Vol. 8 ˇ No. 1 ˇ 2004

Brian P. Conway

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Introduction
The purpose of this article is to critically examine public policy with respect to the control of 'wandering horses' owned by Travellers in Ireland, a topic that has received little scholarly attention. While horses are often mentioned or alluded to in key anthropological works or depicted in photographic images in them, rarely is this feature of Traveller culture interrogated in a systematic way with the result that our understanding of it is somewhat limited. For example, Gmelch (1977) devotes just three pages to a discussion of horses while in Helleiner (2000) horses are mentioned only rarely. In McCann, Ó Siocháin and Ruane (1994) there is an occasional reference to horses. The work of Saris et al.(2000) is one of the few scholarly articles that directly bears on the issue of Traveller horses but this important piece of anthropological research is limited to the experiences of one high-poverty urban community in Dublin.