IRISH TRAVELERS - Experts shed light on reclusive, nomadic clans that roam the country

. I have had a bit of contact with both Gypsies and Travellers. Their languages have distinct similarities. The pictures on the link you provided show horse drawn wagons just like the Gypsy wagons of generations ago. Both Gypsies and Travellers also used to use tents with an almost identical hoop configuration as the wagons they used.

Similar wagons and borrowed words would definitely indicate that Travellers and Gypsies/Roma have met, somewhere in their history, but that doesn't prove that they're ethnically akin at all.

After all, American and Afrikaaner settlers both used similar-looking covered wagons in their respective treks, yet one isn't necessarily descended from the other.

As for language -- according to what I've read on the net, there are some Roma loan-words in Shelta (the Traveller language), but most of the roots are Gaelic. There are also Greek and Hebrew borrowings which suggest that some of the founders of the Travellers must have been hightly educated people - perhaps the last survivors of the ancient bards of Ireland. Go back to post 40, scroll way down past the first round of references, and read the discussion of Shelta.

I heard elsewhere, that the Travellers supposedly have a higher percentage of red hair, than Ireland at large. That would strongly suggest a native insular-Celtic origin followed by genetic drift in a small, mostly closed breeding pool.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Irish Travellers belong to a distinct ethnic group within Ireland.

Base on this, (from the link in post 40) they are not our ethnic kin after all.

Most of what I found on the net suggests that the Travellers are indeed a subgroup of the Irish who split off, who knows how long ago, and formed a separate parallel culture and language. That fits the definition of separate ethnic group quite nicely.

Anyone who commits fraud and theft (not to mention beating her own child) yet goes to mass weekly (perhaps accepting reconciliation weekly too) is in no way a true Catholic.

If they go to Mass on Sunday maybe it is to steal from the collection plate as they pass it around.

I've never heard about this group before, but I wonder how long they have been in the US.

I would like to second, third, your motion to put the screw to them. I am a single mother and I recently have encountered one of them. He became a friend (so I thought). Make a long story short he ends up cleaning me out of anything of value of mine. But small enough to were I wouldn’t notice right away so he could make his escape. Now he did not hide that he was an Irish Traveller, but I didn’t know what the extent of his culture was. He is scottish and myself being of scottish decent he encouraged me to dig in to my roots. Now my great grandmother was born in Haddington Scotland and I’m proud of that and I would never claim this clan as any kin folk of mine. This man is also related to the toogood lady.

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