« Tales of the Irish Traveller world in Why the Moon Travels (2020) by Oein DeBhairduin »

Résumé En

The present paper focuses on Oein DeBhairduin’s collection of stories Why the Moon Travels published by Skein Press in 2020. Skein Press is a young publishing house devoted to publishing texts by authors who are traditionally underrepresented in Irish literature. The 20 stories in the collection come from the Irish Traveller community recognized as Ireland’s indigenous nomadic people and ethnic minority. All the stories in the collection reflect the strong ties between human beings and non-human beings or elements. Irish Traveller’s culture being mostly oral, the publication of those 20 stories in 2020 deserves our attention. Among the Traveller community, spiritual activities, connections to nature and forms of animism have been maintained for longer than in the rest of Irish society. In this paper I wish to study the ways in which the stories collected and narrated by Oein DeBhairduin represent and value the agency between the human and the non-human worlds in ways which could (re)awaken both an awareness of old lore and a form of presence to the natural world in readers outside the Traveller community. The publication of this collection of stories also raises the wider and deeper question of the place left to the ‘other’ in Irish society: the other as non-human, which in a context of climate-change ought to be urgently reassessed and addressed. But also the human ‘other’, living in the margins of Irish society, coming from across the globe, from regions at war and/or already dramatically affected by climate change - or longstanding communities who have been marginalized. I wish to argue that the ‘greening’ agenda, if it is to trigger a virtuous ecological circle and new forms of agencies with non-human ‘others’, must also include the human others back from the margins to the centre of the political agenda, concomitantly with environmental issues.