As a young girl, she worked as a servant girl for a Dingle shopkeeper. Peig Sayers was born in Baile an Bhiocáire near Dunquin in West Kerry. You do not often find a person known simply by their Christian name and while it is common nowadays for married ladies to continue to use their maiden names, it was a rarity in the early years of the last century. Her story is no longer on the curriculum and has been replaced by, among others, Ireland’s Got Talent star Daithí Ó Sé’s father, Maidhc Dainín Ó Sé, who once roguishly described himself as “Peig without the shawl”. Her tales of the harsh life of ordinary folk along the west coast and on the islands was a staple diet for generations. Was there ever a woman more cursed upon by generations of schoolchildren? Her life story was a basic part of the school programme for decades. Perhaps our shame is writing off Peig, an accomplished storyteller.Poor old Peig. It’s an interesting take on a tragic situation. They would all have been executed for crimes. Where could a story like that go? As Peig told it, the farmer ended up happy.Ī stranger gave the bereaved father a vision of what would have happened had the sons lived.
She told the story of a farmer who was so angry at losing his three sons that he planned to kill himself. In the documentary, Peig was described as “the Netflix of the time”. She was like a latter day podcaster or blogger. There are 5,000 pages of transcript in Peig’s archive. Peig went on to dictate 350 ancient legends, ghost stories, folk and religious tales to a member of the Irish Folklore Commission. She dictated her auto-biography to her son, Micheál, who then sent the manuscript to a Dublin teacher who edited it. Peig was illiterate in the Irish language (which is ironic) having received her early schooling through English. But, in her storytelling, a rich Irish emotional life is depicted. She said that urban kids disparaged her as they didn’t understand the kind of life Peig led. Patricia also said that the teaching of Peig with the representation of her as a sainted Mother Mary is an unfair caricature. She spoke of the “sheer skill” of Peig’s storytelling and even went so far as to suggest that the autobiography is comparable to Joyce’s Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man. Also there was Professor Emerita of UCC’s School of English, Patricia Coughlan. On International Women’s Day last week, I tuned into a webinar about Peig in Washington, whose contributors included Daniel Mulhall, the ambassador of Ireland in the U.S.
Tg4 peig sayers tv#
Peg was the subject of a TG4 documentary last week in which “a flirtatious and bawdy nature reveals itself” according to the TV channel. However, Peig is becoming trendy (again?) with Gaelgoirs and artists while a new book on her legacy, Níl Deireadh Ráite (not the last word) is doing well. You had the likes of Flann O’Brien’s hilarious novel, An Beal Bocht (the poor mouth.) The movement was mocked by the so-called cosmopolitan intellectual bourgeois of Ireland for its portrayals of rural hardship. Her book, the bane of school-goers’ lives for so many years, was probably the most famous expression of a late Gaelic revival genre of personal histories by and about the inhabitants of the Blasket Islands and other remote locations. It’s the stuff of John B Keane.īut Peig, an accomplished storyteller who was visited and recorded by scholars from abroad, was written off by the rest of us as a misery boots with her tales of drownings and hardship. Not to mention the grim reality for young girls who often had to go into ‘service’, as poorly rewarded servants, and were expected to marry whoever they were matched with. But unfortunately, at school, the teaching of Peig’s book was more about translating it into English than looking at it in the context of the era in which it is set.
That outline of Peig’s life should be enough to pique our interest.
They had 11 children, of whom six survived. She later moved to the Great Blasket Island after marrying a native of the island who was a fisherman. Peig was taken out of school at the age of 12 and went to work for a Dingle family for a couple of years before returning home to Dunquin due to illness. 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. A friend, who has a more refined sensibility and openness to Irish culture, thinks Peig’s book is fascinating.
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