School: Inis (B.) (roll number 15042)
- Location:
- Ennis, Co. Clare
- Teacher: Proinnsias Ó Fionnmhacháin
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0610, Page 042
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- XML School: Inis (B.)
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- XML “The People of the Road”
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- Scarcely a day passes by but some tramp or another comes to the door. The nickname of one of them is "Sweet Vale of Avoca". He earns his living by going around from house to house singing a song about the river Avoca. That is why they nicknamed him, "Sweet Vale of Avoca". He is a native or Roscommon. There are also other tramps namely Butt Mc Hugh, Paddy Hehir or as he is nicknamed, "Paddy fine day", a man called Paddy Savage, and many other tramps. These tramps earn their living by selling flowers and going around begging for food and alms.
There are other people called gipsies. These people are used to open air life, and sleep in tents and in caravans. These people earn their living by selling tarpaulin and making tables, chairs, baskets and artificial flowers. The way they make the artificial flowers is by buying coloured papers. They then get a piece of wire and wind it around the coloured paper and make it into the shape of flowers. They then make a stick of straw and put the flowers into it, and bring them around and sell them at one penny each. They have different coloured flowers. The red flowers are in honour of the Sacred Heart and the yellow ones in honour of(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Michael Heffernan
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Ennis, Co. Clare
