12th May 2025

Hiring Fairs in Ulster

The Hiring Fair, a statue in Letterkenny’s Market Square, was commissioned by Donegal County Council in 1994 and sculpted in bronze by Derry sculptor Maurice Harron. It represents a social phenomenon in Ulster from the 17th to the 20th century. Driven by hunger and poverty, many men and women hired themselves out as labourers, housekeepers, or potato diggers '(tattie hoakers'). Often, parents were forced to bring their children, some as young as seven years old, along to these hiring fairs so that they could go and work for farmers. This meant one less mouth to feed, and the money the children made could be used to pay the rent.

The largest of these fairs were in Strabane, Letterkenny, and Derry, with smaller fairs in Ballybofey, Limavady, and Omagh. The hiring fairs were also known as 'rabble days', and there was a general air of excitement in the town on the day. There were two hiring fairs in Letterkenny, held on 12th May and 12th November (or on the Friday immediately following the 12th, if the 12th wasn’t a Friday). Those seeking work stood at the head of the town in Letterkenny, where the High Road meets the Ramelton Road (known locally as the Port Road) at the old McCarry’s Hotel, now the Warehouse. They were inspected by their potential employers and their teeth and bodies examined to make sure they were healthy, and anyone showing signs of weakness or ill health was rejected.

In a 1906 issue of The Donegal News, a writer noted:

A sadder sight it would be impossible to witness […] it is pitiable enough to see these poor creatures, boys and girls, standing up like cattle to be examined and cross-examined […] cattle would not have been allowed to be treated as those poor young people.

Children and young people in the depths of desperation would be mocked by their potential hirers, and young women and girls were sometimes victims of sexual abuse. Patrick MacGill of Glenties wrote in his 1914 book, Children of the Dead End, that:

...to [the farmer] I was not a human being, a boy with an appetite and a soul. I was merely a ware purchased in the marketplace, something of less value than a plow and of no more account than a barrow...

This sculpture commemorates the countless children and young people who experienced the hardships of the hiring fairs.