'This book will be appreciated by visitors who want more historical background than ordinary series guidebooks supply...Highly recommended...' LIBRARY JOURNAL 'For independent, inquisitive travellers traversing the green roads of Ireland, there is no better guide than A TRAVELLER'S HISTORY OF IRELAND.' SMALL PRESS Constantly in the news, there are few countries where the background history is so vital to an understanding of its people and culture. A TRAVELLER'S HISTORY OF IRELAND not only offers the reader a chronological outline of the nation's development right up to the present day but also provides an invaluable introduction to this land of poets, saints, eloquent politicians, illustrious soldiers and inspiring rebels. Political, social and industrial history and economics are also well covered. The book includes a comprehensive description of modern Ireland, both North and South, and of its two separate Catholic Nationalist and Protestant Unionist traditions. There is a Historical Gazetteer cross referenced to the main text and particular attention is paid to the classic historical sites, which feature on any visitor's itinerary.

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.

This book contains historical accounts of the Irish American Travellers as seen through their eyes and the eyes of their ancestors. It is a glimpse into a people that have isolated themselves from conventional America. It uses facts and reality to discredit lies and propaganda. If you are ready for the truth, open your mind, and turn the page.

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.

"This book is intended as an aid to Irish historians on the use of traveller's accounts as source-material. It consists of a discursive introduction, annotations of over 200 accounts from the years 1635-1948, a select bibliography and indexes of travellers and places. The annotations consist of the usual bibliographical details, identification of the traveller, the purpose and period of his or her travel, the exact itinerary followed, his or her mode of transport, the traveller's observations, and persons encountered. Whereas those who have published on Irish travel writing in recent years have generally seen it as another literary genre suitable for development of concepts of literary scholarship (image, identity, influences, etc.). C. J. Woods sees travel narratives as an important primary source of information - on transport, landscape, the economy, society, religion etc. This guide is invaluable to Irish local historians as a means of identifying those accounts that refer to the dark places in which they are interested." --Book Jacket.

Margaret Mead Award finalist! Nan Donohoe was an Irish Travelling woman, one of Ireland’s indigenous gypsies or “tinkers.” Traditionally, they traveled the countryside making and repairing tinware, sweeping chimneys, selling small household wares, and doing odd-job work. Over time, they came to live on the roadside in trailers and in government-built camps. Told largely in her own voice, Nan’s saga begins in 1919 with her birth in a tent in the Irish Midlands; it follows her life in Ireland and England, in countryside and city slums, through adversity and adventure. Gmelch brings to her task not only the resources of anthropology, but the skill of a sensitive writer and a warmth that allows her to see Nan as a person, not a subject. What emerges is a human story, filled with cruelty and compassion, sorrow and humor, bad luck and good.

This amazing book is well-researched, with years of research of historical and archaeological detail, legends and folklore, and current information on earth energies for each site. Before the author's rediscoveries, most of the vast number of ancient sites were unknown or almost forgotten except by locals.

Helleiner's study documents anti-Traveller racism in Ireland and explores the ongoing realities of Traveller life as well as the production and reproduction of contemporary Traveller collective identity and culture.

This book addresses the culture, history, ethnicity, language and nomadism of the Irish Travellers, who may be compared to the Gypsies of other nations.

This edited volume offers an interdisciplinary perspective on the history of Irish Travellers. Scholars from anthropology, history, literary studies and socio-linguistics explore the methodological problems that arise when a marginalised minority is portrayed by an established and powerful majority population. Each chapter addresses how different sources illuminate settled and Traveller history alike. With new research and perspectives from a number of disciplines, Irish Travellers: Histories and Representations is a welcome consideration of a neglected aspect of Irish society; the relationship between Irish Travellers and the majority, settled population. Although Irish Travellers are a conspicuous minority in contemporary Irish society, their past existence is often ignored. The contributors to this volume demonstrate a range of sources and approaches that prove Travellers deserve a place in the narrative of Ireland. This book will appeal to scholars interested in majority-minority relations generally, and the example of Ireland in particular.