A DIFFERENT KIND OF NOMADISM
Despite their outward similarities to Gypsy groups, Travellers are native to Ireland and one of several indigenous nomadic groups in Europe.1 They have traveled Ireland’s roads for centuries, at first on foot, then in horse-drawn carts and wagons, and still later in trucks and trailers. Their nomadism, in contrast to the movements of hunter-gatherers and pastoralists, is based not on animal migrations and seasonality but on the sedentary population’s need for certain services and products. Consequently, they and similar groups are sometimes classified as “service” or “commercial nomads.” In the recent past, Irish Travellers were primarily tinsmiths, chimney sweeps, peddlers, horse dealers, and agricultural labors. By the late 1950s, as these rural-based occupations became increasingly obsolete, they began migrating into urban areas in search of new ways to make a living.2 Most women initially walked from door to door in the suburbs, asking for handouts, in an adaptation of rural peddling, while men and boys scoured the city for scrap metal and other recyclables. Both of these activities—as well as Travellers’ “illegal” and unsightly camps and urban householders’ concerns about safety, property values, and other issues—resulted in a public outcry. No longer part of the fabric of Irish life as they had been in the countryside, Travellers were increasingly viewed as social parasites living “off the backs” of the settled community.
SERENDIPITY AND FIRST FIELDWORK
We first became aware of Travellers, or “tinkers” as many Irish in the 1970s called them, while still in graduate school. In 1970, I participated in a summer anthropology field school in Ireland and lived in a small fishing and farming community in county Kerry. On the drive there, I saw Travellers camped on the roadside and wondered who they were, but it was George who had the first opportunity to get to know them. While waiting in Dublin for my program to end, he found work collecting demographic information for a biological anthropologist studying Traveller genetics. He met several families then and took their photographs, sending copies back to them that fall. Little did we know how significant this would later prove.
Both intrigued by Travellers, we purchased a copy of The Report of the Commission on Itinerancy (1963) before leaving the country. It laid out the findings of the government commission that had been charged with investigating the “itinerant problem.” The report documented not only the problems that the influx of Travellers was creating in urban areas but also the harsh conditions most families lived under—their poverty, illiteracy, lack of the most basic amenities, poor health, and shortened life spans. It recommended the construction of official “sites” where families could legally park their wagons and trailers and have electricity, water, toilets, and better access to health care and schools. Although the report paid some attention to preserving Travellers’ nomadic life, the ultimate goal was clearly integration; the logo of what soon developed into a national Itinerant Settlement Movement was a curving road leading to a house.
Back in graduate school that fall, George showed Charles Erasmus, a faculty member and his advisor at UCSB, some of his Traveller photographs. Erasmus was intrigued and surprised to learn that no cultural anthropologist had ever studied them.3 Soon, he was urging us both to abandon our plans of going to Mexico for our doctoral research and to seek funding for Ireland instead. His enthusiasm was infectious. The dream of most anthropologists at the time, although rarely achievable, was to find a culture that had not been studied.
We immersed ourselves in the social-science literature—conducting what is commonly called a “lit review”—on Ireland and on similar nomadic groups in other parts of the world in order to begin formulating our research “problems.” I decided to explore how Travellers, who are so fundamentally like other Irish people in that they are English-speaking, Roman Catholic, and indigenous to the country, had maintained a separate identity for generations. George wanted to examine their city-ward migration and adaptation to urban life. Convinced that these were the most significant issues to study and with modest research grants to support us, we returned to Ireland the following summer to begin our doctoral fieldwork. Dublin, with the largest and a rapidly growing population of Travellers, seemed the best place to go.
Figure 2-1. Sharon and George Gmelch in Santa Barbara, California, just before leaving for fieldwork, 1971.
Our Aer Lingus flight landed on July 19, and our fieldwork began the same day during the cab ride into the city when George asked the driver about Travellers. “The government is trying to house them,” he told us, “but they don’t want to be locked up.” In what later proved to be a common stereotype, he added, “One family got a house, but they let the horses inside and cut the banisters up for firewood.” He claimed to have seen the horse looking out their second-story window.
After checking into a bed-and-breakfast and catching a few hours’ sleep, we made a list of things we needed to do: rent a flat, buy a used car, obtain a year’s visa, and contact local officials about our research. Eager to get under way, George phoned Eithne Russell, a social worker he’d met the previous summer. She invited us to attend a Traveller wedding the next day, assuring us that the family wouldn’t mind. She thought they’d be delighted to have some Americans there. As it turned out, George had met members of the family the previous summer and had sent them photographs, so we were welcome.
The ceremony to sanctify the “match” or arranged marriage of Jim Connors and Mags Maughan took place at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Churchtown, a Dublin suburb. We arrived expecting a large gregarious crowd, but only a couple dozen people were there, and an air of detachment seemed to pervade the gathering. Most of the men stood outside the church, while the bride’s father and female relatives waited uncomfortably on the pews inside. When the fifteen-year-old bride finally appeared, she seemed shy and looked somewhat woebegone in her wrinkled wedding dress. The groom’s expression was difficult to decipher. When the priest took them by their elbows and jockeyed them into position in front of the altar, instructing them on what to say and when to say it in what seemed to be an unnecessarily loud and impatient tone, I couldn’t help but feel embarrassed on their behalf. A handful of neighborhood children drifted in during the ceremony and stood at the back, gawking at the spectacle before them. Then suddenly, it was over, the customary Mass omitted. As the newlyweds emerged from the church, a young garda (police officer) leaned out his patrol-car window and called Jim over, advising him to “start out right” and be “well-behaved.” As Eithne explained later, petty larceny was becoming a growing problem among Travellers in the city, and Jim was out of jail on bail for the ceremony.
IDENTIFYING A COMMUNITY AND SETTLING IN
Within the week we had purchased a used VW Beetle, leased a small “bedsitter” (studio apartment), and begun visiting Traveller camps around the city. One of the first issues we faced as fledgling anthropologists was delineating the boundaries of the population we hoped to study. As graduate students participating in rural field schools, we had each lived in a small village. Dublin, in contrast, was a large city with 1,500 Travellers scattered around in at least 50 camps. Some were roadside encampments of two or three families; others were groupings of up to a dozen families who squatted on undeveloped land or amid the rubble of derelict building sites in the city center. The government had also established three official Traveller sites for up to forty families. As lone researchers planning to do in-depth participant-observation research, we needed to identify a community where we could live with Travellers.