BARBARA HAYLEY (1938-91)

Mould-breaking figure in an Academic Tradition and Transition

Lecturer (1981*) and Professor (1986) of English 

Of all the people who might have been chosen to continue the tradition of teaching English Language and Literature at what might have been popularly known as St. Patrick's University College (in fact that appellation was used sparingly) in Maynooth in the years when its secular academic regime was still under the control of the Catholic hierarchy, an English-based Protestant female who had come relatively late to scholarly life and had originally graduated from Trinity College would have seemed an outlandish suggestion.

Yet that is who the bishops accepted, in the early years of Maynooth's opening up to the world, as the person to assist Professor Peter Connolly in meeting the demand for knowledge of Ireland's and the world's encounter with the English muse. With Peter Denman, she set a new standard for teaching and research so that when the Professorship became vacant in 1986 due to Fr. Connolly's ill health, she secured the appointment. The solid structure of an observant Catholic faculty would be  further shattered by the appointment in 1987 as lecturer of the dramatist Frank McGuinness, who challenged several other conventions of that environment.

By then too Barbara was living in some degree of splendour with her family in the former Church of Ireland Rectory across Parson Street. But in the scant five years that were left to her, her lifestyle evolved further into what might be described as more dangerous territory, following a meeting with a charismatic author at a book launch in 1985. She had just committed herself to an independent life and completed the move to a house in Ballsbridge, when, after a trip to the drop-off zone in Dublin Airport, she took the long way home along country routes and became the victim of a single-car accident in a collision with a wall (she is reputed to have asked the attending medics at the scene 'Am I dead yet?').Sadly, the appointment of a successor was marred by accusations from a disappointed candidate that his previous connections to Jesuit-run institutions had worked against him (the Acting Head of the Department was eventually appointed by the Trustees).

The Maynooth University website, in reviewing research activities over the centuries, features Barbara alongside Nicholas Callan, Sir Dominic Corrigan and Charles Russell as the leading examples of achievement and influence. About her, it says: She was a renowned literary scholar of the pre-Yeatsian literary revival and in particular the work of William Carleton. Her work led to a re-evaluation of Carleton and indeed allowed a broader re-evaluation of Anglo-Irish literature in the period. An authoritative scholar on 19^th century periodicals, she was the first woman to hold the Chair of English at Maynooth University.   Nationally, Prof Hayley was a celebrated critic and broadcaster and served on committees of the Royal Irish Academy and as secretary for the committee for Anglo-Irish Literature, activities that reflected her passionate advocacy for the central role of the Arts in Irish cultural life.

Her early return visits to Ireland were focused on what might be termed the Yeats industry, and her presentations at the Yeats Summer Schools, while she was still at Lucy Cavendish College in Cambridge University, introduced a new angle on the connection between the Ireland of the great poet and the author of 'Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry', who had died four years after Yeats was born.

We attach here an obituary and tribute from the Irish University Review and a commemorative poem by her colleague Frank McGuinness that appeared in Poetry Ireland.