John Lyons sang Farmer Michael Hayes in 1974 on his Topic album The May Morning Dew. A.L. Lloyd and Sandra Kerr commented in the sleeve notes:
The period 1850-70 was one of great unrest among Irish tenant farmers. Laws passed enabling landlords speedily to evict any tenants who fell behind with rents. Dispossession was often violent, leading to reprisals in the form of terroristic attacks on landlords and agents. In places, agrarian crime took on the aspect of guerrilla warfare. Against this background, the song of Michael Hayes was made. After being evicted from his farm, the enraged Hayes murdered the landlord’s agent Badel at Thurles, Co. Tipperary, and went on the run. Despite close pursuit, involving telegraph messages and mounting offers of reward, he managed to get to America, thumbing his nose to all his enemies.
Planxty sang The Pursuit of Farmer Michael Hayes on their 1979 album After the Break. Several Planxty live recordings from between 1979 and 1982 were released in 2016 on their DVD Between the Jigs and the Reels and in 2018 on their CD One Night in Bremen. They commented in their original album’s notes:
The Pursuit of Farmer Michael Hayes was learned from several sources: Christy heard versions of it sung by John Lyons, Tom Lenihan, and an unknown singer on Donnacha O Dulaing’s radio programme “Highways and Byways”. He received written versions from Mike Flynn and Seamus Mac Mathuna and there’s another in Zimmerman’s Songs of Irish Rebellion (Figgis, Dublin). The air is that of a song that Andy Irvine used to sing in early Planxty days. The words of that song were not to our taste but we were glad that the air fitted Michael Hayes so well.
From: https://mainlynorfolk.info/folk/songs/thepursuitoffarmermichaelhayes.html
