'The people wouldn't like to let them into their house; for if you would let one man in, maybe twelve families would follow them and take possession of the whole place.
'Some of them that do smiths' work are middling decent. They will sit there with their little pot and melt metal in it, and make things that belong to a plough; but the most of them have no trade but to be going to fairs and doing tricks, and having a table for getting money out of you with games. Indeed the most of them are no better than pickpockets—"newks" they are called. And they never go to Mass; and, as to marriage, some used to say they lepped the budget, but it's more likely they have no marriage at all.
'They never go in lodgings; but they'll tilt up the cart, and put a bit of guano cloth over it and a little kennel of straw in it. Or if a man is alone, he'll lay down on the sheltery side of a wall and sleep there. They are hardy with all the hardships they go through; they are the hardiest people in the world.
'And they make sport and fun sometimes. I used to see them dancing at Rathin gate; but no one would dance along with them; it is only among themselves they would have it. And they sing songs too—"The sweet boy of Milltown" I heard them singing.
'There was a sweep in Gort joined them. Charlie his name was. He went into Greely's shop one time, that had set up a little public-house, and bid him give him five pounds and he'd make his fortune. And he was afraid to refuse; and gave it to him, and off walked Charlie, and was never seen there again.
'He died after that in hospital. He slept out one night and the frost went through his body. There was another of them stole two of old Quin's geese at Ballylee one night, and sold them to him again next day. After he had them bought, Mrs. Quin came down and when she looked at them she knew them to be her own geese. "Give me back the money," she said. "I'd be a fool if I did," said he, and he went away.'
Another neighbour says: 'They often made their camp in the boreen near my house; but one of them never came into the house, and I never saw one of them at Mass. One very hard morning I passed by them as I was bringing in pigs to the fair of Gort. There they were, sleeping under an ass-cart, quite happy and satisfied. They fight at night and make friends again in the daytime; and they sell their wives to one another; I've seen that myself.'
And an old man says: 'I think the tinkers are not the same as the rest of us; I think they originated in themselves. They are very mirthful, and they have no control; but sometimes there will be a tyrant among them that is a good fighter, and they will obey him.
'They have no religion; and it might be true they don't believe in the devil—but what of that? Aren't there many on your side and our own that think there is no resurrection, but that we go straight to heaven at the minute of death?
'They never go into any house; and there's a great many of them wouldn't go in a house if they were asked. My father went one time from Ballylee to Limerick; and there was a tinker at that time the Government wanted to get information from; something about Bonaparte it was. And they offered him a good lodging with a feather-bed in it to sleep on; and he said if he slept one night on a feather-bed, he'd never be any good after; that it was more wholesome to sleep outside on a bed of rushes. They didn't get any information out of him after; though they offered him good reward, he wouldn't give it to them.