School: Melview, Longford (roll number 7518)

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1. Travelling Folk

   

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   The call of the road is so much on the bands of itennants [?] commonly called gipsies or tinkers that they never stay long in a district but are away to another. The gipsies are properly foreigners and should not be confused with the Irish tribes. The Irish tribes who travel from place to place are for the most part originated in the west of Ireland. The biggest bands being the McDonaghs and the Joyces who were intermarried with the Stokes and the Cauleys and others. The McDonaghs generally followed the trade of tinsmiths or tinkers. In fact all these bands are known as tinkers and because some of them have living caravans like the gipsies they are called gipsies. The tinkers camps as they are called when these people settle down along the road for days generally around the days of a fair in Longford or any other town are low tents in which they sleep. They cook their food outside with fires made from the sticks of hedges and turf if they can get them. They are generally all one clan in a tinkers camp, sometimes four generations being represented and then they have the "in-laws". While the men make tins, the women go from house to house selling them or begging tea, sugar, milk or money. They pay no rates, rents or taxes and usually squander in drink any money they

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   Topics

   1. agents (~1)
      1. people by social grouping
         1. travellers (~3,023)

   Language

   English

   Collector

   Séamus Mc Manus

   Gender

   Male

   Address

   Aghadegnan, Co. Longford