Voices of Irish Tinkers: "If you ask: What's the time? do you have the time?, people do be vexed and they stare at you with their calculations as if you were riding about in a painted dream on the old horse & cart. We have black teeth but we dream just the same as the people that live in houses. Just to be born on the side of the road is to go down in disrepect. I know a man went down in Australia and he came back in Ireland as a tinker but they still had no respect for him..." "When I was small and went for water up the ditch where my Mammy sent me I saw the houses, standing up high over the hills and trees, some of them. I often thought betimes to meself I wonder why we're sitting outside waiting for to go inside. Mammy brought me inside houses with her when she went every Thursday . Sometimes they'd sprinkle holy water on us and sometimes they'd harm us with a few hard knocks and curse us passing..." "Betimes it do be peaceful on the road. I get a queer feeling when I do hear the goats scratching on the bark of the trees and they hop around in the branches and they rock the caravan of an evening & I lean out & tell them get off heifer, get off rooster, get off, get off, and don't be rocking the old caravan. The wind does have the best job in doing that. There's no need for you to scratch me ears out with your midnight goings on." -- Excerpts of conversation from " Irish Tinkers," Wiedel & O'Fearadhaigh