Peig later recalled that the Curran family were kind employers and treated her very well. The Currans were members of the growing Irish Catholic middle class produced by the Government-funded breakup and sale of the Anglo-Irish landlords' estates after the Land War. Sayers' later 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.Īnother theme of her memories was devout Catholicism and mass emigration to the New World following a ceremonial ceilidh called an "American wake".Īt the age of 12, she was taken out of the National school and went to work as a domestic servant for the Curran family in the nearby town of Dingle. Through her father's influence, Peig also grew up upon a rich oral tradition of Irish folklore, mythology, and local history, including local folk heroes like Piaras Feiritéar, faction fights at pattern days and market fairs before the Great Famine, and the lingering memory of Mass rocks and priest hunters under the Penal Laws. Her father Tomás Sayers was a locally renowned expert on the oral tradition and passed on many of his tales to Peig. She was called Peig after her mother, Margaret "Peig" Brosnan, from Castleisland. She was born Máiréad Sayers in the townland of Vicarstown, Dunquin, Corca Dhuibhne, County Kerry, the youngest child of the family. Seán Ó Súilleabháin, the former Chief archivist for the Irish Folklore Commission, described her as "one of the greatest woman storytellers of recent times". Máiréad "Peig" Sayers ( / ˌ p ɛ ɡ ˈ s ɛər z/ 29 March 1873 – 8 December 1958) was an Irish author and seanchaí ( pronounced or – plural: seanchaithe ) born in Dún Chaoin, County Kerry, Ireland.
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