Brigid Carmody: Traveling Community, Tradition, Change,
Title
Brigid Carmody: Traveling Community, Tradition, Change,
Subject
Life History; Traveling Community;
Description
Brigid is a Traveller. She talks about her childhood within an extended family, and about Traveller heritage and culture.
Brigid talks about growing up quickly within an extended family. She describes adult life in a caravan and the difficulties of getting used to living in a house. She talks about life in the group housing scheme for Travellers. She comments with pride on a Traveller wagon that was built from scratch for Cork Capital of Culture.
She remembers going for nights out in the city and she describes the scene when a group of Travellers were turned away from a club, and how that felt. She contrasts life now to that of the past and hopes her children will keep their Traveller culture. She remembers her grandparents’ lifestyle and the importance of the wagon to her grandfather, and the pinny and buttons to her grandmother.
Note; This interview was conducted as part of the Cork 2005 Project
Brigid talks about growing up quickly within an extended family. She describes adult life in a caravan and the difficulties of getting used to living in a house. She talks about life in the group housing scheme for Travellers. She comments with pride on a Traveller wagon that was built from scratch for Cork Capital of Culture.
She remembers going for nights out in the city and she describes the scene when a group of Travellers were turned away from a club, and how that felt. She contrasts life now to that of the past and hopes her children will keep their Traveller culture. She remembers her grandparents’ lifestyle and the importance of the wagon to her grandfather, and the pinny and buttons to her grandmother.
Note; This interview was conducted as part of the Cork 2005 Project
Date
26 November 2004
Identifier
CFP_SR00351_carmody_2004
Coverage
Cork; Ireland; 1970s - 2000s;
Relation
Cork 2005 Collection Catalogue Numbers:
CFP_SR00329_mccarthy_2004;
CFP_SR00330_odriscoll_2004;
CFP_SR00331_claffey_2004;
CFP_SR00332_hanover_2004;
CFP_SR00333_desplanques_2004;
CFP_SR00334_bale_2004;
CFP_SR00335_sheridan_1996;
CFP_SR00336_steiner-scott_2004;
CFP_SR00337_rot_2004;
CFP_SR00338_stafford_2004;
CFP_SR00339_odonoghue_2004;
CFP_SR00340_hawkins_2004;
CFP_SR00341_ocarroll_2004;
CFP_SR00342_ikebuasi_2004;
CFP_SR00343_ogeallabhain_2004;
CFP_SR00344_geaney_2004;
CFP_SR00345_wulff_2004;
CFP_SR00346_abdoulbaneeva_2004;
CFP_SR00347_gunes_2004;
CFP_SR00348_fourie_2004;
CFP_SR00349_henderson_2004;
CFP_SR00350_valdman_2004;
CFP_SR00352_osullivan_2004;
CFP_SR00353_mahknanov_2004;
CFP_SR00354_oflynn_2004;
CFP_SR00355_akhter_2004;
CFP_SR00356_walker_2004;
CFP_SR00357_kelleher_2004;
CFP_SR00358_manresa_2004;
CFP_SR00359_wimpenny_2005;
CFP_SR00360_skotarczak_2005;
CFP_SR00361_vermeulen_2005;
CFP_SR00362_owen_2005;
CFP_SR00363_dsouza_2005;
CFP_SR00364_setter_2005;
CFP_SR00365_obrien_2005;
CFP_SR00366_botan_2005:
CFP_SR00329_mccarthy_2004;
CFP_SR00330_odriscoll_2004;
CFP_SR00331_claffey_2004;
CFP_SR00332_hanover_2004;
CFP_SR00333_desplanques_2004;
CFP_SR00334_bale_2004;
CFP_SR00335_sheridan_1996;
CFP_SR00336_steiner-scott_2004;
CFP_SR00337_rot_2004;
CFP_SR00338_stafford_2004;
CFP_SR00339_odonoghue_2004;
CFP_SR00340_hawkins_2004;
CFP_SR00341_ocarroll_2004;
CFP_SR00342_ikebuasi_2004;
CFP_SR00343_ogeallabhain_2004;
CFP_SR00344_geaney_2004;
CFP_SR00345_wulff_2004;
CFP_SR00346_abdoulbaneeva_2004;
CFP_SR00347_gunes_2004;
CFP_SR00348_fourie_2004;
CFP_SR00349_henderson_2004;
CFP_SR00350_valdman_2004;
CFP_SR00352_osullivan_2004;
CFP_SR00353_mahknanov_2004;
CFP_SR00354_oflynn_2004;
CFP_SR00355_akhter_2004;
CFP_SR00356_walker_2004;
CFP_SR00357_kelleher_2004;
CFP_SR00358_manresa_2004;
CFP_SR00359_wimpenny_2005;
CFP_SR00360_skotarczak_2005;
CFP_SR00361_vermeulen_2005;
CFP_SR00362_owen_2005;
CFP_SR00363_dsouza_2005;
CFP_SR00364_setter_2005;
CFP_SR00365_obrien_2005;
CFP_SR00366_botan_2005:
Published Material:
‘How’s it Goin’, Boy? radio series (six thirty-minute episodes, broadcast 2005 and available on the Cork Folklore Project website)
O'Carroll, Clíona for the Cork Northside Folklore Project (2006) How's it goin', boy? Dublin: Nonsuch Publishing.
Source
Cork Folklore Project Audio Archive
Language
English
Type
Sound
Format
1.wav File
Interviewee
Interviewer
Duration
32m 25s
Location
Kinsale Road, Cork City, Ireland.
Original Format
MiniDisc
Bit Rate/Frequency
16bit / 44.1kHz
Transcription
The following is a short extract from the interview transcript, copyright of the Cork Folklore Project. If you wish to access further archival material please contact CFP, folklorearchive@gmail.com
C.O.: Ay, ya. And thinking of your mother, em and life in the caravan, what would be a normal day for her, a kind of a daily routine?
B.C.: Em, normal day, get up, more or less the same as any ones normal day. Em, just get up and put ‘em to school and I mean, she could go away for the day then, she’d be away driving. She’d come and visit my grandfather or she’d go and visit the aunts and she’d be back then just before my sister’s arrive back from school, it’s just… it’s not…em, it was much different from being in a house, it was more or less the same thing you just hadn’t got the same space, basically.
C.O.: How would people deal with that, the lack of space, would there be…?
B.C.: Em, well I…when I got married first I had em, moved into a caravan and, I had two kids before I moved into the house and I found the space of the house unbelievable. I keep… I kept moving things, I kept moving the beds. I’d… for a week there was never things in the same place all the wardrobes were moved, all the beds were moved, cause I wasn’t used to havin’ that kind of space, em…because we were brought … because my children were brought up in the house, at that stage my youngest was Jessica, she’s nine now but, she would be crying if I went into the bathroom because she couldn’t figure out where I was gone. The house was so big for ‘em they couldn’t understand it. Em, but it’s very, very tough in the caravan, I mean, where I lived in a caravan I would em, I’d have to walk to use one of the bathrooms in my aunts house, em, you’d walk down the hill, about a hundred yards, or to get water and you’d have to carry the water up to the caravan and you’d be washing clothes outside. Em, frosty mornings, my husband would have to get up about six to light the fire before the kids got up for school so the caravan would be heated, and I can remember waking up on morning, it was really, really frosty and the curtains were stuck to the insides of the windows, it was that cold, that the win… that the glass had actually frozen, and we’d have to peel the curtains off the inside windows and… But at the same time then you’d have the good side of it which is the freedom of, you open all the windows, you know-mean and completely clean out the caravan in one day, eh, and that’s great, as you have the freedom and if you do want to go somewhere, you have the freedom to hitch up a caravan and just go, whereas with the house, you have to have someone watching the house and you have to have certain things in place, em, but, I mean, that… that side of it is good, but it’s a tough life to live in a caravan, rearing children in a caravan is very, very tough. I mean, I mean, you’d have, in a mobile home you’d have a bedroom and then you’d have to pull out the bunks to make a double bed in the front of the caravan, I mean if you had visitors or anything by seven o’clock you’d have to pull out the bed, so the kids could go to bed and em, and then you’ve no space then because the bed is out. The bed is practically in the kitchen, so if you’re cooking or what ever you’d doin’ anything around the bed it is very tough and… storytime, the kids didn’t have the toys the wanted then either because they hadn’t got the space, like, they couldn’t have their dolls and prams like, because you had nowhere to put them. Stuff like that, so I mean once they moved into the house… their great now, they love it now, I mean I have a nine year old who is a traveller to the bone, she loves being the traveller. Eh, I’ve a twelve year old who just doesn’t want anything to do with it, she’s at the stage where… “don’t be telling the principle that I’m a traveller” and this, and then the nine year old who’ll say to the teacher, she’ll give her a picture of a house and she’ll say “do have any trailer that I can do”. Em, but, the nine year old have said to me now, I’d love to live in a trailer again. You know, she’s about the only one now, the rest of them don’t want, they don’t want that life at all, they think it’s… it’s too tough altogether, and honestly I mean the young fellow have his own room, the girls have their own bedroom and they go into it and watch television or whatever, something they couldn’t do if they were in a caravan, so…
C.O.: Ay, ya. And thinking of your mother, em and life in the caravan, what would be a normal day for her, a kind of a daily routine?
B.C.: Em, normal day, get up, more or less the same as any ones normal day. Em, just get up and put ‘em to school and I mean, she could go away for the day then, she’d be away driving. She’d come and visit my grandfather or she’d go and visit the aunts and she’d be back then just before my sister’s arrive back from school, it’s just… it’s not…em, it was much different from being in a house, it was more or less the same thing you just hadn’t got the same space, basically.
C.O.: How would people deal with that, the lack of space, would there be…?
B.C.: Em, well I…when I got married first I had em, moved into a caravan and, I had two kids before I moved into the house and I found the space of the house unbelievable. I keep… I kept moving things, I kept moving the beds. I’d… for a week there was never things in the same place all the wardrobes were moved, all the beds were moved, cause I wasn’t used to havin’ that kind of space, em…because we were brought … because my children were brought up in the house, at that stage my youngest was Jessica, she’s nine now but, she would be crying if I went into the bathroom because she couldn’t figure out where I was gone. The house was so big for ‘em they couldn’t understand it. Em, but it’s very, very tough in the caravan, I mean, where I lived in a caravan I would em, I’d have to walk to use one of the bathrooms in my aunts house, em, you’d walk down the hill, about a hundred yards, or to get water and you’d have to carry the water up to the caravan and you’d be washing clothes outside. Em, frosty mornings, my husband would have to get up about six to light the fire before the kids got up for school so the caravan would be heated, and I can remember waking up on morning, it was really, really frosty and the curtains were stuck to the insides of the windows, it was that cold, that the win… that the glass had actually frozen, and we’d have to peel the curtains off the inside windows and… But at the same time then you’d have the good side of it which is the freedom of, you open all the windows, you know-mean and completely clean out the caravan in one day, eh, and that’s great, as you have the freedom and if you do want to go somewhere, you have the freedom to hitch up a caravan and just go, whereas with the house, you have to have someone watching the house and you have to have certain things in place, em, but, I mean, that… that side of it is good, but it’s a tough life to live in a caravan, rearing children in a caravan is very, very tough. I mean, I mean, you’d have, in a mobile home you’d have a bedroom and then you’d have to pull out the bunks to make a double bed in the front of the caravan, I mean if you had visitors or anything by seven o’clock you’d have to pull out the bed, so the kids could go to bed and em, and then you’ve no space then because the bed is out. The bed is practically in the kitchen, so if you’re cooking or what ever you’d doin’ anything around the bed it is very tough and… storytime, the kids didn’t have the toys the wanted then either because they hadn’t got the space, like, they couldn’t have their dolls and prams like, because you had nowhere to put them. Stuff like that, so I mean once they moved into the house… their great now, they love it now, I mean I have a nine year old who is a traveller to the bone, she loves being the traveller. Eh, I’ve a twelve year old who just doesn’t want anything to do with it, she’s at the stage where… “don’t be telling the principle that I’m a traveller” and this, and then the nine year old who’ll say to the teacher, she’ll give her a picture of a house and she’ll say “do have any trailer that I can do”. Em, but, the nine year old have said to me now, I’d love to live in a trailer again. You know, she’s about the only one now, the rest of them don’t want, they don’t want that life at all, they think it’s… it’s too tough altogether, and honestly I mean the young fellow have his own room, the girls have their own bedroom and they go into it and watch television or whatever, something they couldn’t do if they were in a caravan, so…
Collection
Citation
Cork Folklore Project, “Brigid Carmody: Traveling Community, Tradition, Change,,” accessed April 23, 2024, https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/document/38.