Editing Peig Sayers

{{Short description|Irish writer (1873–1958)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2020}}
{{Infobox writer <!-- for more information see [[:Template:Infobox writer/doc]] -->
| name         = Péig Sayers
| image        = Peig Sayers c1945.png
| caption      = Sayers, {{c.|1945}}
| birth_date   = {{birth date|1873|03|29|df=y}}
| birth_place  = [[Dún Chaoin]], County Kerry, [[History of Ireland (1801–1923)|Ireland]]
| death_date   = {{death date and age|1958|12|08|1873|03|29|df=y}}
| death_place  = [[Dingle]], County Kerry, Ireland
| nationality  = Irish
| spouse       = Pádraig Ó Guithín
| alma_mater   =
| occupation   = Storyteller, housewife
| notableworks = ''Peig''
}}
'''Máiréad "Peig" Sayers''' ({{IPAc-en|ˌ|p|ɛ|ɡ|_|ˈ|s|eɪ|ər|z}}; 29 March 1873{{snd}}8 December 1958) was an Irish author and [[seanchaí]] ({{IPA|ga|ˈʃan̪ˠəxiː|pron}} <small>or</small> {{IPA|ga|ʃan̪ˠəˈxiː|}}) born in [[Dunquin|Dún Chaoin]], County Kerry, Ireland.<ref>[https://churchrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/details/2cd8010061089?b=https%3A%2F%2Fchurchrecords.irishgenealogy.ie%2Fchurchrecords%2Fsearch.jsp%3Fnamefm%3D%26namel%3Dsayers%26exact%3D%26name2fm%3D%26name2l%3D%26location%3D%26yyfrom%3D1873%26yyto%3D1873%26diocese%3DKERRY%2B%28RC%29%26parish%3D%26century%3D%26decade%3D%26sort%3D%26pageSize%3D100%26ddBfrom%3D%26mmBfrom%3D%26yyBfrom%3D%26ddMfrom%3D%26mmMfrom%3D%26yyMfrom%3D%26ddDfrom%3D%26mmDfrom%3D%26yyDfrom%3D%26ddBto%3D%26mmBto%3D%26yyBto%3D%26ddMto%3D%26mmMto%3D%26yyMto%3D%26ddDto%3D%26mmDto%3D%26yyDto%3D%26locationB%3D%26locationM%3D%26locationD%3D%26member0%3D%26member1%3D%26member2%3D%26member3%3D%26member4%3D%26member5%3D%26member6%3D%26member7%3D%26member8%3D%26member9%3D%26namef0%3D%26namef1%3D%26namef2%3D%26namef3%3D%26namef4%3D%26namef5%3D%26namef6%3D%26namef7%3D%26namef8%3D%26namef9%3D%26namel0%3D%26namel1%3D%26namel2%3D%26namel3%3D%26namel4%3D%26namel5%3D%26namel6%3D%26namel7%3D%26namel8%3D%26namel9%3D%26event%3D%26keyword%3D%26submit%3DSearch Margaret Sears] Area – Kerry (RC), Parish/Church/Congregation – Ballyferriter</ref> [[Seán Ó Súilleabháin]], the former Chief archivist for the [[Irish Folklore Commission]], described her as "one of the greatest woman storytellers of recent times".<ref name="sullivan">Sean O'Sullivan, "Folktales of Ireland," pages 270–271: "The narrator, Peig Sayers, who died on 8 December 1958, was one of the greatest storytellers of recent times. Some of her tales were recorded on the Ediphone in the late 'twenties by Dr. Robin Flower, Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum, and again by Seosamh Ó Dálaigh twenty years later."</ref>

==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>

==Books==
{{More citations needed section|date=March 2021}}
Sayers is most famous for her autobiography ''Peig'' ({{ISBN|0-8156-0258-8}}), but also for the folklore and stories which were recorded in {{lang|ga|Machnamh Seanmhná}} (''An Old Woman's Reflections'', {{ISBN|978-0-19-281239-1}}). The books were not written down by Peig, but were dictated to others.<ref>{{cite news |title=She wrote about the Blaskets |work=The Irish Times |issue=page 1 |date=9 December 1958}}</ref>

Sayers' memoir ''Peig'' describes her childhood immersed in traditional [[Munster Irish]]-speaking culture, which was still surviving despite [[rackrenting]] [[Anglo-Irish]] landlords, the resulting extreme poverty, and the coercive [[Anglicisation]] of the educational system. Another theme was devout [[Catholic Church in Ireland|Catholicism]] and mass emigration to the [[New World]] following a ceremonial [[ceilidh]] called an "American wake".

Even though Peig Sayers' memoir at first received high praise, Máire Ní Chinnéide has since received very harsh criticism and accusations of [[censorship in Ireland|censorship]]. Máire Ní Chinnéide did so, however, to make Peig's life story conform to the idealised vision of the Irish peasantry favoured by the ruling [[Fianna Fáil]] political party, which owed more to 19th century [[Romantic nationalism]] than to the reality of daily life or the culture of the [[Gaeltacht]]aí.

One matter of speculation is whether there was delicate material that a female informant such as she would have refrained from recounting to a male collector ([[Irish Folklore Commission]]'s policy being to hire only male collectors), though there was evidently close rapport established between the two individuals, which perhaps overrode such hypothetical barriers.{{sfnp|Briody|2007|p=463}} She was also among the informants not comfortable with being recorded mechanically on the [[Ediphone]], so the material had to be taken down on pen and paper.{{sfnp|Briody|2007|p=249}}

In the 1966 [[University of Chicago]] volume ''Folktales of Ireland'', three uncensored folktales collected from Peig Sayers, as translated by [[Seán Ó Súilleabháin]], appeared in English for the first time.<ref> Sean O'Sullivan (1966), ''Folktales of Ireland'', [[University of Chicago]] Press. Pages 57–60, 151–165, 192–205, 263, 270–271, 276–277.</ref>

===''Peig''===
[[File:peig_sayers_headstone.jpg|thumb|upright|Headstone of Peig Sayers]]
''Peig'' is among the most famous expressions of a late [[Gaelic Revival]] genre of personal histories by and about inhabitants of the Blasket Islands and other remote Gaeltacht locations. [[Tomás Ó Criomhthain]]'s similarly censored memoir {{lang|ga|an tOileánach}} ("the Islandman", 1929) and [[Muiris Ó Súilleabháin]]'s {{lang|ga|Fiche Bliain ag Fás}}, and [[Robert J. Flaherty]]'s documentary film ''[[Man of Aran]]'' address similar subjects.

The often bleak tone of the book is established from its opening words:

{{cquote|"I am an old woman now, with one foot in the grave and the other on its edge. I have experienced much ease and much hardship from the day I was born until this very day. 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 as it was in the beginning of my days."
}}

Ironically, the standard cliches of Peig's memoirs and those censored similarly to hers swiftly found themselves the object of contempt and mockery – especially among the cosmopolitan middle class [[intelligentsia]] and the often covertly literary [[Civil Service of the Republic of Ireland|Irish civil service]] – for their often extremely depressing accounts of rural poverty, starvation, family tragedies, and bereavements. In [[Modern literature in Irish]], mockery of the Gaeltacht memoir genre reached its peak with [[Flann O'Brien]]'s parody of {{lang|ga|An tOileánach}}; the novel {{lang|ga|[[An Béal Bocht]]}} ("The Poor Mouth").

Despite this fact, Peig's book was widely used as a text for teaching and examining Irish in many secondary schools. As a book with arguably sombre and depressing themes and its latter half cataloguing a string of heartbreaking family tragedies, its presence on the Irish syllabus has often been harshly criticised.

It led, for example, to the following comment from [[Progressive Democrats|Progressive Democrat]] Seanadóir [[John Minihan (politician)|John Minihan]] in the [[Seanad Éireann]] in 2006 when discussing improvements to the curriculum:

{{cquote|"No matter what our personal view of the book might be, there is a sense that one has only to mention the name Peig Sayers to a certain age group and one will see a dramatic rolling of the eyes, or worse."|20px|20xp|[[Seanad Éireann]] – Volume 183 – 5 April 2006<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/seanad/2006-04-05/speech/131/|title=Irish language: Motion |first=Houses of the|last=Oireachtas|date=5 April 2006|website=www.oireachtas.ie}}</ref>
}}

According to Blasket Islands literary scholar Cole Moreton, however, this was not Peig's fault, but that of her censors, "Some of her stories were very funny, some savage, some wise, some earthy; but very few made it into the pages of her autobiography. The words were dictated to her son, then edited by the wife of a Dublin school inspector, and both collaborators sanitized the text a little in turn so that it was homely and pious, a book fit to be taken up as a set text in Irish schools. The image of Peig's broad face smiling out from beneath a headscarf, hands clasped in her lap, became familiar to generations of schoolchildren who were bored rigid by this holy peasant woman who had been forced upon them. They grew up loathing Peig... without hearing the stories as they were intended."<ref name="Marcus Tanner 2004 Pages 102-103"/>

''Peig'' was eventually replaced by [[Maidhc Dainín Ó Sé]]'s ''A Thig Ná Tit Orm'' during the mid-1990s.

==Popular culture==
In ''Paddywhackery'', a television show from 2007 on the [[Irish language]] on television channel [[TG4]], [[Fionnula Flanagan]] plays the ghost of Peig Sayers, sent to Dublin to restore faith in the Irish [[language revival]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.iftn.ie/news/?act1=record&only=1&aid=73&rid=4280742&tpl=archnews&force=1 |title=Daniel O’Hara Goes ‘Paddywhackery’}}</ref>

A stage play, ''Peig: The Musical!'' (co-written by [[Julian Gough]],<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/author/cr-103253/julian-gough/  |title=HarperCollins – Julian Gough bio}}</ref> Gary MacSweeney and the ''Flying Pig Comedy Troupe'') was also loosely based on Peig's autobiography.

== See also ==

* [[Tomás O'Crohan|Tomás Ó Criomhthain]]

== External links ==

* [https://archive.org/details/peig0000saye/ Text of ''Peig''], in original Irish

* [https://archive.org/details/peigautobiograph0000saye/ Text of ''Peig''], translated into English

==References==
;Citation
{{reflist}}

;Bibliography
{{refbegin}}
* {{cite book|ref={{SfnRef|Briody|2007}}|last=Briody |first=Mícheál |author-link=<!--Mícheál Briody--> |title=The Irish Folklore Commission 1935-1970 |location=Helsinki |publisher=Finnish Literature Society |year=2018 |orig-year=2007 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RoZRDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA230 |isbn=9517469470<!--, 9789517469470-->}}
{{Refend}}

{{Gaelic literature}}
{{Blasket Islands}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sayers, Peig}}
[[Category:1873 births]]
[[Category:1958 deaths]]
[[Category:20th-century Irish women writers]]
[[Category:Irish-language writers]]
[[Category:20th-century Irish memoirists]]
[[Category:Irish storytellers]]
[[Category:Irish women memoirists]]
[[Category:Writers from County Kerry]]
[[Category:People from the Dingle Peninsula]]
[[Category:History of women in Ireland]]
[[Category:Women storytellers]]