She has been described as “the Netflix of the time” It’s a snapshot of rural Ireland at a time when marriages, including Peig’s, were arranged and America beckoned for young hopefuls who wanted or had to get away from the old sod.ĪCCOMPLISHED STORYTELLER: Peig Sayers pictured in around 1930. And when you think of it, it must be an interesting book. No matter what our personal view of the book might be, there is a sense that one has only to mention the name Peig Sayers to a certain age group and one will see a dramatic rolling of the eyes, or worse.A friend, who has a more refined sensibility and openness to Irish culture, thinks Peig’s book is fascinating. It led, for example, to this comment from Seanadóir John Minihan in the Seanad Éireann in 2006 when discussing improvements to the curriculum: As a book with arguably sombre themes (its latter half cataloguing a string of family misfortunes), its presence on the Irish syllabus was criticised for some years.

The book was for a long time required reading in secondary schools in Ireland. Had I known in advance half, or even one-third, of what the future had in store for me, my heart wouldn't have been as gay or as courageous it was in the beginning of my days. I have experienced much ease and much hardship from the day I was born until this very day. I am an old woman now, with one foot in the grave and the other on its edge. The often bleak tone of the book is established from its opening words: Peig depicts the declining years of a traditional Irish-speaking way of life characterised by poverty, devout Catholicism, and folk memory of gang violence, the Great Hunger and the Penal Laws. Parody of this type reached its zenith with Flann O'Brien's satire of An tOileánach, the novel An Béal Bocht ('The Poor Mouth'). The movement swiftly found itself the object of some derision and mockery – especially among the more cosmopolitan intellectual bourgeois of Ireland – for its often relentless depictions of rural hardship. Flaherty's documentary film Man of Aran address similar subjects. Tomás Ó Criomhthain's memoir an tOileánach ('the Islandman', 1929) and Muiris Ó Súilleabháin's Fiche Bliain ag Fás, and Robert J. Peig is among the most famous expressions of a late Gaelic Revival genre of personal histories by and about inhabitants of the Blasket Islands and other remote Irish locations. The books were not written down by Peig but were dictated to others. Sayers is most famous for her autobiography Peig ISBN 0-8156-0258-8, but also for the folklore and stories which were recorded in Machnamh Seanmhná/An Old Woman's Reflections, ISBN 978-0-19-281239-1. All her surviving children except Mícheál emigrated to the USA to live with their descendants in Springfield, Massachusetts. She is buried in the Dún Chaoin Burial Ground, Corca Dhuibhne, Ireland. She was moved to a hospital in Dingle, County Kerry where she died in 1958. She continued to live on the island until 1942, when she returned to her native place, Dunquin. Over several years from 1938 Peig dictated 350 ancient legends, ghost stories, folk stories, and religious stories to Seosamh Ó Dálaigh of the Irish Folklore Commission. He then sent the manuscript pages to Máire Ní Chinnéide in Dublin, who edited them for publication. Peig was illiterate in the Irish language, having received her early schooling through the medium of English.

In the 1930s a Dublin teacher, Máire Ní Chinnéide, who was a regular visitor to the Blaskets, urged Peig to tell her life story to her son Mícheál. He recorded them and brought them to the attention of the academic world. Flower was keenly appreciative of Peig Sayers' stories. The Norwegian scholar Carl Marstrander, who visited the island in 1907, urged Robin Flower of the British Museum to visit the Blaskets. She and Pádraig had eleven children, of whom six survived. Peig moved to the Great Blasket Island after marrying Pádraig Ó Guithín, a fisherman and native of the island, on 13 February 1892. She had expected to join her best friend Cáit Boland in America, but Cáit wrote that she had had an accident and could not forward the cost of the fare. She spent the next few years as a domestic servant working for members of the growing middle class produced by the Land War. She spent two years there before returning home due to illness. At the age of 12, she was taken out of school and went to work as a servant for the Curran family in the nearby town of Dingle, where she said she was well treated. Her father Tomás Sayers was a renowned storyteller who passed on many of his tales to Peig. She was called Peig after her mother, Margaret 'Peig' Brosnan, from Castleisland. She was born Máiréad Sayers in the townland of Vicarstown, Dunquin, County Kerry, the youngest child of the family.

Peig sayers children