MARGARET O’BRIEN remembers keenly the smell of griddle bread baked at night on the outside fire near her family’s caravan on the rural roads of west Limerick, 45 years ago.
Her mother, Bridget, would produce the main meal at about 6pm, and afterwards bake the bread. “They were harder times, but better,” she says.
Margaret, a long-settled Traveller in the village of Ballyduff, who has seven children – one of whom has died – and eight grandchildren, recalled her early life yesterday at the launch of a food book, Bonar, Wild and Delicious, which she and eight other women have contributed to as part of the North Kerry Traveller Women’s Group.
“Bonar” is the word for “good” in Shelta, the language once widely spoken by Travellers.
Times were better then because Travellers were more friendly to each other, Ms O’Brien says.
Not many use the Traveller language nowadays, but words she has never seen written – such as “dora”, for bread, “muggins” for potatoes – have not left her.
Her colleague Molly McCarthy, a mother of 12, has been settled in Listowel for 28 years. She reared her children in a caravan, and the eldest child is now 36. The food was mostly “bacon and cabbage and a pot of potatoes in their jackets . . . There would be a good Irish stew for a good day,” she says, smiling at the memory.
Scones would be baked on the top part of the griddle. All the food was healthy and “organic” – a term unused at the time.
The group was set up four years ago and tried various activities. Cookery was a real passion for the women, according to community development workers.
The book launch, by founder of the Listowel Food Fair and Kerry North TD Jimmy Deenihan, took place at the opening of the 14th fair in the newly opened Family Resource Centre. “This fair has always been inclusive and this is a very positive expression of Traveller Culture. Traveller women, in order to survive and feed large families, had to be resourceful,” he said.
The book, compiled by Alice Virmond, has a foreword by Darina Allen.
The Listowel Food Fair continues until Sunday.
Yes you Cant: words and food to try
WORDS
Food-related words in Traveller Cant/Shelta dialect
Tcherpa cook
Screedja wine
Dura bread
Blekki, or geth pot
Burik table
Skok water
Groodj tea
Greentchor dinner
Mundjari lunch
FOOD
Wild and delicious pheasant
Ingredients: One pheasant cut into eight portions; 200g bacon chopped; 3-4 onions chopped; 5 cloves of garlic; 3 carrots; 1 leek; 250g puy lentils; pinch of cayenne; black pepper; ground sea salt.
Method: Put olive oil into your big pan and add pheasant portions when the oil is hot; turn until golden brown on all sides. Add the onions, bacon and garlic and stir gently until golden brown. Add the chopped carrots and leek. Add water until the pheasant portions are covered and add the lentils, with a pinch of cayenne, black pepper and the sea salt.
Cover pan and simmer for about an hour. Leave for another 20 minutes to about half an hour to deliciously settle down and having the perfect taste.
Serve with potatoes in the jacket.
From Bonar, Wild and Delicious