The time Tim Hayes wanted to get buried in a Fairy Fort in Wexford - The Real Story and Fake News

The time Tim Hayes wanted to get buried in a Raheen/Fairy Fort in Monamolin, Co. Wexford
For those who haven’t seen this before, here is a brilliant clip with Cathal O’Shannon from the RTÉ Archives where he visited Monamolin not too far away from where I grew up in Co. Wexford and interviewed locals leading up to a visit by a famous Cork man, Tim Hayes. Tim was a bit of an Irish celebrity back in the day who travelled around the country getting buried underground in a coffin for long periods of time in a bid to beat world records but also to make money.
I have shared this clip from years ago here on my page and I see it doing the rounds in recent weeks and with stories attached and not a bit of truth in them. I know the story well and over the past few weeks have been interviewing those involved in the whole event here in Wexford and yesterday we went to visit the spot where Tim was buried.
I’ll tease out the details later when I share the interviews but just to put this on record first, Tim was not buried in a raheen/fairy fort. In fact he was NEVER going to be and this was one of the best publicity stunts pulled in order to bring further celebrity statue on Tim but also to raise money for the local GAA. From talking to the people directly organised in this, the whole Fairy Fort story as orchestrated by Tim and the local organisers ran with and as you can see from this clip, the media fell for the story hook, line and sinker!
Briefly the back story was, the local GAA Club in Buffers Alley wanted to buy a piece of land to put up a pitch and clubhouse but didn’t have the funds. A group of local men including John Doyle, Matty O’Loughlin, the late Séamus Kavanagh and a few others went looking for Tim and and wanted to organise an event where he'd draw some attention and crowds would come that they'd raise a few pound. Matty told me that they drove to Cobh to meet the man and made a deal. They wanted an event to make money. Tim originally wanted 1,000 pounds at the time, however some haggling was done and they agreed on a figure 300.
That was grand, however Tim added an extra bit of spice to the mix and put out the story that he was going to be buried in a raheen/fairy fort in Wexford. Apparently he’d good contacts in one of the Sunday papers and the story broke and it grew legs. Naturally, this hit a chord with rural Irish people - s touching a fairy fort was a complete no-no. In time, RTÉ came down and this wonderful clip with Cathal O’Shannon chatting to Tim and local man Peter O’Brien is priceless. Tim was his typical cool Cork character while the Wexford man was excited and animated. Thing is, Peter was in on the whole thing and was one of the area's best local actors and performers doing the rounds. The son of one of the organisers, Michael Kavanagh, told me during the week that Peter’s performance was as good as what you’d see on the stage in the Abbey. He also told me he was only a chap at the time and remembers Tim was fed down through a pipe using his little sandcastle bucket tied onto a rope!
Anyway the story put out was that they couldn’t get any locals in Wexford to dig the grave in the raheen/fairy fort out of fear for the fairies even though there was a fee of 30 pound offered to dig it. As you can see in the clip, Tim said he would resort to his dock-yard workers in Cork to do it for him. However, this was never going to happen as the spot was well known beforehand in the corner of the field by the road ditch in the now Buffers Alley GAA pitch. There was never a raheen or fairy fort here, never was and never will be. I was told that local men dug the grave in the field in the middle of the night so no-one knew who was behind it and the rest is history. The whole thing was like something out of Fr. Ted with people driving and walking and cycling from all over the south-east, day and night, to pay their 6 pence for their time to talk to a man via a telephone and wavin pipe 6 foot underground. I could write pages on this story and will share the recordings with locals in time and the great news is, yesterday I was shown 5 photos taken just before the event with Tim and his brother.
This story has everything from sensational news, deep folkloric superstitions, world record attempts, acting, clever fund-raising and a good splash of madness on top. Enjoy.
Text: Michael Fortune
Credit: RTÉ Archives