Before long I lost him, too.”īlasket Village ruins. Donal was drowned trying to save the lady off the White Strand. Two died of measles, and every epidemic that came carried off one or other of them.
From that time on they went as quickly as they came. “Ten children were born to us, but they had no good fortune, God help us! The very first of them that we christened was only seven or eight years old when he fell over the cliff and was killed. How hard was life on Blasket? Tomas O’Crohan in The Islandman wrote the following about his children: Two others, Twenty Years a Growing and The Islandman, were written by Blasket natives also. Perhaps the most astounding thing about Blasket was that Peig was not the only one from there who wrote a Gaelic literary classic. It was on those steep cliffs according to Peig that several of Blasket’s citizens met their death trying to secure enough food to carry them through the winter storms.Īs hard as life was on Blasket, during the Irish persecutions and famines several mainland families settled on the island, “Because life was better there.” I did not go further than perhaps 10 feet or so because the cliff quickly became much steeper. I climbed partway down the cliffs on the island’s north side where the residents would scramble down to pilfer the eggs of the shorebirds that nested there. It felt as though I was walking on a springy mattress. When I walked on it, it supported my weight. Peig’s home contained a single room in which she spent most of her life.īeyond the village, exposed to the fierce winds off the Atlantic, a thick mat of furze, Irish gorse, and heather, with peat (or bog or turf) beneath much of it covered the rest of the island. It was little more than rocks piled on one another for walls with more rocks to make the roof (I understand it has been made into lodging for a small hostel now). I climbed through the ruins and into Peig’s cottage. The tiny village on the lee of the island lay in ruins and deserted. There is a regular motor ferry now but not then.Īlthough the passage between the islands is no more than a couple of miles wide, it was too stormy and impassable during much of the year for the small traditional rowboats available at the time the island was inhabited, so the residents of Blasket were often marooned and had to live exclusively on what they could glean on the island. I met the ferry-man in the pub that stands on the bluff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and persuaded him (for a few dollars) to row me there. I ferried there from the mainland in one of those tar-covered little leather boats that used to be common in the western part of the country. Peig was an old woman when approached by a representative of the Irish Folklore Commission and asked to write the story of her life on that forlorn island.Ĥ0 years ago I traveled to Blasket. As far as I know, none of the islanders objected to the relocation. It housed between 100 to 150 souls until in the 1940s the Irish Government in a fit of uncharacteristic responsibility removed the remaining twenty-two of them and resettled them in other parts of the country. The island at the tip of the Dingle Peninsula is bleak and barren. She lived much of her life on Great Blasket Island off the Western Coast of Ireland. Peig Sayers’, Peig, is considered one of the classics of Gaelic literature and perhaps all literature as well. Had I known in advance half, or even one-third, of what the future had in store for me, my heart wouldn’t have been as gay or as courageous it was in the beginning of my days.” I have experienced much ease and much hardship from the day I was born until this very day. Peig Sayers (/ p s r z / 29 March 1873 8 December 1958) was an Irish author and seanchaí (pronounced anxi or anxi plural: seanchaithe anxh) born in Dún Chaoin, County Kerry, Ireland. The 7 Blasket Island books published by OUP contain memoirs and reminiscences from within this literary tradition, evoking a way of life which has now vanished.“I am an old woman now, with one foot in the grave and the other on its edge.
A rich oral tradition of story-telling, poetry, and folktales kept alive the legends and history of the islands, and has made their literature famous throughout the world. Until their evacuation just after the Second World War, the lives of the 150 or so Blasket Islanders had remained unchanged for centuries. The Blasket Islands are three miles off Irelands Dingle Peninsula. There were 'clouds of sorrow', but helping to lift them was the friendship she found in the community, which 'was like a little rose in the wilderness'. Such everyday tasks as collecting turf for roots, catching and eating seals, and preparing for a wake are depicted alongside such momentous events as drownings at sea, pilgrimages, and the spread of the news of the Easter uprising in 1916. She recalls the events of her life and her simple philosophy in a moving poetic style.
In her old age, Peig Sayers, recounted her life to her son who recorded the tale in this book. Storytelling kept alive the myths, legends and history of the Blasket Islands.
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