DUBLIN: Warmed by a wood-burning stove and thinking of the past, James Collins often works with tin late into the evening, the passing of time punctuated by the steady tap of his hammer.

Collins, 73, is one of Ireland’s last remaining Traveller tinsmiths, a traditional craft passed from generation to generation which now has all but died out.

“My father done it and his father before him done it,” Collins told AFP in his Dublin workshop. “There was hundreds of tinsmiths. Nearly every Traveller was a tinsmith.

There’s only two tinsmiths that’s left.” Collins grew up in a nomadic culture practised by Ireland’s Traveller ethnic minority that is itself little more than a memory.

He was born in a tent by the side of the road in the Irish midlands in 1949.

In a time of deep deprivation even for Ireland’s settled communities, Collins lived with his family on the road until his mid-twenties.

He learnt tinsmithing from his father when he was 14, swapping the buckets, mugs and the wire-handled cooking pots or billycans he made for food. The family also offered casual labour on the land, working at the same locations seasonally.

“It was a good life but it was a hard life,” Collins said. “You’d hate the winter time of the year with the cold, frost and snow.

“But you wouldn’t pass much heed to it because you were brought up with it.”

Collins set down roots in the 1970s, moving to a Traveller housing scheme in Avila Park in northwest Dublin where he raised a family.

Most Travellers living in the Republic of Ireland now live in a permanent location, according to European Union research. Those who do travel tend to do so only in the summer.

Published in Dawn, December 16th, 2022