The History of the Irish Traveler

creeper1

I once heard a story - don't know if it was true or not that the travelling community came into being when landlords evicted tenants unable to pay rent.

The poor Irish had nowhere to go so simply moved from place to place or traveled.

Is this a myth or was the traveling community really born this way?

goose2005

There was always a large number of itinerant and semi-itinerant people - travelling salesmen, "gombeens", evicted people, migrant labourers, etc. Most settled in towns/cities, or died, or emigrated. Some of them adopted gypsy-style lifestyles around the mid-19th century and that's basically where Travellers originate

tac foley

Apologies.

tac

looksee

I saw a programme about tracing Traveller genetics and they established, afair, that the Travellers were from way before then.

creeper1

I know there is a strong anti-traveler sentiment in Ireland and England. I don't want comments on how much you hate them.

This is a history forum.

I want to know their origins. I know there are gypsy communities in Europe also. There are also the Roma from Romania.

Are they related to the Irish traveller?

Or are Irish travellers distinct?

jonniebgood1

Keep it focused on the history of the travellers rather than present day folks.

We had a similar thread here http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=76598921 recently.

munchkin_utd

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

Keep it focused on the history of the travellers rather than present day folks.

We had a similar thread here http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=76598921 recently.

the recent TV programme investigating the issue is also mentioned in that thread.

There they did DNA tests on a few travellers and found that the people they tested must have become atonomous from the settled Irish Gene pool well before the famine. At this stage I cant remember the exact date but it was 100s of years prior to the famine anyhow.

They also are 100% Irish bloodline abeit they kept to themselves for the past 400+ years!

LordSutch

I have often wondeded if Irish travellers are in fact descendents of the true Irish people, in the same way as the Welsh people (as claimed by some) may be descended from the true English people, who were pushed further west to the edge of Britain when the Romans invaded?

just a theory.

tac foley

LordSutch wrote: »

I have often wondeded if Irish travellers are in fact descendents of the true Irish people, in the same way as the Welsh people (as claimed by some) may be descended from the true English people, who were pushed further west to the edge of Britain when the Romans invaded?

just a theory.

The Welsh, in particular those in North Wales, are for the most part genetically the original British native population. The entire island of Britain was occupied by their ancestors, and the language - or recognisable variants of it - was spoken over the entire known part of the main island.

The English, as such, did not exist an an identifiable group until the time of Alfred the Great, the first monarch to call himself King of the English. HIS background ancestry was Anglo-Saxon - the invaders from Germanic Europe in the 5th to 8th centuries. The Welsh, at that time, had been left well alone after the Romans left. Only the island of Anglesey [Island of the Angles] had a recognisable settlement of the invading Scandinavians and Germanic tribes. There are a few other place-names of Anglo-Saxon/Norse/Old Scan derivation though - always on the coast.

tac

dubhthach

LordSutch wrote: »

I have often wondeded if Irish travellers are in fact descendents of the true Irish people, in the same way as the Welsh people (as claimed by some) may be descended from the true English people, who were pushed further west to the edge of Britain when the Romans invaded?

just a theory.

If you mean "True English" as in population of territory now known as England then yes. However at the time this was known as Britain thence he Welsh and the Cornish are the descendants of the "ancient Britons" their languages are members of the Brythonic family of Celtic languages (with Breton).

The name England obviously derives from the Angles and their home territory of Angeln in Southern Jutland (Northern Germany/southern Denmark)

One way to visualise the input of Germanic "anglo-saxons" into sub-Roman Britain is to look at the visual mappings of the following Y-Chromosome Haplogroups

Haplogroup R1b-L21 (Highest in Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, Western Scotland, Brittany)


Haplogroup R1b-U106 (Peaks in Netherlands) -- Highest boundaries in Britain within boundaries of England (excluding Cornwall)


Haplogroup I1 (Peaks in Scandinavia)


I1 and U106 have strong correlations with Germanic Europe. In England when it comes to R1b it's bout equally divided between L21 and U106. Obviously in the south-east which has the longest presence of "Anglo-Saxons" U106 is considerably higher. The L21 level gradually increases as you go west. One potential implication is that the the English are thus an admixed "Celto-Germanic" population. (I'm talking bout source linguistic populations).

If you take for example samples from Ireland, England and Netherlands and do a Principle Component analysis the English will unsurprising fall in the middle between Irish and Dutch. Mainly as they have ancestry from two populations that were similiar to these (eg. "Britons" and "Anglo-Saxons")

Genetically the Cornish are quite distinctive from general English population. No doubt due to their fairly recent isolation. Cornwall was seperated from Wales around 700-800AD by westward advance of Kingdom of Wessex, even then it remained very distinct from nearby English territory due to survival of Cornish as community language until at least the 17th century.

ciarriaithuaidh

Thanks for posting that dubh..knew the Cornish were distinct from Anglo-Saxons, but didn't know the genetic differences were so pronounced. I remember also on that "Blood of the Irish" series they were drawing comparisons between Irish and Basques genetically which doesn't seem to be represented on your images.

slowburner

The Y haplogoups of Iceland are very surprising.

dubhthach

ciarriaithuaidh wrote: »

Thanks for posting that dubh..knew the Cornish were distinct from Anglo-Saxons, but didn't know the genetic differences were so pronounced. I remember also on that "Blood of the Irish" series they were drawing comparisons between Irish and Basques genetically which doesn't seem to be represented on your images.

Part of the reason for that is because they used outdated information. One of major developments over the last 10 years has been a mushrooming in the number of "branches" of the "Haplotree". In case of R1b it's gone from something like this in 2003:


To this in 2009


New markers spilt up groups of men. As you can see in 2003 L21 or U106 (two of maps above) weren't even discovered let. As a result you would see maps like this (which just looks at all the men with Haplogroup R1b)


This gave impression of a peak in Irish and Basque population, ergo they must be closely related. Well yeah Basque men who are R1b are related to Irishmen who are R1b but they belong to different "sub-branches"/Sub-clades under R1b.

For example L21 which is dominante in Ireland and by far most common in Britain probably only arose about 4k years ago on the continent. The implication is that it arrived in Ireland after this (during Bronze age and following period)

R1b itself probably arose in Central Asia and it's spread across Europe appears linked to Indo-European languages. The "terminal branches" tend to be furthest west, whereas branches "further up the tree" are concentrated in east.

The oldest known R1b from ancient-DNA is only about 1,000BC (3,000 years ago). It's completely absent from any ancient-DNA retrieved so far from Neolithic cemeteries (which have been mostly Haplogroup G and I)

Anyways those images above are based purely on the Y-Chromosome which makes up only 2% of a man's genome. If you look at a wider picture of genome (autosomnal) you see the following for Europe, unsurprising those genetically closest to us are also our nearest neighbours.

Anyways with regards to blood of the travellers. The men showed up as been fairly standard Irish. Implication was L21 and subclades (Ward was M222+ -- L21+, M222+) the rest were told they belong to most common male haplogroup in Ireland (implication L21).

From an autosomonal point of view the travellers cluster together, however the closest related population to them were "Settled Irish". There was some implication that part of divergence is due to "genetic drift" probably due to lack of intermixing between the two communities over the last couple hundred years.

virino

Could anyone tell me please, when you get Y chromosome results from a genealogy site, giving the Haplogroup R1b, how do you find what subgroups you have in your line such as the L21 mentioned in the earlier posts? Does this need a new test?

Nollipop

creeper1 wrote: »

I want to know their origins. I know there are gypsy communities in Europe also. There are also the Roma from Romania.

Are they related to the Irish traveller?

Or are Irish travellers distinct?

I'm currently undertaking cultural research on Irish Travellers. I'm not qualified to do 'the Science bit' on DNA origins, but the cultural differences between Irish Travellers and Roma (or 'gypsies') suggest that they have some things in common, but not through close relation. The Roma from Romania ('Roma' is not a shortened form of 'Romanian' confusingly) are also gypsies and therefore not related to Irish Travellers either.

The differences I'm talking about here are language, customs and taboos. Obviously, both groups have nomadic cultures and have undertaken common lines of employment, such as horse-dealing and metal working. But there the similarities end.

Irish Travellers are more closely related to non-Traveller Irish than Roma in cultural terms. I think the programme "Blood of the Travellers" also agreed with this from their DNA tests.

slowburner

It's not something that I can help you with, sadly, but I would be intrigued to see the results of your research.

paky

the irish at some stage were entirely nomadic. when civilisation, as we know it, came to ireland, people started to settle down but a small minority (the travellers) continued on the lifestyle.

dubhthach

Nollipop wrote: »

Irish Travellers are more closely related to non-Traveller Irish than Roma in cultural terms. I think the programme "Blood of the Travellers" also agreed with this from their DNA tests.

Indeed all travellers tested on the show carried Y Haplogroups (if men) that were identical to what you find in settled Irish community (r1b-L21, R1b-L21-M222 etc.) . Roma tend to have high concentrations of Haplogroup H, which unsurprising is connected to South Asia.



From a point of view of overall genome travellers clustered together (unsurprising) the closest non-traveller population to them were settled Irish. The implication is that travellers are a "branch" of wider Irish population who due to limited gene-flow (due to societal pressure against traveller/settler marriage) have started to diverge from each other -- through process of genetic drift

CDfm

dubhthach wrote: »

From a point of view of overall genome travellers clustered together (unsurprising) the closest non-traveller population to them were settled Irish. The implication is that travellers are a "branch" of wider Irish population who due to limited gene-flow (due to societal pressure against traveller/settler marriage) have started to diverge from each other -- through process of genetic drift

Ha dubh, can I please have the skinny in English.

The travellers are Irish and not Roma and predated the famine so any idea when this "genetic branch" started ?

dubhthach

CDfm wrote: »

Ha dubh, can I please have the skinny in English.

The travellers are Irish and not Roma and predated the famine so any idea when this "genetic branch" started ?

It's a good question, they were kinda vague on the program. They mention that there were signs of movement between both populations. The earliest date they gave is about 1200, other one they mention were all way up to mid 17th century.

In general most travellers have "Gaelic surnames" particulary ones that were quite important in Connacht eg.

Connors -- Ó Conchobhair
Ward -- Mac An Bháird
McDonagh -- Mac DONNCHADHA
Mongan -- Ó MONGÁIN
Sweeney -- Mac SUIBHNE (Gallowglass surname)
Nevin -- Mac CNÁIMHÍN or Mac NAOIMHÍN

Francie Barrett of course was unusual in this regard as Barrett is a cambro-norman surname. The Barretts settled in Mayo after the De Burgh led invasion of Connacht in mid 13th century.

Some have argued over the years that the travellers are a result of the destruction of the Gaelic society in the 16th/17th centuries.

CDfm

How nomadic were they and are any associated with particular counties.?

What are the earliest records?

I was friendly with a guy in England who was fourth generation in Oxford with a "traveler" accent.

The idea that you had "travelers" in Europe following and supplying armies happened too." Mother Courage and her Children" a play by Bertholt Brecht is about a canteen woman in the Thirty Years War is a traveler type character.

The idea that a mobile workforce or population developed with all the leadership changes and absence of serfs etc is not at all far fetched at all.

nuac

munchkin_utd wrote: »

the recent TV programme investigating the issue is also mentioned in that thread.

There they did DNA tests on a few travellers and found that the people they tested must have become atonomous from the settled Irish Gene pool well before the famine. At this stage I cant remember the exact date but it was 100s of years prior to the famine anyhow.

They also are 100% Irish bloodline abeit they kept to themselves for the past 400+ years!

I had assumed that DNA tests were done by some independent person in some typed of organised manner to avoid contamination.

In that programme the presenter seemed to be outllning his theory of traveller origination and then taking swabs which he claimed supported his proposition