School: Cloonmagunnane (roll number 13114)
- Location:
- Cloonmagunnaun, Co. Roscommon
- Teacher: T. Rogers
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0238, Page 135
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: Cloonmagunnane
- XML Page 135
- XML “Travelling Folks”
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- (continued from previous page)135
The people call them gypsies. These have horses, vans and other vehicles and appear to be well -to-do. Many of them deal in horses and donkeys and are to be seen at every fair in the locality. They travel in companies and have comfortable looking vehicles in which they sleep.
Tin-smiths or tinkers are frequent visitors. These, too, deal in old horses, jennets and donkeys and are seen at every fair. The men make cans, saucepans, milk strainers, etc out of tin and if they can they sell them in the district. The tinkers are a hardy healthy tribe. They sleep in tents and their beds are on the ground. When they come into the district they cause much annoyance for they are continually going from house to house during the day looking for alms. The men do a good deal of hunting and each company has a few greyhounds and other dogs. Both men and women like intoxicating drinks and when they drink too deeply they sometimes quarrel among themselves and it not infrequently happens that the Civil Guards have to be called on to disperse them.
The travelling musician is now almost unknown, unheard of in the locality. He was always welcome and was never refused a copper or two.
A sixpenny piece is often called a "Tanner" and a shilling is sometimes called a "Bob". A penny or a halfpenny is called a "copper". Farthings, fourshilling pieces, four shilling pieces, fourpenny pieces are not in use now.
