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Peig Sayers, quite unfairly, became a punchline of the terrible way the beauty of Gaeilge was inflicted upon Irish kids like a curse instead of a priceless blessing. She was born Máiréad Sayers in 1873, in the townland of Vicarstown Dún Chaoin, County Kerry. She’d grow up to become one of the most recorded voices in Irish oral tradition… before the advent of Onlyfans at least. And one of the most resented names on generations of Leaving Cert syllabi (dying to use that word!) Peig married Pádraig Ó Guithín in February 1892 and moved with him to the savage paradise of the Great Blasket Island, a few miles off the Dingle Peninsula. The marriage was arranged and she’d never laid eyes on him before the match was made. She`d eleven children for him, tragically only six survived to adulthood. Her formal education ended when she was only 12 years old, when she was sent into service. So she never learned to read or write in Irish.
But her encyclopedic memory for stories, songs, and island lore was so complete that scholars and linguists made pilgrimages to her fireside to record it, thank Christ. And Robin Flower of the British Museum among them. In the 1930s, encouraged by Dublin teacher Máire Ní Chinnéide and her own son Mícheál, Peig dictated her life story to Flower. He wrote it down, sent it to Ní Chinnéide for editing, and the result was published in 1936 as Peig. It became a fixture of the Irish school curriculum for decades and it became a cliché how miserable and boring it was and hardly likely to be relatable or exciting for urban secondary school kids. I loved it, but then again I find asymmetric tachyon entanglements erotic.
Incidentally Peig left the Great Blasket in 1942, despite a lot of needlessly romantic accounts saying she evacuation in the final exodus with the last twenty-two islanders were resettled on the mainland in 1953. She spent her remaining years in Dingle and passed away there on 8 December 1958 aged 85. Her dictated autobiography and the hundreds of tales collected from her by the Irish Folklore Commission is an absolute priceless treasure of native Gaelic storytelling. She was one of the last true seanchaithe and she deserves a new audience. I`ll give the last word to the legend herself: “Long as the day is, night comes, and alas, the night is coming for me too… A person here and a person there will say, maybe, ‘Who was that Peig Sayers?’ but poor Peig will be the length of their shout from them.” From Machnamh Seanmhná (An Old Woman’s Reflections) Buy the Dublin Time Machine a pint and support the DTM Book https://ko-fi.com/buchanandublintimemachine
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