![]() Peig Sayers, who died in 1958, lived in two homes during the near-50 years she spent on the island. “We have heard there are plans to build a pier on the island but, to be honest, we think they would be better off first installing better facilities for tourists." “There are no toilets, and there should be, and there are also no signs warning visitors about the dangers of being too close to the seals,” Mr Montgomery said. It was one of two to die that we know of.” The couple were so concerned about what they say has been going on on the island that they recently wrote to the OPW to draw their attention to the issues. “We witnessed one man throw a seal cub into the water, then take it out and hold it up for a selfie taken by his wife. “We are, however, more worried about what day trippers are doing to seals. “But we don’t blame people because they have nowhere else to go. Netherlands-born Ms de Haas said: “We witnessed people regularly using the ruins as toilets. Peig Sayers' home on the Great Blasket Island. ![]() The couple, who left the island on Tuesday after starting work there as holiday home caretakers in April, also say tourists are endangering the lives of seals in the island’s famous seal colony. Novelist, folklorist, university lecturer, balladeer, and poet he has had three of his plays produced by the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, and his fiction has received critical acclaim and wide translation.But the island, which has neither electricity nor water mains, doesn’t have public toilets.Īs a result, tourists use ruins - which include the first home Peig lived in when she arrived on the island that the OPW has owned since 2009 - as toilets instead. ![]() Peig recounts a life of tragedy and joy in which whatever occurs is stoically endured, buoyed by the companionship of neighbors and by faith in God.- The Nation About the Author Bryan MacMahon, a fluent Irish speaker, looked on this translation of Peig as a labor of love. Much of the grief she suffered was over the death of four of her ten children, another was the torment of all-night vigils while her husband was out fishing. She later moved to Great Blasket Island where she spent the next forty years-a troubled and tormented life. An important part of Irelands oral heritage, as well as a monument to an astonishing personality.- Eire Ireland Near classic status.- Choice Peig was brought up on the mainland, where she spent a life of servitude and hardship. Review Quotes A fine, heartwarming book.- Publishers Weekly Her story is very Irish indeed, but so close to earth as to be universal. Long loved in Ireland, this autobiography will now be seen for what it truly is-one of the great heart-cries of the Irish people. As Eoin McKiernan, President of the Irish American Cultural Institute, notes in his introduction, Peig has the quality of honesty and sincerity, of life lived at the bone. Through this American edition, Peig will reach a new international audience. ![]() She is buried a short distance from the townland where she was born, above the sea on the Dingle Peninsula, within sight of the Great Blasket Island. Her own farewell to life had the same clear-eyed simplicity: People will yet walk into the graveyard where Ill be lying Ill be stretched out quietly and the old world will have vanished. laid out as expertly and as calmly as if twelve women had tended him. Peig said of her son Toms, who was killed in a fall from a clifftop: Instead of his body being out in the broad ocean, there he was on the smooth detached stone. It reveals with fidelity, humor, and poignancy a womans life in a bleak world where survival itself was a triumph and death as familiar as life. Here is a story as unforgettable as it is simple. Book Synopsis Here is one of the classics of modern Gaelic literature-the autobiography of Peig Sayers, a remarkable woman who lived forty years at the edge of survival on barren Great Blasket Island, and who came to be recognized as one of the last of Irelands traditional storytellers.
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