve, and coalesce again as relating to particular ideas and images which are continuously re-staged across, rather than within, stable nationalist cultural narratives. Postcolonial diasporas have served to both intensify and accelerate this undermining and reconfiguring of (hitherto) dominant cultural narratives. Nowhere is this disruption of narrative more in evidence than in the case of diaspora peoples and cultural groups such as Travellers, Roma (Gypsies) and other migrant groups. As outlined in the essays that comprise this book the diverse and often-reductionist representations of such “outsider” groups disrupt the narratives which define dominant cultures and hybridize the discourse. In the process they serve to remind us that cultural identities are always fluid and heterogeneous and may disrupt such “traditional” concepts as the “nation” or what we may define as “home” or “abroad”. Volumes such as the following hope to provide a forum for an enhanced dialogue between the old and the new, the local and the foreign, the indigene and the migrant. Through such a dialogic process we can ensure that the voices “from the margin” can begin to be heard both inside and outside of the dominant discourse. —Dr. Mícheál Ó hAodha Department of History, University of Limerick, Ireland CHAPTER ONE IRISH TRAVELLERS AND “COUNTRY PEOPLE”: FOLK NARRATIVE AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SOCIAL IDENTITY FIONNUALA CARSON WILLIAMS The demographic makeup of Irish society has undergone recent rapid change in recent times. In a small island where, for centuries, only two languages were present to any extent, with English being predominant, there are now over fifty in everyday use. A distinct group, with its own ‘distinct language register’ and, indeed, culture has, however, been here all along and the newcomers have raised awareness of it.1 To quote from the booklet accompanying a recent touring exhibition in Northern Ireland: Today we are becoming more and more aware of the multi-cultural dimension within our society-a trend which is set to grow and develop. This exhibition encourages you to explore and appreciate the varied histories and experiences of our people and our times.2 The group, along with groups of recent arrival such as those from China, is one of those featured in the exhibition. The group is, and always has been, very much in the minority. In Northern Ireland there are only about one and half thousand of them in a total population of about 1.6m, while in the Republic of Ireland there are about 28,0003 in a population of about 4.2m.4 Thus, in the whole island, they make up about .5 percent of the total population of about 5.9m. Although such a small minority, it is probably reasonable to say that everyone in the majority group has an opinion about them, despite the fact that few would have any direct contact or know any of them on a personal basis; one of the two things on which the opinion is largely based is oral tradition so it would be important to try and see how that tradition is brought about.5 What has distinguished this group from the general population is the fact that they were economic nomads, travelling in family groups from one place to another, the equivalent of the 2 Chapter One Macheros in Spain. As with them, membership is by descent and they are largely landless in countries with large numbers of farmers. In Ireland, in oral tradition, there are insider and outsider names for both the minority and majority groups. The names now considered politically correct for the minority are those they use themselves-Travellers, or Travelling People- but it took until the very end of the last century for this to become so and, indeed these terms, as far as I can see, have not, as yet, made it into mainstream dictionaries, or even regional ones.6 On a popular level such people are still referred to as ‘gypsies,’ even though they are not Roma. Until about five years ago there were no Roma in Ireland, however, Roma from eastern Europe now live here. In a recent conversation I heard a middle aged woman explaining Irish Travellers to her aunt by saying ‘They’re our gypsies’.7 In turn, Travellers call non-Travellers ‘country folk,’ ‘country people' and also ‘Gorgios,’ a word borrowed Romany, which can be pejorative.8 Travellers seldom recount origin legends about themselves and this is in great contrast to the general population, many of whom have definite beliefs as to the origin of Travellers. The commonest belief is that Travellers became landless because of the great famine period in the late 1840s (1847-49). In my questionnaire in preparation for this paper which was designed to be answered by non-Travellers I included the question ‘Where and when do you think Travellers originated? And here are the responses: The Famine caused people to take to the road and stop relying on the land. and I always heard they originated in the West of Ireland and went ‘on the road’ at the time of the famine. A further response also suggested that Travellers were formerly settled but that a catastrophic event had caused them to be dispossessed of their land: Dispossessed people at time of plantations,9 that is, in the seventeenth century.10 A similar group live in Scotland and a common belief about their origin is that they were people displaced at the time of the Massacre of Glencoe in 1692. It has been suggested that this belief tells more about the event than the group it is explaining. That such and such an event, for example, the famine,