SRS
Selections from our collection have been issued on a double CD 'From Puck To Appleby' available from Musical Traditions Internet magazine, where the 30 odd pages of notes are freely accessible.
Full copies of our entire collection are housed at The National Sound Archive in The British Library, The Folklore Department in Dublin and The Irish Traditiona Music Archive, also in Dublin. The latter is intending to feature selection from the collection on their web-site in the near future. We are happy to supply copies of articles and scripts of talks on our work to anybody interested enough to request.
By the way; it is characteristic of the generosity of the Travellers we met that all the proceeds of the CDs we made should be donated to The Irish Traditional Music Archive.
"Sarcasm can drive readers away from otherwise useful information"
I make no apologies for the tone I adopted in my response to what I believe to be a racist attitude - the situation as far as Travellers are concerned, certainly here in Ireland, has gone far beyond polite debate as far as I'm concerned.
This is what I pm'd earlier to one of the contributors to this (somewhat disturbing) thread.
".....and not divide them into black, white, Asian, Native American, Catholic, Protestant, Traveller settled......
I understand your situation; try to understand mine - or rather, theirs; the Travellers.
The situation here regarding Travellers is heading gradually towards that of the Jews in pre-war Germany.
The "lucky" ones are being forced off the roads and into little boxes of houses, built specifically for them, surrounded by large walls to hide them from the view of us "normal people" - they are being ghettoised.
Those not so lucky, the vast majority of them, are denied a place to stay, running water, electricity, sanitation, education for their children, full access to health facilities, a regular job.... all the things we take for granted.
As a people, they are dying off; there will almost certainly be no Travellers on the road in ten - maybe twenty years time. The settled community will have "ethnically cleansed" them out of existance.
If they were the worst people in the world they would not deserve the treatment we give them as a matter of course.
But they are not the worst people in the world.
In the thirty years my wife and I worked with them, we found them to be kind, generous to a fault, highly knowledgeable, sensitive, and, considering the treatment that is meted out to them daily, the most tolerant people we have ever met.
An added, (purely selfish on our part) aspect of our association with them has been that they have retained the folk traditions, the songs, stories, music, lore, we believe to be so important and enjoyable, long after our settled communities have abandoned them. Luckily, often at great inconvenience and expense to themselves, they have been more than happy to share them and allow us to record them.
They desrve to be treated as human beings and not as 'suspect' Travellers - surely?"
Jim Carroll