Island Writers

"An old woman sat up in bed in Dingle Hospital. Her hair was carefully combed. As she sat in state, her sightless eyes vaguely alternating with her ears in sifting the occasions of the ward, a flock of schoolboys crowded to the stairhead and spilled quietly into the room.

As four boys walked forward, nuns and nurses watched carefully. One of the boys spoke in Irish.

'Peig Sayers', he said, 'we offer you this small gift as a mark of our esteem' …chun méid ár measa a chur in iúl duit…

He thrust his gift into the blind woman's hands. The tears came down the old features. Peig Sayers of the Blasket Island, one of the great narrators of the wonder-tales of Gaelic Ireland, and a superb natural actress was on her deathbed.

In gratitude she stretched out her hands to read and caress the boy's face."

From HERE'S IRELAND by Bryan MacMahon

The Great Blasket is the largest of a group of small islands lying off the south-west coast of Ireland. An Irish-speaking fishing community [c. 200 pop.] lived on the island, where there were no doctors or policemen, no post-office or shops or bars. During the winter months the island was completely cut off from mainland Ireland.

Today the Great Blasket Island is known throughout the world as it spawned a number of great Irish writers - Peig Sayers, Tomás Ó Criomhthain and Maurice O'Sullivan among others. None of the writers had more than a basic primary education and yet their works have been translated into many languages. They are chiefly known through English translations of their works.

Peig Sayers was born in Dunquin on the mainland in 1873. She married into the island and spent the most of her life there. She has been hailed internationally as a great storyteller, though she was illiterate in Irish and her stories were recorded from her by dictaphone or by dictation. About 5,000 manuscript pages from her can be found in the archives of The Irish Folklore Commission.

One of her books "Peig" gives a unique insight into the culture, traditions, joy and hardship of Island life. She tells of the recreations of the people on the island and how they battled with the danger of cliff and sea. Her stories relate tales of real-life heroes, with plenty of observations on neighbours, both living and dead. She tells of arranged marriages, of the fact that there was no class divisions on the island and of the tools the fishermen and farmers used, which were primitive in relation to those used on the Mainland.

One topic that fascinates readers is the culture of matches, where a woman had to marry the man chosen for her by her family. Peig's father made a match for her with a man on the island and Peig accepted this man, willingly though she had never spoken to her soon-to-be husband until she met him at the altar. She mentions days of multiple marriages at Ballyferriter, a village on the mainland. She doesn't actually speak about the Church ceremony but about what went on in the bars and the street!

Peig gives an elderly woman's view of her life, but she also recaptures her childhood and youth in a way that no other Irish writer does, in my opinion.

Peig recalls the Fenian tales in Irish folklore. There was the tale of the Battle of Ventry, in which the Fianna fought for a year against French invaders; a story about a girl called Sibéal [Sybil in English] who was drowned off Sybil Head after eloping with her lover. Another tale relates how a woman lay with a phantom man who came to her from the sea. She gave birth nine months later to a son who never slept.

I recall my mother Maura, telling me a story, that her mother Nell, would recite to her, about Peig. Peig, at age twelve was sent to the village of Cnoc a' Bhróigín to work on a farm there. Nell lived next door. The people of the village soon got to know Peig and she was nick-named "the accordion"…the reason being that the farmer who she worked for made her climb the hills and vales ten or twelve times a day, bringing cows, calves, bulls and sheep from field to field. Here is an extract from "Peig: The Autobiography":

"The summer was fine, sultry and dry. Five or six cattle were grazing on the hillside field and as the weather was so fine they often had to be driven to water. After dinner-time the boss came in.

'Peig,' he said, 'you may as well drive the cattle to water for they haven't had a drink for two days'.

Although I was lazy enough to move off I had no business going against him. That was the reason I was there and earning my tuppenny pay! I stood up and called the puppy in the house; he was very useful, for I had him trained to catch the cattle by the tail and as soon as he'd pinch them they'd go wild. My master was often angry with me because the cows' tails were torn by the pup but that didn't bother me as long as it was convenient for myself".
Peig: The Autobiography

Tragically for those of us interested in Irish culture in it's purity, the island was evacuated on November 1953, and a way of life which is totally alein to most of us, was lost forever.

Most of the islanders emigrated to the USA. In fact, 80% sailed to America and most of them settled in Springfield, Mass. There are only two former islanders living in Dunquin now, the nearest parish on the mainland to the Great Blasket Island. Peig is buried in Dunquin and her grave is facing out towards the wild Atlantic Ocean and her beloved Blasket Island.