The other Blasket islanders we were expected to read, or to know about, included Muiris Ó Súilleabháin, author of the autobiographical Fiche Blian ag Fás (Twenty Years a-Growing), and Tomás Ó Criomhthain, who wrote An tOileánach (‘The Islandman,’ 1929), satirised by Flann O’Brien as An Béal Bocht (‘The Poor Mouth’).īut as we headed out the Dingle Peninsula last week, we were reminded that Peig was neither from the Blasket Islands, nor did she die there. 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. The oft-bleak tone of the book begins with the very opening words: ‘I am an old woman now, with one foot in the grave and the other on its edge. Her book Peig depicts the declining years of a traditional, Irish-speaking way of life characterised by poverty, devout Roman Catholicism, and folk memories of gang violence, the Great Famine, and the Penal Laws. It was only later in life that I learned that she never wrote the book, and that she dictated her reminiscences to others, who redacted and edited them. I cannot blame my negative teenage views of the Irish language on Peig Sayers … but she did nothing to leave me with a positive view of a language that was foreign to me, despite an increasing interest in the Irish language at the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 Rising.Īnyone of my age who was a schoolboy in Ireland in the 1950s and the 1960s has memories of Peig Sayers (1873-1958) and her autobiographical memoir Peig.
#Peig sayers books full#
And until I spent the summer of 1966 in Ballinskelligs in the Kerry Gaeltacht, I was on course to fail the ‘Inter Cert’ exams in Irish – and so I was on course too to failing the full exams and to finding myself on the way to school in England.
Her books were part of the reading list on the Irish-language courses. The Blasket Islands seen from Slea Head (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017 click on image for full-screen view)Īs a schoolboy, Peig Sayers were the bane of my life.
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