'Athair na Tuaithe' - The John Canon Hayes Archive

The archives of the University of Galway Library are home to the archives of Muintir na Tíre (‘People of the Country’). Founded as a rural renewal movement in 1937. Its extensive archive contains an abundance of material relating to social and economic conditions in rural Ireland, Irish rural civil society, the involvement of the Catholic clergy in local community organising, and rural civil society/state relationships over a period spanning more than 80 years. Included within the Muintir na Tíre collection are nine boxes containing the personal archives of its founder, John Martin Canon Hayes (1887-1957).

December 1954 issue of The Landmark, the official magazine of Muintir na Tíre, featuring John Canon Hayes on the cover. (P134/6/2) 

Canon Hayes was born 11 November 1887 in a Land League hut in Murroe, County Limerick; his family having been evicted from the estate of Lord Cloncurry in 1872 for non-payment of rent. In the 22 years his family resided in the hut, seven of Canon Hayes’ nine siblings died. From these impoverished rural circumstances, a desire to improve living conditions in rural Ireland would be instilled in the young future clergyman; the Hayes family would finally return to the estate in 1894 after Canon Hayes’ father testified before the evicted tenants’ commission in Dublin. Hayes would attend Crescent College in Limerick before entering the priesthood. After two years of ecclesiastical college in Thurles, he obtained a spot at the famed Irish College in Paris in 1907 and was ordained in 1913.

Certificate, written in Latin, issued by the Archdiocese of Paris stating that Canon Hayes, then a cleric studying at the Irish College in Paris, is permitted to conduct masses and sacraments on behalf of the Diocese of Kilmore, 10 July 1911. (P134/12/1/4/2/1)

It was not long after Father Hayes’ ordainment (even after his designation as canon in April 1954, he remained ‘Father Hayes’ to his loyal acquaintances) that he was posted to Liverpool, where he served for nine years. By this time, he had already acquired a reputation for his oratory skills, support of the temperance movement, and opposition to sectarianism. Upon his return to Ireland in 1924, Hayes immersed himself in the duals causes of rural Irish development and temperance (he was a steadfast member and organiser for the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association of the Sacred Heart). Appointed to County Tipperary in 1927, he would spend the rest of his life based in the county’s parishes, from where he would conceive of the movement that became Muintir na Tíre.

Page from a lecture on Muintir na Tíre, c. 1938, mentioning the recent founding of a Muintir na Tíre guild in Clonmel, 3 guilds in Cork, and the hope of founding a Munster Provincial Council by the end of the year. (P134/12/1/2/10/8)

In his parochial duties, Canon Hayes was already raising funds for church/community projects and dabbling in rural industrial development schemes. Inspired by the rural cooperatives he saw in continental Europe and by the Catholic Action movement, he sought to organise something similar in Ireland. Muintir na Tíre was initially formed out of a 1931 meeting in Dublin as a standalone society before reconstituting itself in 1937 as an association of parish-based community guilds. By the time of his death, over 400 guilds existed across Ireland working on various local development schemes.

Notes written by Canon Hayes for a radio broadcast he delivered on Muintir na Tíre and vocationalism, c. 1937-1945. (P134/12/1/2/10/65)

Canon Hayes maintained a relentless schedule, constantly on the road across Ireland speaking to Muintir na Tíre guilds, temperance associations, Catholic sodalities, and agricultural, vocational, and business groups, and was a frequent orator on Radio Éireann. His position as leader of Muintir na Tíre and never-ending promoting of rural Irish life, in which he sought to condemn capitalism and communism in equal measure as two sides of a materialist coin while attempting to keep rural Irish from fleeing for the cities or overseas, led to him being courted by leaders of every political stripe. The correspondence in the Canon Hayes archive displays the balance he was forced to keep between keeping the ears of the Ireland’s most powerful political figures and attending to both his rural activist and parochial duties. Letters from Éamon de Valera, James Dillon, and Douglas Hyde are intermixed with pleas from parishioners asking for employment references, financial assistance, aid from being evicted, and simple prayers.

A small sample of Canon Hayes’ lecture notes, which take up four entire archival boxes. Canon Hayes wrote notes for his lectures on every type of paper imaginable, from flowing prose on foolscap to point-form topic notes scrawled on the backs of envelopes. (P134/12/1/2/10/)

Document and mementos pertaining to Canon Hayes’ 1934 trip to Argentina, where he ministered to the Irish diaspora in August, September, and October 1934 at the invitation of the Pallottines and attended the 32nd International Eucharistic Congress in Buenos Aires. At centre, a list of the missions and retreats given by Canon Hayes includes a retreat at San Patricio Church, infamous for being the site where five members of the Pallottine order were massacred in 1976 during the Argentine ‘Dirty War’. (P134/12/1/3/1)

Father Hayes addressing a crowd from the back of a coal lorry, May 1948. (P134/15/027)

Leaflet containing the order of services for a retreat given by Father Hayes and Father J.J. Bergin at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Roman Catholic Church, Liverpool, 14-21 September 1947. Having served the Mount Carmel parish between 1915 and 1924 at the beginning of his priesthood, Canon Hayes retained many connections among the Catholic community and Irish diaspora in the region through the rest of his life. The 1950s would also see Canon Hayes travel to the United States, where his many connections resulted in the establishment of Muintir na Tíre support organisations in Boston, New Jersey, New York, and Los Angeles.(P134/12/1/4/3/8)

Canon Hayes’ name lives on in the neighbourhood of Canon Hayes Park and in the Canon Hayes Sports and Recreation Centre, both in Tipperary Town, and in Canon Hayes court, Fethard.