For far too long, the huge contribution of Travellers to our musical and oral traditions has been overlooked, writes Bairbre Ní Fhloinn
There are a number of towns in Ireland with populations in the region of 25,000-30,000 people. Imagine that one of these towns had, in the past few generations, produced singers and musicians of the brilliance of Johnny Doran, the Fureys and the Keenan family, to mention just a few better-known examples; imagine that it had produced storytellers of such a calibre that their tales have appeared in books and journals, on CD and on record, and have been broadcast internationally; imagine that the people of the town had been responsible for the preservation of such gems of traditional song as The Well Below the Valley and The Raggle Taggle Gypsy, again to name just a few, and that these same people had inspired a wonderful series of paintings by Louis le Brocquy. If this were the case, the town in question would probably long since have received special heritage status from the Government, and would have been feted accordingly.
Imagine a further set of circumstances in our hypothetical town. Imagine that many people in the town had to cope without proper amenities and with very poor standards of sanitation and hygiene; imagine that the housing conditions generally were well below standard and that many of the children of the town did not have access to full-time education; imagine that many of the residents lived way below the poverty line, with well below-average levels of life expectancy. Imagine, on top of all that, that the town had to cope with a considerable degree of hostility from surrounding towns and from society at large, and imagine that the children of the town were constantly made to feel inferior to children from other places, in all kinds of subtle ways. If this were the case, the town would undoubtedly be held up as a model of the triumph of the human spirit, and of the extraordinary ability of human beings to produce works of art in the face of extreme hardship and duress.
For all of the above scenarios, however, you don't have to imagine at all. The town in question really exists, except that it's not a town, it's a community, and the people of that community are generally known as Travellers. Ireland's longest-standing indigenous minority number about the same as the inhabitants of our hypothetical town, and their contribution to the oral and musical tradition of this country is all too easily overlooked by those whom it suits to do so.
In 1930, Pádraig MacGréine recorded a version of a story clearly related to that of Perseus and Andromeda - known from Greek myth by those in receipt of formal education - from a Traveller woman called Oney Power on the side of the road in Co Longford; in 1967, Alen MacWeeney recorded a version of a story similar to that of Jason and Medea from Johnny Cassidy, a Traveller then living in Labre Park in Ballyfermot; in 1972, Jim Delaney of the department of Irish folklore in UCD recorded from Mickey Greene, an Athlone-based Traveller, a fine version of one of the best-known stories of the Fenian cycle, the tale of Céadach - a rare find in the English language. In the 1950s, Paddy Sherlock, a Traveller and chimney-sweep from Co Clare, told his stories on BBC Radio, and received fascinated reviews from correspondents of The Listener at the time. The following is taken from one of his stories, recorded by Séamus Ó Duilearga of the Irish Folklore Commission, with its wonderful mixture of the familiar and the fantastical: "Out of that did they hear the Black Dog coming from the other end of the world, with all the old trees breaking and the young trees shaking, till they made the hard ground soft and the soft ground hard, till they drew spring-water through the green flags, until the cock crew in the morning, until the Black Dog of the Wild Forest had to retire back again."
Meanwhile, Tom Munnelly, Alen MacWeeney and others were starting to record the music and singing tradition of Travellers. In 1947, Kevin Danaher of the Irish Folklore Commission made the only sound recordings in existence of virtuoso uileann piper Johnny Doran, whose playing was to prove so influential on the current generation of pipers. And there were and are so many more: Paddy and Stephen Rainey, the Cashes, Michael and John Doherty, Mickey and Christy Dunne, the Cassidys, Felix Doran and Pecker Dunne, to name but a few. In 1969, Tom Munnelly recorded a treasure house of songs from John Reilly, a Traveller living in Boyle, Co Roscommon, including the haunting The Well Below the Valley, described as "a remarkable survival" and like "a whisper from the Middle Ages". Reilly was to die tragically at the age of 44, and was described thus by Tom Munnelly: "A man who did not read or write but who was one of the most learned men to grace the roads of Ireland." Today, the tradition continues, in the person and in the music and in the storytelling of Davy Collins, Chrissie Ward, John Rooney, John Collins, Mary Frances Keenan, Celine O'Leary and Áine and Martin Furey, among many others. Long may they continue to honour the contribution they have made so far, and to enrich our lives.
• Bairbre Ní Fhloinn works for the UCD Delargy Centre for Irish Folklore and the National Folklore Collection