In recent decades, particularly when viewed through a media lens, Irish Travellers have been frequently depicted as a single homogenous group of people, all of whom share the same cultural traditions and history. This narrative is partly a remnant of colonial discourse whereby all Irish Travelling people and nomadic groups were “classified” as one and the same -e.g. “masterless men and women”, “wandering Irish”, “wild Irish” etc. Under colonialism, administrators made little or no distinction between different cultural and minority groups who travelled for a living and the rest of the Irish population. This meant that all Irish Traveller communities – whether travelling metalworkers, jobbers, animal-healers, stonemasons, tailors, musicians and fairground Travellers – to name were all assigned to the same category and assumed to be culturally similar.

This obscured the rich cultural diversity within Irish Traveller communities and the historical differences between different groups in terms of language, culture and tradition. This talk explores just one aspect of the diversity within Irish Traveller history and culture i.e. show people and fairground people, their centrality to Irish fairs, and discusses how these Travellers are represented in Irish oral tradition (both in Irish and English) and the historical discourse generally.

ISL interpretation will be provided. This talk will be recorded and uploaded to Dublin City Heritage on YouTube.

This talk forms part of the Oak Room Heritage Talk Series, created by Dublin City Council's Heritage Office as an action of the Dublin City Strategic Heritage Plan 2024-2029. It is part-funded by the Heritage Council. Email [email protected] with any queries