Carnivals and Gypsy Kings

Carnivals and Gypsy Kings  

by Paul McCann

With no home of their own except for a caravan they would frequently arrive on the spare ground fringes around my village in North Belfast  . The gypsy people roamed from place to place with all their family in a time when they were welcome on free roads North and South of the border . They brought stories and songs and dancing around their campfires . They run carnivals for extra money and fixed up things that were broken hence the y got the name Tinkers on their journey.

I liked to call them the traveling people . Most of the times they came to Ardoyne they brought with them the colour of life on the wild side .

They had this wild fire in their eyes, they told fortunes and , read tea cups and  took  shelter in the their caravans under the moon like a secret community from another place and time . Part of me would often like to think they were more than Gypsy’s.

I liked to imagine they were time travellers who would visit briefly to check ion on the people of Ardoyne to see how their were going . In a sense of wonder I thought maybe somehow they had knowledge of the past and future .

I would see them at the carnivals over the bone running these slot machines where you could run a penny down a ramp and they all piled up on a moving platform , Just when I thought all the coins would cascade over the edge and fall into the shute at the bottom for me to scoop up , the coins always just took their place along side tall the other coins on the moving platform . There were bumper car rides and fairy floss and other side shows that were run by the Gypsy Kings of the day .

They were a different breed of people that most unlike normal people who lived in brick houses and went to work everyday . I’d often them in the long twilight around the grounds beside Flax Street and the smoke of their campfires was rising up into the sky as if they were sending secret messages to the man who lived in the moon .

The travellers who moved around the country . people you don’t meet every day and they survived  whatever way they could , begging , fighting , dancing and singing  .They had gifts to share with others and brought a measuring to gauge hardship and struggle against comforts and regular everyday lifestyles .

The Gypsy Kings were devoted to their unique way of life on the roads through the cold winters to the spare grounds of places like Ardoyne in the summer . In their caravans , they seem to have this ability to arrive anytime uninvited and they stayed until it was time to go . When ever they left I like to walk over the grounds where they had occupied to see if maybe they had left something worthwhile like a gold ring or a pouch of coins .

Then the plastic age came to modern Ireland  . Plastic money on cards . It wasn’t long before the Tinkers were no longer required and they even became unwanted and harassed by the authorities who questioned them and trued to move them on ,.

“What’s your business here and how are you proposing to stay ?

Was often they welcome they got . Some of them answered in their soft tone almost like they were singing ..

“Well now before I can tell you that let me bring you to a place where we come from so you can see the mists of time fall  around and the sounds of enchantment ring through your ears . We can tell you stories of the future and past if you have the time to listen ?

 Their words fell on deaf ears and sadly they were moved on to the edge of town like an unwanted tribe of the past

I thought to myself ,  what if they are time travellers are we messing with our own destiny , pushing them away and what gives those people the right to make them feel unwelcome .

Reluctantly their audience were taken away from them and their chance to share their stories were no more  .

More and more in modern Ireland , their words and way of life has gone and their  carnivals are over never to return .

Now its like the Gypsy Kings have been unconscious for a long time in a hole somewhere in the ground that swallowed them up .

The snow fell and the end of winter came and in the fields the ice had melted away where the rivers ran freely again and springtime flowers were being gathered by unmarried women to present to their men folk and somehow the Gypsy people are able to continued their way of life and customs of a time passed in a modern world unwilling to accept their ways that once surrounded our villages when for a moment we could believe in fortune telling and life beyond the pale .

The End  

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