Paper short abstract:

This study explores Irish Traveller spirituality, placing particular emphasis on Traveller women's religious rituals.

Paper long abstract:

This study explores Irish Traveller spirituality, placing particular emphasis on Traveller women's religious rituals. As mother, as healer, as wise woman, as respected elder Traveller women wield significant powers in mediating with the divine on behalf of family and have a central role in ritually protecting the family.

Much of Traveller religious life is private and personal, such as devotions at domestic shrines and pilgrimages to holy wells. Travellers actively shape the nature of their religious experiences, and these experiences are mediated by their interactions with the institutional Catholic Church and the wider dominant culture within which they operate.

This paper is primarily concerned with addressing how women's religious lives can offer insights into the nature of religious power and how women's rituals can challenge the dominant discourses of the institutional Catholic Church, and of the wider society.