Editing Irish Travellers (section)

===Origin theories===
Many different theories have been put forward to explain the origins of Ireland's itinerant population. It has been suggested Travellers are related to [[Romani people|Romani]] due to a similarly itinerant lifestyle,<ref name="Griffin">{{cite book |last=Griffin |first=Rosarii |year=2014 |title=Education in Indigenous, Nomadic and Travelling Communities |language=en |publisher=A&C Black |isbn=9781472511195 |page=50}}</ref> but [[genetic testing]] has shown no evidence for a recent ancestral component between Irish Travellers and Romani Travellers.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Gilbert |first1=Edmund |last2=Carmi |first2=Shai |last3=Ennis |first3=Sean |last4=Wilson |first4=James F. |last5=Cavalleri |first5=Gianpiero L. |date=2017-02-16 |title=Genomic insights into the population structure and history of the Irish Travellers |journal=Scientific Reports |language=en |volume=7 |issue=1 |page=42187 |doi=10.1038/srep42187 |doi-access=free |pmid=28181990 |pmc=5299991 |bibcode=2017NatSR...742187G |issn=2045-2322}}</ref> There is also a theory that an indigenous, itinerant community of craftsmen are the ancestors of Travellers, who never settled down.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ní&nbsp;Shúinéar |first=Sinéad |year=1994 |title=Irish Travellers, Culture and Ethnicity |publisher=W & G Baird Ltd. |isbn=0-85389-493-0 |location=Belfast |pages=70–72}}</ref> Other speculations on their origin are that they were descended from those Irish who were made homeless during the [[Cromwellian conquest of Ireland|Cromwellian conquest]] in the 1650s, or made homeless in either the 1741 or the [[Great Famine (Ireland)|1840s famine]], or due to [[Highland Clearances|eviction]].<ref>{{cite book |last=McCaffery |first=Juliet |title=Education in Indigenous, Nomadic and Travelling Communities |chapter=Education as Cultural Conflict: Gypsies and Travellers in Southern England |year=2014 |editor-last=Griffin |editor-first=Rosarii |series=Education as a humanitarian response |location=London, UK |publisher=Bloomsbury |isbn=978-1-4725-1119-5 |page=50 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4gK2AwAAQBAJ |doi=10.5040/9781472593337.ch-003}}</ref><ref name="Keane2005">{{cite journal |last=Keane |first=David |year=2005 |title=International law and the ethnicity of Irish Travellers |journal=Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice |volume=11 |issue=1 |issn=1942-5732 |url=http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol11/iss1/4}} {{open access}}</ref>{{rp|style=ama|pp= 43, 56}}

According to Helleiner (2003),<ref name=Helleiner-2003-05/> current scholarship is investigating the background of [[Gaelic Ireland]] before the [[Tudor conquest of Ireland|English Tudor conquest]]. The mobile nature and traditions of a Gaelic society based on [[pastoralism]] rather than land tenure before this event implies that Travellers represent descendants of the Gaelic social order marginalised during the change-over to an English landholding society.<ref name=Helleiner-2003-05>{{cite book |last=Helleiner |first=Jane |date=May 2003 |title=Irish Travellers: Racism and the politics of culture |publisher=University of Toronto Press |isbn=978-0-8020-8628-0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Zr6VRPmZjV8C&pg=PA29 |page=29}}</ref> An early example of this mobile element in the population, and how displacement of clans can lead to increased nomadism within aristocratic warrior societies, is the displacement of the [[Clan Muircheartaigh Uí Conchobhair|Clan Murtough O'Connors]] after the [[Norman invasion of Ireland|Norman invasion]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=Simms |first=Katharine |year=2001 |title=A Lost Tribe: The Clan Murtagh O'Conors |journal=Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society |volume=53 |pages=1–22 |jstor=25535718}}</ref>