PEIG SAYERS

'Peig Sayers' (1873 - 1958) was an Irish author and seanachaí born in Dunquin (Dún Chaoin), County Kerry, Ireland. She spent much of her early life as a domestic servant working for members of the growing middle class produced by the Land War. She moved to the Great Blasket Island after marrying Pádraig Ó Gaoithín, a fisherman and native of the island. Peig was illiterate, but dictated many of her stories to Seosamh Ó Dálaigh of the Irish Folklore Commission and Dr. Robin Flower of the British Museum. Peig Sayers continued to live on the island until 1953, when the island was abandoned due to declining population. She was moved to a hospital in Dingle, Co. Kerry where she died in 1958. She is buried in the Dunquin Burial Ground, Dingle Peninsula, Ireland. Her surviving children, except for her son Micheál, emmigrated to the USA and live with their descendants in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Contents

''Peig''

Seanachaí

Reference

External Links

''Peig''

Sayers is most famous for her autobiography, ''Peig'', ISBN 0-8156-0258-8, which she dictated to her son Micheál. Published in 1936, ''Peig'' is perhaps the most famous expression of a late Gaelic Revival genre of personal histories by and about inhabitants of the Blasket Islands and other remote Irish locations. Tomás Ó Criomhthain's memoir ''an tOileánach'' ("the Islandman", 1929) and Robert J. Flaherty's documentary Man of Aran address similar subjects. The movement swiftly found itself the object of some derision and mockery -- especially among the more cosmopolitan city dwellers of Ireland - for its often relentless and seemingly monotonous depictions of rural hardship. Parody of the type reached its zenith with Flann O'Brien's (from Strabane, County Tyrone) satire of ''an tOileánach'' as ''an Béal Bocht'' ("the Poor Mouth").
''Peig'' depicts the declining years of a traditional, Irish-speaking way of life characterised by poverty, devout Catholicism, and folk memory of the Famine and the Penal Laws. The often bleak tone of the book is established from its opening words:
The book was for a long time required reading in secondary schools in Ireland in the later years when the students were 16 or so. Studying ''Peig'' in Irish (Gaelic) was mandatory for the vast majority of Irish secondary school students for generations and the book is most closely associated with that experience today, to the point of overshadowing the book's intrinsic importance as a historical and cultural document. Peig is a remarkably depressing book to be used in teaching children aged 15-18, its latter half cataloging a string of family misfortunes, and its presence on the Irish syllabus was roundly criticised for many years, for example leading to this comment from Senator Minihan in the Irish Senate in 2006:

Seanachaí

Sean O'Sullivan, the former archivist for the Irish Folklore Commission, describes her as follows^[1]:

Reference

1. Sean O'Sullivan, "Folktales of Ireland," pages 270-271

External Links

★ A Mocking Parody of Peig's Memoirs (In Irish)