Editing Peig Sayers (section)

==Biography==

=== Youth ===

She was born Máiréad Sayers in the townland of Vicarstown, [[Dunquin]], [[Dingle Peninsula|Corca Dhuibhne]], County Kerry, the youngest child of the family.<ref name="oxford">{{cite ODNB|id=58634|title=Sayers, Peig|first=Maria|last=Luddy}}</ref> She was called Peig after her mother, Margaret "Peig" Brosnan, from [[Castleisland]]. Her father Tomás Sayers was a locally renowned expert on the [[oral tradition]] and passed on many of his tales to Peig.

Through her father's influence, Peig also grew up upon a rich [[oral tradition]] of [[Irish folklore]], [[Irish mythology|mythology]], and local history, including local [[folk hero]]es like [[Piaras Feiritéar]], faction fights at pattern days and market fairs before the [[Great Famine (Ireland)|Great Famine]], and the lingering memory of [[Mass rock]]s and [[priest hunter]]s under the [[Penal Laws (Ireland)|Penal Laws]]. The custom of ''bothántaíocht'' (people visiting neighbours at night to swap news and stories) was strong and Peig’s brother Sean used to bring her along, and Peig heard and remembered a large number of stories about the past. <ref>{{Cite book |title=Peig Sayers: Volume 1: Labharfad le Cach |publisher=New Island |year=2022 |isbn=978-1-84840-845-6 |edition=Paperback |location=Dublin}}</ref>Peig was very sociable and enjoyed the company of older people as well as girls her own age.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Peig Sayers: Volume 1: Labharfad le Cach |publisher=New Island |year=2022 |isbn=978-1-84840-845-6 |edition=Paperback |location=Dublin}}</ref>

At the age of 12, she was taken out of the [[National school (Ireland)|National school]] and went to work as a domestic servant for the Curran family in the nearby town of [[Dingle]].<ref name=wom>Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia, 2002</ref> The Currans were members of the growing [[Irish Catholic]] middle class produced by the Government-funded [[Land Acts (Ireland)|breakup and sale]] of the [[Anglo-Irish]] landlords' estates after the [[Land War]]. Peig later recalled that the Curran family were kind employers and treated her very well. The Curran children, however, were forbidden by their parents, who desired for them to move up in the world, to learn the [[Irish language]] and so, at the children's request, Peig taught the local [[vernacular]] to them in secret.

After she grew to adulthood, Peig was promised during the "American wake" of her childhood best friend, Cáit Boland, that Peig would soon join her as part of the [[Irish diaspora]] in the United States. Cáit later wrote, however, that she had had an accident and could not forward the cost of Peig's passage.

=== Island Life ===
Instead, Peig moved to the [[Great Blasket Island]] after her brother arranged for her to marry Pádraig Ó Guithín,<ref name="oxford"/> a fisherman and native of the island, nine years her senior,<ref>{{Cite book |title=Peig Sayers: Volume 1: Labharfad le Cach |publisher=New Island |year=2022 |isbn=978-1-84840-845-6 |edition=Paperback |location=Dublin}}</ref> on 13 February 1892.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/details-civil/240ef17590494|title=General Registrar's Office|website=IrishGenealogy.ie|access-date=29 March 2017}}</ref> Pádraig and Peig had eleven children, of whom only six survived their mother.<ref name=wom/> Three died in infancy, and an eight year old girl, Siobhán, died from measles.

[[Norwegian people|Norwegian]] [[linguist]] and [[Celtic studies|Celticist]] [[Carl Marstrander]] stayed on the island while studying the Corca Dhuibhne dialect of [[Munster Irish]] in 1907 and later persuaded [[Robin Flower]] of the [[British Museum]] to similarly visit the Blaskets. Flower was keenly appreciative of Peig Sayers' storytelling skills. He recorded her and brought her stories to the attention of the academic world.<ref name="flo">Flower, Robin. The Western Island. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945. New edition 1973.</ref>

After the [[Easter Rising]] of 1916, Peig hung up a framed picture of the 16 executed [[Irish Volunteers]] and [[Irish Citizen Army]] leaders in the family's cottage in Great Blasket island. During a search of the island by the [[Black and Tans]] during the subsequent [[Irish War of Independence]], a terrified Pádraig Ó Guithín ordered his wife to take the picture down before she got them all killed. Even though Peig indignantly refused, the search party did not harm anyone in their family.<ref>Peig Sayers (1962), ''An Old Woman's Reflections'', [[Oxford University Press]]. Translated by [[Seamus Ennis]]. Pages 113–120.</ref>

Pádraig Ó Guithín died in April 1923.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Peig Sayers: Volume 1: Labharfad le Cach |publisher=New Island |year=2022 |isbn=978-1-84840-845-6 |edition=Paperback |location=Dublin}}</ref> The remaining children, like many islanders, emigrated to America. <ref>{{Cite book |title=Peig Sayers: Volume 1: Labharfad le Cach |publisher=New Island |year=2022 |isbn=978-1-84840-845-6 |edition=Paperback |location=Dublin}}</ref>Last to leave was Mícheál, called 'an File’ (The Poet), who sailed in 1929. From then on Peig lived only with her elderly, partially blind brother-in-law, Mícheál.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Peig Sayers: Volume 1: Labharfad le Cach |publisher=New Island |year=2022 |isbn=978-1-84840-845-6 |edition=Paperback |location=Dublin}}</ref>

During the 1930s a Dublin teacher, [[Máire Ní Chinnéide]], who was also a regular visitor to the Blaskets, urged Peig to tell her life story to her son Mícheál. Peig was [[illiterate]] in the Irish language, having received her early schooling only through the medium of English. She dictated her biography to Mícheál, who then sent the manuscript pages to Máire Ní Chinnéide in Dublin. Ní Chinnéide then edited the manuscript for its publication in 1936.

Over several years from 1938 Peig dictated 350 ancient legends, [[ghost stories]], [[Irish folklore|folktales]], and religious stories to Seosamh Ó Dálaigh of the [[Irish Folklore Commission]]<ref name="sullivan"/> (while another source tallies 432 items collected by Ó Dálaigh from her, some 5,000 pages of material).{{sfnp|Briody|2007|pp=468, 466}} Peig had a vast repertoire of tales, ranging from the [[Fenian Cycle]] of [[Irish mythology]] to romantic and supernatural stories.<ref name="Marcus Tanner 2004 Pages 102-103">Marcus Tanner (2004), ''The Last of the Celts'', Yale University Press. Pages 102–103.</ref>

'''Final Years'''

She continued to live on the island until 1942, when she returned to her native place, Dunquin, to live with her son, Mícheál, because there was nobody to look after her in her old age on the island.<ref>Letters from the Great Blasket, Eibhlis Ní Shúilleabháin, p.36, Mercier Press</ref><ref>{{cite news |title="Queen of the Blaskets" in hospital |work=The Irish Times |issue=page 3 |date=9 January 1952}}</ref>

Peig lost her eyesight in the late 1940s. She travelled to Dublin for the first time in 1952 at the age of 81 years, having required hospital treatment there.<ref>{{cite news |title="Queen of the Blaskets" in hospital |work=The Irish Times |issue=page 3 |date=9 January 1952}}</ref>

She later moved to a hospital in [[Dingle]], County Kerry where she died on 8 December 1958 at the age of 85 years.<ref>{{cite news |title=She wrote about the Blaskets |work=The Irish Times |issue=page 1 |date=9 December 1958}}</ref> She is buried in the Dún Chaoin Burial Ground, [[Corca Dhuibhne]], Ireland. All her surviving children except Mícheál emigrated to the United States to live with their descendants in [[Springfield, Massachusetts]].<ref>Marcus Tanner (2004), ''The Last of the Celts'', Yale University Press. Pages 104.</ref>