The role of the Travellers contribution to our folk songs has raised its head recently - I thought maybe it was time to give it its own thread
This is an article based on a talk I gave in the 80s at a folklore conference in Sheffield in 1982 - if the mods feel it is too long, I'll happily cut it
Thanks
Jim Carroll

MICHAEL McCARTHY, SINGER AND BALLAD SELLERS Jim Carroll
In 1973, Pat Mackenzie, Denis Turner and I made contact with several of the large number of Irish Travellers that were to be found in and around the Greater London area. We started recording singers, having very little experience in this field and, in six weeks, had collected over a hundred songs and completed a list of potential informants that would keep us occupied for the next five years, if they were all to be followed up.
It became obvious to us that there was much more to be collected than songs and that we would have to evolve a method of work that would allow us to use the time we had available to the best advantage. Coincidentally, about the time we were reaching this conclusion, the London Borough Councils were putting into motion policies designed to clear their areas of Travellers. Almost overnight, it seemed, all the people we were in contact with had been evicted from their sites and scattered all around the outskirts of London, making it virtually impossible for us to continue our work with them.
We decided that the best way to proceed was to index the collection, take a look at the material and see if we could not arrive at a method of work; it was nearly eighteen months before we took it up again. We had reached the conclusion that the best method for us was to concentrate our attention on a small number of informants and record not only songs but as much information on travelling life and culture as possible. We were able to meet up once more with our original contacts and begin work again, but progress was slow as most of them were camped a fair distance outside London and, as we were only able to work at weekends or evenings, the time we could spend with them was very limited.
One evening, after a long period of doing very little recording, we were drinking in a pub to the west of London when one of the Travellers pointed out a man engaged (we thought) in conversation with several other men. We approached the group and found that in fact he was singing to them. We introduced ourselves and asked if he would be prepared to sing for us. He agreed and the following evening we began working with Mikeen McCarthy, work we have not yet completed after eight years.
Mikeen (Little Michael) McCarthy was born fifty years ago in Cahirsiveen, a small town on the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry in the south west of Ireland. His parents followed the traditional travelling trades: tin-smithing, horse dealing, hawking, chimney sweep¬ing and, like a number of travelling families, spent eight months of the year on the road and rented a house for the winter, thus enabling Mikeen and his four sisters to get a little education. In addition to these trades, Michael McCarthy, senior, spent some time abroad as a soldier in the First World War and as a miner and bare-fist prizefighter in South Wales. Both of Mikeen’s parents were singers, his father being in great demand as one, among Travellers and in the settled community in Kerry. His mother was an Ullagoner, one of the women who were called on to keen or lament at funerals.
Mikeen took up tin-smithing as his first trade but later became skilled as a caravan builder. Some of the beautiful barrel-topped vans that are now used to haul holidaymakers around the roads in the south west of Ireland were built by him.
During his youth, he worked with his mother at the fairs and markets selling ‘the ballads’, the song sheets that were still being sold in rural Ireland right into the fifties. These sheets, measuring about 12 inches by 5 inches, were printed on coloured paper and contained the words of one song. The trade was carried on almost exclusively by Travellers. The songs appearing on the sheets were by no means all traditional. Titles mentioned to us were ‘Little Grey Home in the West’, ‘Smiling Through’, ‘Home Sweet Home’, and ‘No Place Like Home’, as well as ‘Rocks of Bawn’, ‘Sailor’s Life’, ‘Betsy of Ballentown Brae’, and ‘Willie Reilly and his Colleen Bawn’.
Mikeen was able to describe to us in great detail how these ballads were printed and distributed. Although, as I have mentioned, he had received some education, his writing ability was somewhat limited; his mother is still unable to read and write. They would go into a town or village where a market was to take place and approach a local printer. The words of a selected song would be recited to the printer who would take them down and an order would be placed for the required number. In Kerry, where the McCarthys traded, the sheets were illustrated with a picture that related to the song: ‘A man’s song would have the picture of a man at the top, a woman’s would have a woman’s head’. This does not appear to have been the case throughout Ireland; in County Clare we have been told that the sheets contained the words only, with no illustration.
When they were printed they were taken around the fairs, usually to the bars, and sold at a penny each, though sometimes, towards the end of the day, they would be sold for less. A seller had to be able to supply tunes for the songs on sale; quite often a transaction depended on this. Mikeen described how, at a fair in Tralee, a customer was so anxious to learn a song that he pushed a pound note into Mikeen’s top pocket every time he sang the song through: ‘I went home with eleven pounds that time’.
Attitudes to ballad selling appeared to have differed among Travellers. Although it was carried out almost exclusively by them, by many it was regarded as no better than begging: ‘They thought it was a low trade, but I didn’t, I was glad to do it. I still would if I had the chance.’ Even Mikeen’s parents disagreed about it: ‘My mother thought it was okay, but my father didn’t like the idea of his songs going on them; if he found out there’d be trouble.’
The songs that were selected for the sheets would depend on where they were to be sold: ‘Some would sell well in one place and some in another... If you could get a song that nobody knew in that place, you had a winner.’ Quite often Mikeen would be asked if he had any of his father’s songs for sale. Such a request would be complied with the next time that place was visited.
The practice of ballad selling appears to have died out some time in the late fifties. One of the last songs to have appeared on a ballad was ‘The Pub with No Beer’. These ballad sheets, along with the song page in the weekly magazine, Ireland’s Own, have exerted a very strong influence, for good or ill, on the singing tradition in Ireland over the last fifty years. We have yet to meet an Irish traditional singer who has not learned songs from them.
We were interested to find that a song, entered in the Stationers’ Register in 1675, was still being sold on a ballad sheet right into the 1950s. Moreover, it is still popular among Irish Travellers today as in Example 1, which was recorded in late 1975.

Example 1 THE BLIND BEGGAR(Laws N27) Michael McCarthy Late 1975

Oh, there was a blind beggar, for a long time was blind,
He had one only daughter who was handsome and kind;
He had one only daughter, a fair maid was she,
And the name that she went by was bonny Bessie.

The first came to court her was a rich squire so grand,
He courted lovely Bessie then all the night long,
Saying, ‘My land, gold and silver, I will give to thee,
If you’ll tell me your father, my bonny Bessie.’

Oh, the next came to court her was a captain from sea,
He courted lovely Bessie in then every degree,
Saying, ‘My ship, gold and silver, I will give to thee,
If you’ll tell me your father, my bonny Bessie.’

Oh, the next came to court her was a merchant so grand,
He courted lovely Bessie then all the night long,
Saying, ‘I’ll buy you some fine satins right down to your toes,
If you’ll tell me your father, my bonny Bessie.’

Oh, my father he’s a blind man that is very well known,
He is led by a dog and a chain and a bell,
He is led by a dog and a chain and a bell.
Will you roll into my arms, my bonnie Bessie.

Oh I’ll buy you fine satins right down to your toes,
I’ll build you a mansion right up to the moon,
And the blind man he laid down ten times as much more.

As well as information about the ballad sheets, Mikeen has provided us with many insights into the singing tradition in Ireland, especially concerning the singer’s approach and relationship to his material. We had been working with him for over a year and had got to know him quite well when we decided to question him about how he felt about his songs; which songs he felt important, which songs he had learned just to sell, which ones he had picked up because he happened to be around when they were being sung. We got him to sing one of his songs, ‘Betsy of Ballentown Brae’ (Laws P28), and we asked him what he thought about while he was singing it. He furnished us with a complete description of all the characters in the song, what they looked like, what they wore, where they lived (not Ballentown Brae), and a description of the area where the action of the song takes place. None of this information is given in the text. He described the mental process that took place while singing as; ‘like watching a film at the pictures, or watching television’. We asked him if this was the case with all his songs, to which he replied that he thought it was. We then took one of his non-traditional songs, ‘I Wish All my Children were Babies Again’, and repeated the procedure; he was unable to supply us with any information about the song. Then we asked him to sing ‘Early in the Month of Spring’ (Laws K12), to which he provided a full visual description, as with the first song. Again we took a non-traditional song, ‘The Night You Gave Me Back my Ring’, and once more he was unable to provide us with any description. We have found this visual identification with traditional songs common to most, though not all, of the singers we have questioned so far.
It has been our experience that, while all the singers we have recorded have no compunction in singing non-traditional material, country-and-western, parlour ballads, pop songs, etc., they do separate these in their minds from traditional songs, often having a term that describes the type of song (this is the case with both Travellers and settled singers). One travelling woman we have been recording for some time now has given us over sixty songs and, though we are aware that she could easily double this number with non-traditional material, she has constantly avoided doing so: ‘You don’t want them, they’re modern songs’. She told us that she doesn’t like the ‘modern songs’, but is expected to sing them by other Travellers, especially when she sings in the pubs. She describes all the traditional songs she has given us so far as her father’s songs, even though, on questioning, she can remember exactly where she got all her songs, and it turns out that only half-a-dozen actually came from her father. So far, after nearly ten years work with Irish Travellers, we have recorded less than a dozen non-traditional songs, although this has not been a deliberate policy on our part.
This differentiation also covers the way that the songs are sung. On one occasion when we were introduced to the brother of one of our informants, we were taken aside by another singer who told us that we shouldn’t ‘waste our time’ with him as, even though he had the old songs, ‘he can’t sing them properly’. It turned out that the person in question was accustomed to singing country-and-western songs and everything he sang, including versions of ‘The Outlandish Knight’ and ‘The Lover’s Ghost’, was given country-and-western treatment!
Mikeen McCarthy values his songs as belonging to a time that is now gone, along with the old trades and a way of life that, though by no means easier, was far more tolerable than today. Some of this attitude may be accounted for by the fact that one tends to look back on the past through the rose-tinted spectacles of hindsight, but there can be no doubt that all the Travellers we have met got more satisfaction out of tin¬smithing, caravan building, and horse trading than they do from today’s main occupations of collecting scrap and shifting rubbish. Mikeen places the action of most of the songs we have questioned him about in locations he has visited during what he considers as ‘better times’.
As a singer, Mikeen is by no means the most skilful we have recorded, but in many ways he is the most easy to listen to. His delivery can best be described as conversational and his approach narrative. The phrase used in the west of Ireland, to ‘tell a song’, sums up perfectly Mikeen’s singing. In a folk club (he has appeared at the London Singers’ Club several times), he will select a member of the audience to use as a focal point and sing to them. Whilst he is singing, he becomes totally engrossed in the story of the song.
As well as having a repertoire of fifty odd songs, he also has a large number of stories, ranging from the traditional tales and legends of Ireland, to stories and anecdotes about travelling life. This aspect of his culture is still very active and he is constantly coming up with fresh material that he has recently learned. Two months ago he told us a version of ‘The Bishop of Canterbury’ tale that he had heard that week. On one occasion he told us a joke he had just heard from another Traveller, about a travelling couple with a large family, in conversation with a wealthy landowner with no children. This he told us as a dirty joke, in the third person, with just basic narrative and containing no detail. A couple of weeks later he re-told us the joke, which had by then undergone a number of changes and additions. About a month later he told us it again but, by then, it had been padded out with much more description and completely personalised, that is, told as having happened to him and his wife. He has a number of stories in his repertoire which are tale versions of traditional songs, including ‘the one about the rich girl who ran off with a gypsy’. Example 2 is a tale that shares its plot with the ballad, ‘Get Up and Bar the Door’.

Example 2 GO FOR THE WATER
There was a brother and a sister one time, they were back in the west of Kerry. Oh and a very remote place altogether. So the water was that far away from them that they always used to be grumbling and grousing, the two of them, which of them would go for the water. They’d always come to the decision anyway that they’d have their little couple of verses and whoever’d stop first, they’d have to go for the water. So they’d sit at both sides of the fire anyway and there was two little hobs that time, there used be no chairs, only two hobs. One would be sitting at one side and one at the other side and maybe Jack would have his doodeen, d’you know, that’s what they used to call a little clay pipe, and Jack’d sing:

Oh then hom-dom-dee-doodle-le-dom-the-doo-rom-day,
Racks-fol-the-vo’lean, the vo-vo-vee.

So now it would go over to Mary:

[sung] ‘Oh, then...’ etc.

So back to Jack again:

[sung] ‘Oh, then...’ etc.

So they’d keep on like that from morning maybe until night and who’d ever stop would have to go for the water. So there was an old man from Tralee, anyway, and he was driving a horse and sidecar, they’d be calling it a taxi now. He’d come on with his horse and sidecar maybe from a railway station or some place and they’d hire him to drive them back to the west of Dingle. So bejay, he lost his way anyway, and ‘twas the only house for another four or five miles, so in he goes to enquire what road he’d to take. And when he landed inside the door, he said, How do I get to Ballyferriter from here? And Mary said:

[sung] ‘Oh, then.‘etc.

So over he went, ‘What’s wrong with that one? She must be mad or something.’ And over to the old man, he said, ‘How do I get to Ballyferriter from here?’

[sung] ‘Oh, then.‘etc.

He go back over to Mary and he was getting the same results off Mary; and back to Jack again. Now this old man, he wouldn’t take a chance and go off without getting the information where the place was. So he catches hold of Mary and starts tearing her around the place, ‘Show me the road to Ballyferriter!’, shaking her, pushing her and pulling her and everything.

[sung] ‘Oh, then ‘etc.

And he kept pulling her and tearing her around the place and he pucking her and everything. ‘Oh, Jack,’ says she, ‘will you save me?’ ‘Oh, I will, Mary, but you’ll have to go for the water!’

Travelling life has undergone radical changes in the last thirty or forty years. Changes in farming methods and the development of materials such as plastic have meant that Travellers can no longer make a living at tinsmithing, and the mechanisation of farming has led to the almost total disappearance of the travelling horse and donkey dealer. Once the Travellers were welcome visitors in rural areas for their manual skills and also for their abilities as singers, musicians, and storytellers. One farmer in the west of Ireland told us how, when they were in his area, he would go off with them for a week at a time ‘just to pick up a few songs’. Music once played a vital part in Irish rural life. In parts of County Clare, so important was it that, when the floors were being laid in newly built cottages, an old iron pot or kettle, or an animal’s skull was placed beneath a flagstone in a central spot in the kitchen (the main room), so that when that spot was danced on, the sound would reverberate. These cavities were known as ‘battering pots,
The decline in the musical tradition in Ireland has played a strong part in the fact that the communication between the settled and travelling communities has all but disappeared. It should be remembered that the death of these musical traditions was not entirely from natural causes as it was elsewhere in the British Isles. It was helped on its way by the combined efforts of the Catholic clergy, who objected to the country house and crossroads dances on the grounds that they were detrimental to the morals of the youth of Ireland, and the Irish Government’s Public Dance Halls Act of 1936 which required all public dancing to be licensed under conditions laid down by the District Justices. Thanks to the isolation of the travelling community and, until recently, the immunity from outside cultural influences such as television and radio, singing and storytelling survived as living traditions right into the 1970s. When we first started recording Travellers in 1973, it was still possible to go back to the site after the pub closed and become involved in singing sessions around an open fire. The development of the portable, battery-powered television virtually destroyed this in a matter of a couple of years. Nevertheless, it is still possible to find Travellers with large repertoires and considerable singing skills. Mikeen, at the age of fifty, is one of the oldest singers we have recorded to date, the majority being between twenty and forty years old.
Travellers have had a considerable influence on the musical and singing traditions of Ireland, both by distributing the songs on ballad sheets and by carrying them and the tunes from area to area. Their migrations to and fro across the Irish Sea are among the reasons why it is possible to find songs in the repertories of Galway, Clare, and Donegal singers that are usually associated with England and Scotland, and vice versa.
Singers like Mikeen have made a tremendous contribution to the singing traditions of the past and are still able to assist us in our understanding of those traditions. Apart from the older songs, they have been instrumental in preserving songs that have come into being during their own lifetimes and have gained very little, if any, currency outside the communities in which they were conceived. Such a song is the final example recorded in spring 1976, concerning a Roscommon farmer who, on reaching the age of seventy-one, decides that he should marry and so advertises for a wife in the local paper, with unforeseen consequences.

Example 3 FLOWERY NOLAN Michael McCarthy Spring 1976

Oh, he lived upon the Stokestown Road, convenient to Arphin,
A man called Flowery Nolan, a terror to all men;
He reached the age of seventy-one and he thought it himself it was time
For to go and get a missus, his wedding ‘twould be no crime.

Oh, several maids came offer to him and from them all he fled,
Except one young fair maid, her fortune was rather high,
So he took and he married this young fair maid to be his wedded wife.

Oh, the wedding it lasted two nights and one day till one night going in to bed,
Oh, Flowery turned all to his wife and these are the words he said;
‘You think you are my wedded wife but I’ll tell you you’re not,
You are only but my serving maid and better is your lot.

Oh, there is two beds in my bedroom and take the one to the right,
I lived all alone for seventy-one and I’ll lie alone tonight.’

Oh, when Mrs. Nolan heard those words she thought her husband queer,
Oh, packing up her belongings and from him she went away;
She tramped the road to her father’s house and ‘tis there she did remain,
And then all the men in the Stokestown Road wouldn’t get her back again.

So now all ye pretty young fair maids, take a warning take by me,
Never marry an old man or ‘tis sorry you will be,
Never marry an old man until you’re fed up of your life,
Or then you’ll be coming home again like Flowery Nolan’s wife.

“He was an old bachelor for years, he used to be always talking about getting married, but when he made up his mind to get married, he’d wait until the next year, and the next year, and he’d go on like that till he was seventy-one years of age. The farmers round told him it would do no harm to have someone to look after him, so he advertised in the paper for a wife; it was a joke more than anything else. All the lads around the parish were more blackguards than anything else, so a lot of the girls came around pulling his leg, letting on they were going to marry him. This one really meant it. Out of all her jokes, till she got the dirty turn-out”.

This paper was given at the ‘Traditional Song’ conference at Leeds, 20 November 1982, and accompanied by tape-recorded examples. Transcriptions of Examples 1 and 2 have previously been published elsewhere, in ‘Michael McCarthy: Irish Travelling Man’, English Dance and Song, 45, no. 1 (1983), 11- 14, and Example 3 in Sharon Gmelch and Pat Langan, Tinkers and Travellers (Dublin: O’Brien, 1975), p. 139. The transcriptions here are by Ian Russell.