The Death of an Irish Tinker by Bartholomew Gill Read Free Book Online

since.”
    Which was apparent. From sun and wind, the skin of her face was creased and lined and the color of dark tea. Yet it was once a handsome face with clear brown eyes, prominent cheekbones, and a strong chin. Her nose, which was long, was bent to one side, as though from an injury. Battering was an all-too-common feature of many Traveler marriages.
    She was wearing a bright scarf over her head, reminiscent of the full shawls that older Tinker women used to employ. McGarr could just see the glint of thick gold “Gypsy” earrings. Her winter coat was new; her boots were rather stylish and made of some supple leather. In all, she looked like a woman who had spent her life on the road, but those roads, at least in recent days, had been in and around Dublin or some other large city.
    “How long have you lived in Dublin?” McGarr asked Maggie Nevins.
    “Permanent like? Nine year up until ten month ago. Before that we tried to stick to the country. But there’s nothing for Travelers in the country no more. It got so we couldn’t even keep all our own childer.”
    “And how many would that be?”
    “Sixteen in all. Four is dead, six still with me, seven counting me oldest daughter’s daughter.”
    Bresnahan’s head had come up from her notepad, and she regarded the woman down her long, straight nose with unveiled contempt. The daughter of a “strong” farmer from Kerry, she was very much a settled personality in every way.
    “There in your caravan in—Ballinasloe, is it?” It was a city in Galway that was about a hundred miles from Dublin.
    “Aye. But”—Maggie Nevins’s eyes darted timidly at Bresnahan—“it’s not been as bad as the telling would have it. Not by half. I’m alive, amn’t I?” That seemed to cheer the woman for a moment, before her brow glowered. “It’s about her—Oney, the little one—that I come. She do beMickalou and Biddy’s child, and I’m freckened she’ll be needing a da.”
    “She’s also your daughter’s daughter?” McGarr asked, remembering that the pavement artist had been noticeably pregnant—when?—four or five years back. “The girl, the one who does the Book of Kells at the top of Grafton Street?”
    She nodded, her eyes shying toward the bar. “Biddy. I’m a born Maugham myself, you know.”
    “Here, can I get you another wet?” asked McKeon, now that she had begun her story.
    “That’s grand.” She handed him her glass, and McGarr eased back into the cushions of the banquette, recalling what he knew of Tinkers. A few years before, he had chaired a Garda commission to establish police guidelines for dealing with the over three thousand families that constituted the “Traveling community,” was the current phrase in Ireland, and he was acquainted with their history.
    The word “Tinker”—by which those people had been known until recently—had been taken from the sound a hammer makes when striking metal. But there was only so much work in any given area, and they of needs had taken to the road.
    As early as A.D . 400 smiths were traveling throughout the country, and in later times, when famine, poverty, and evictions swelled their ranks, Tinkers offered other services to the resident population. They became seasonal farm workers, horse traders, minstrels, storytellers, thatchers, and chimney sweeps—whatever it took to get by.
    Contrary to current opinion, they were not shiftless vagabonds. Tinker women brought isolated farm wives news, gossip, and swag—small manufactured items, such as needles, combs, hand mirrors, etc.—that could not be had otherwise in rural Ireland, while their men provided needed skills and services and were, by and large, honest brokers. They had to be. Vigilante justice was swift and harsh, andin most quarrels officials took the side of the settled party, no matter the wrong.
    The pattern of Tinker life, however, changed drastically after the Second World War with the appearance of cheap metal and plastic goods and