22 Facts About Peig Sayers

Peig Sayers was born Mairead Sayers in the townland of Vicarstown, Dunquin, Corca Dhuibhne, County Kerry, the youngest child of the family.

Peig Sayers was called Peig after her mother, Margaret "Peig" Brosnan, from Castleisland.

Peig Sayers's father Tomas Sayers was a locally renowned expert on the oral tradition and passed on many of his tales to Peig.

Peig Sayers was very sociable and enjoyed the company of older people as well as girls her own age.

Peig Sayers later recalled that the Curran family were kind employers and treated her very well.

The Curran children 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 Sayers taught the local vernacular to them in secret.

Padraig and Peig Sayers had eleven children, of whom only six survived their mother.

Peig Sayers recorded her and brought her stories to the attention of the academic world.

Peig Sayers was illiterate in the Irish language, having received her early schooling only through the medium of English.

Peig Sayers dictated her biography to Micheal, who then sent the manuscript pages to Maire Ni Chinneide in Dublin.

Over several years from 1938 Peig Sayers dictated 350 ancient legends, ghost stories, folktales, and religious stories to Seosamh O Dalaigh of the Irish Folklore Commission.

Peig Sayers had a vast repertoire of tales, ranging from the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology to romantic and supernatural stories.

Peig Sayers continued to live on the island until 1942, when she returned to her native place, Dunquin, to live with her son, Micheal, because there was nobody to look after her in her old age on the island.

Peig Sayers travelled to Dublin for the first time in 1952 at the age of 81 years, having required hospital treatment there.

Peig Sayers later moved to a hospital in Dingle, County Kerry where she died on 8 December 1958 at the age of 85 years.

Peig Sayers is buried in the Dun Chaoin Burial Ground, Corca Dhuibhne, Ireland.

The books were not written down by Peig Sayers, but were dictated to others.

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.

Peig Sayers was among the informants not comfortable with being recorded mechanically on the Ediphone, so the material had to be taken down on pen and paper.

Peig Sayers 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.

Peig Sayers was eventually replaced by Maidhc Dainin O Se's A Thig Na Tit Orm during the mid-1990s.

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.