Not yet with the ashes this ragged thingNi a gye a sloha a turpog inox
Oein DeBhairduin
Poetry
Not yet with the ashes this ragged thing / Ni a gye a sloha a turpog inox is a new poem by Oein DeBhairduin, written in response to his experience of rereading the Commission on Itinerancy Report (1963), a report which sought to eliminate Travellers from Irish society.
When Oein first received this report, he was so perturbed and disturbed by the dehumanising language within that he responded by printing out direct quotes from the report onto a scarf, a t’tog. He then attempted to drag the fabric through spaces of historic remembrance of trauma endured by the Traveller community. He then went through a process of burying, drowning, attempting to burn and destroy the scarf by a variety of means. What emerged from this artistic and deeply intimate process was his new poem: Not yet with the ashes this ragged thing / Ni a gye a sloha a turpog inox.
The scarf/ a’tog is an item that Traveller women wore all wrapped up; as something worn against the elements, a way of swaddling the young, carrying food and being a bit more secure in themselves. I’ve many memories of my mother and father talking about the togs, and have memories of people wearing them when I was very young – less so now. It was a remembrance and unexpected echo in me to realise, that while others may have wrapped us up in things, we can take that off and garment ourselves in our own understandings.
Oein DeBhairduin
Design by Frontwards Design
As a way of honouring this experience, Skein has had this new poem printed onto scarves in English (maroon) and in Gammon-Cant (yellow); the indigenous language of the Traveller/ Mincéirí community.
Oein DeBhairduin
Oein DeBhairduin is a writer, activist and educator with a passion for preserving the beauty of Traveller tales, sayings, retellings and historic exchanges. Oein is the author of the award-winning Why the moon travels. His other works are Weave, The Slug and the Snail andTwiggy Woman. He is the Curator of Traveller Culture with the National Museum of Ireland and seeks to pair community activism with cultural celebration, recalling old tales with fresh modern connections and, most of all, he wishes to rekindle the hearth fires of a shared kinship.
