Recalling the hiring fair days

Times Past

In 1995, a ‘Hiring Fair Festival’ was held in Strabane, Co Tyrone, which through music, art, market stalls and re-enactment scenes created the carnival feel of the old hiring fairs. However, the objective of a fair could be compared to a cattle mart where people were put on the market for hire and often at a lower price than was paid to the average labourer.

Farmers came from every region to find workers and sometimes two farmers would share the same worker who worked part-time for three days on one farm and three at the other. The hired-out men, women, boys and girls expected good treatment, and rarely got it, since there was little luxury in the work they were made to do.

The fair day itself was a great day, filled with fun and merriment for the townspeople, often coinciding with the cattle fair, the street lined with stalls selling all sorts of wares and produce as hundreds of people poured in from neighbouring districts. Better still, children got the day off school much to their delight.

But the objective of the hiring fair was something that would trouble our modern mindset of today, as farmers and their wives looked over the men, women and children on offer, physically grabbing the person’s chin, opening the mouths of those for hire to check their teeth and looking at their hair for lice and then deciding if they had the hands or physique of a healthy worker.

People attending the fair saw little difference in how some farmers purchased a cow or hired a person, both were bought like lots at an auction. Hiring fairs may have had a carnival atmosphere on the day with its stalls and entertainment, but the carnival was over quickly by the following day for the hired person.

The School’s Folklore Collection from the 1930s which is now available on www.duchas.ie has many entries on hiring fairs including one by Charles Lyness of Belcoo who wrote that ‘the largest fairs of the year in Blacklion are the hiring fairs, which are held on 12th May and 19th November’.

Fairs were held in practically all towns in Co Cavan, including Cavan, Virginia, Swanlinbar, Bailieborough, Cootehill and Mullagh.

If successfully hired out, the individual rarely saw their family for another six months. Children as young as seven years old were hired out as families badly needed the money. Since there was no government welfare, people had no choice but to find ways to survive.

Work was very physical in those days. The hired men worked on the farms, doing the usual jobs of the time, clearing manure from calf sheds and drawing it to the fields to spread by fork, ploughing, planting potatoes, milking cows by hand, making hay in summer and cutting turf. They were servants to the farmer who could work them to the bone, rising early in the morning and working until night. Women and girls were contracted as domestic servants to do the daily chores of baking, cooking and the laborious task of clothes washing, all by hand. Life was harsh.

Hiring fairs took place in May and November and farm servants were hired for a term, that is six months. If you were good enough, you might be expected to be taken on again for another six months with a small raise in your wages. However, the likelihood of that happening was slim as many farmers did not want to pay more than was necessary. As Aogán Ó Fearghail states in his book, ‘Images of Drumgoon’, the hired boys and girls would be ‘fed and kept’ and the ‘wages depended on several factors, the person’s ability or more often the hirer’s ability to pay’.

Changes

After the First World War, Irish families relied less on the hiring fair as a gateway to employment and, from the 1930s, as social and economic changes gathered pace, people looked for jobs with a weekly wage and, should they find themselves unemployed for brief periods, then they could claim state unemployment benefit during out of season periods when certain types of farm work ceased. Another reason for the decline of the hiring fair was mechanisation, the introduction of tractors and new tractor-operated farm machinery thereby reducing the need for extra workers on the land.

Perhaps, one of the most important developments to have taken place in the early years of the Irish Free State was the Schools Attendance Act of 1926, which prevented parents taking children out of school to send to hiring fairs and with the result of this change and the aforementioned changes, it was only a matter of time before this practice of hiring came to an end in Ireland.

This newspaper contained notices for the final hiring fairs in Co Cavan. In May 1940, it was noted in Virginia that: ‘At the May hiring fair the ruling wages were – Men accustomed to farm machinery, £18 to £22; farm labourers, £16 to £19, youths £12 to £14; cook generals, £10 to £14; domestic help, £8 to £10; nurse maids, £5 10s to £7.’

In 1944, Blacklion’s hiring fair was offering anything from £10 to £45 for ‘best farm hands’ while it was reported that most of the ‘old servants’ were re-engaged. In 1947, the Mullagh and Killinkere news lamented that ‘the old hiring fairs have almost died out, as most contracts are made privately and beforehand’.

In 1948, the farmers of Rockcorry, Co Monaghan, were in short supply of men servants and had to attend the fair in Cavan to procure them. In June 1955, the ‘long-established’ Ballybay hiring Fair in Co Monaghan was acknowledged to be ‘very much on the way out’.

On December 3, 1955, the news report for Swanlinbar simply mentions how the hiring fair on Monday ‘was small’. From the 1950s onwards, this method of employing workers was to be consigned to Ireland’s history books.

Hiring Fair (Sung by the Irish Rovers)

“You’re welcome with me, Johnny. And you’re with a decent man.”

But little I knew what I had to do for Grady of Stravan.

I worked on Grady’s farm til I looked an awful sight.

My bones were pushing through my skin, for I worked from morn til night.

One day, I died and passed away, and Grady gave a grin,

Saying “He’ll make good fertilizer, and there’s plenty more like him.”

Saying “You’re welcome with me, Johnny. And you’re with a decent man.”

But little I knew what I had to do for Grady of Stravan.