Analysis: Look beyond the photo on the cover of her autobiography and the Kerrywoman's story reflects issues that still concern us today
The grainy picture of an old woman on the front of the school textbook is unmistakeable to a certain generation of Irish school goers. A shawl wrapped around her shoulders, she looks up at the reader from her seat by the fire, her head askance as she appears to pause in her knitting. This is Peig Sayers and the book is Peig.
For many, her autobiography is synonymous with memories of the Leaving Certificate and the drudgery of rote learning passages of a poorly understood Irish language text. Yet, as Sayers might say herself, ní mar a shíltear a bhítear: sometimes all is not as it seems. For when we open a scéal féin, first published in 1936, and delve into its opening chapters, the life story of the young girl from Baile an Bhiocáire in Dún Chaoin in Co Kerry quickly reveals itself.
Hailing from what UCC researcher Patricia Coughlan describes as the rural 'subsistence class’, and dictated by her to her son Micheál, most of Peig is an account of her life as a girl and a young woman, and not the old woman who has become a fixture in the popular imagination, as was explored in the 2021 TG4 documentary. Not only that, but the bulk of the autobiography focuses on issues that continue to be relevant for young people in Ireland in 2024 – having one’s own home, work, leaving home, and the sustaining power of friendships.
From TG4, Sinéad Ní Uallacháin is on a rebranding mission to give Peig the mother of all make overs
The importance of home is one of the most enduring aspects of Peig, and the teenage longing for her own place becomes increasingly important as she grows from girlhood into womanhood. This is fuelled not only by the harsh conditions of her second period as a domestic servant, but also by a desire to be free from oppression, which she describes as ‘daorsmacht’.
Forced by circumstances (including a jealous sister-in-law) into domestic servitude aged fourteen and leaving her beloved, ailing mother behind, homesickness and loneliness are palpable in Sayer's account of teenage employment. She describes what it like to be under the cosh, ‘fé bhais an chait’ and what it is to be powerless, ‘fé dhaoirse’. In a significant passage in the autobiography, she gives an account of what in current parlance we call sexist language, gender discrimination and gas lighting.
But if her working life is unrelenting, the supportive nature of her female friendships with older women, with her island sisters when she moves to the Blasket Island, and with her best friend Cáit Jim, see her through some of her more difficult periods. Even as Sayers looks back on the vagaries of her life in the final passages of the book, she continues to hold imaginary dialogues with her childhood friend, many years after Cáit has emigrated. They are never to meet again.
It is possible that the material hardships and emotional challenges described so honestly by a woman of her class were unwelcome in an Ireland that frequently silenced women’s voices. Class studies in modern Irish language literary criticism, and political and sociological studies of class in Irish language communities, continues to be an under-explored area of research.
Although a less well-known text, it is interesting in the context of the dearth of class studies in Irish to compare the negative perception of Peig among the general public to the rapturous reception and interest that for example Caoineadh airt Uí Laoghaire continues to generate. For the narrator in Eibhlín Dhubh Ní Chonaill’s poem, material wealth and status feature heavily, with a heavy focus on the trappings of middle class Gaelic life and culture. On the contrary, Peig is centred on a more immediate necessity - survival.
So, how should those who wish to reacquaint themselves with Peig go about reclaiming the text? Thinking differently about the book is the first step. With its abundance of universal themes, we can conceive of it as a work of world literature. Although it shares much with Tomás Ó Criomhthain's An tOileánach (1929) and Muiris Ó Súilleabháin’s Fiche Bliain Ag Fás (1933) these are, after all, ‘masculine renditions’ of island life (2010) as researcher Irene Lucchitti points out.
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From RTÉ Archives, a dramatised account of Peig's separation from her childhood friend Cáit Jim broadcast in 1988
For this reason, it is worth considering Peig in the context of women’s life stories from around the globe and from a variety of historical periods. These range from Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) and Nien Cheng's Life and Death in Shanghai (1986) to Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003). In terms of what Peig can teach us about Irish, Sayers' use of rhyming words, her playful pairing of opposites, her creative use of proverbs, her inventive metaphors and, most of all, the soundscape that she creates, comprise some of the most sparkling features of the work and indeed, capture important facets of modern Irish.
I am the granddaughter of islanders from Clew Bay, who experienced the harsh realities of island life that I imagine were similar to Sayers' experience during her 40 years on the Great Blasket Island, and her life story continues to resonate with me. I believe it speaks to women at all stages of life. As a key to understanding the beauty of the Irish language, the most vulnerable of our national treasures, Peig will always rank amongst my most cherished works.
A full article on Peig and this topic is now available in the Special Collections Open Library of Humanities Journal series Local and Universal in Irish Literature and Culture
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
