Peig was no Cáilin Ciuin, but her voice lives on 90 years since her book's publication

06 Jul 2026, 19:00 by Concubhar Ó Liatháin, https://www.thejournal.ie/author/concubhar-Ó-liatháin/ · TheJournal.ie

(Seo alt ónár bhfoireann Gaeltachta. Is féidir an bunleagan as Gaeilge a léamh anseo)

WHILE THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL book Peig was a source of torment for a generation of secondary school students who studied it for the Leaving Certificate until the mid-1990s, evidence continues to emerge showing that she was a pioneering woman who gave a voice to Gaeltacht women in a way that had never been done before.

Mairéad ‘Peig’ Sayers, who was born in 1873, is being commemorated this month - it was in July 1936 that her book was first published, a work in which she described her life: the hard existence she had from her youth in Dún Chaoin, her life on the island, and her return to the mainland.

Peig's autobiography was first published in July 1936. The Great Blasket CentreThe Great Blasket Centre

Her life is also being recalled at the Great Blasket Centre in Dún Chaoin – the Gaeltacht community where she was born and raised – which received a special gift last week: a copy of the first edition of Peig.

“We are enormously grateful to Caitlín Nic Amhlaigh who gave us this precious book,” said Lorcán Ó Cinnéide, Director of the Centre, speaking to The Journal. The donor is a retired teacher from Corca Dhuibhne by origin who now lives in Ballyshannon in County Donegal.

Ó Cinnéide explained that the book was of particular importance as it was the first work of its kind to give a voice to a Gaeltacht woman.

“The dust jacket describes Peig as follows — ‘an ordinary woman of the people, but Peig Sayers, the author, was an extraordinary woman in her gift for storytelling, in her wit and her warmth in spite of the hardships she endured, and in her philosophy regarding the affairs of life and time.’”

He also recalled what his own late father, the poet Caoimhín Ó Cinnéide – who knew Peig – particularly towards the end of her life – had said about her. “He said to me: she was a great character, full of craic, full of curses and full of spirit,” he said.

“You would know, let us say, that you were in the presence of someone who had standing, who had authority and who had something to say and had no reluctance to say it.

“That is a reading entirely different from the kind of understanding people had of her from the book.”

He said it was from Peig that the largest collection of stories in the archive of University College Dublin came, and he said that hundreds of copies of her book are sold every year at the Blasket Centre, particularly the English language version.