Phs s Pdraig Gaoithn n mBlascaod Mr, agus d'aistrigh s ansin leis. Thinig Peig Sayers ar an saol i nDn Chaoin, baile beag i gContae Chiarra, ire.

I wish, though, that her written legacy retained more sense of the shrewdness and humour which were part of her oral inheritance, still flourishing here in Corca Dhuibhne. Seancha agus drbheathaisnis ireannach ab ea Peig Sayers (1873 - 1958). Indeed, it was at university that I fell in love with her world and its worldview myself. No one, therefore, could be happier than I am to know of NUI Galway's students' admiration for Peig. They produced a bottle and within a short time. For many of us, resentful of the requirement to achieve a pass in Irish in order to pass the Leaving Cert, Peig Sayers's name represented insult added to injury.įar from disparaging either the woman or her cultural legacy, I reiterated a point made in my memoir – that the decision to foist Peig's edited reminiscences on a generation of schoolchildren who, in most cases, had no sense of the struggling communities she described, was an act of folly that deprived them of something of value. In Chapter 14 of the account of her life, Peig tells us of a night when three men unknown to either herself or her father came through the door. I wrote that my own generation of secondary schoolchildren hated reading Peig, a work which was presented to us uncontextualised in terms of the social background from which it emerged, and in a form which failed to represent the earthy humour that was a feature of Blasket island life. However, he also states that my feature on the cultural heritage of the Blasket Islands (Life, May 20th) includes comments that are “disparaging towards Peig Sayers”, which is not the case. Sir, – Tomás Ó Murchú (June 1st) writes that a majority of his final year Irish language students in NUI Galway informed him during course evaluation that he should have spent more time on Peig Sayers’s works, as they enjoyed her.

Peig sayera