![]() ![]() He eventually returned to Ireland, the last of the Blasket Island poets. ![]() Her son, Micheál Ó Guithín, leaves her a poem as a souvenir before departing for the United States. Visual artist Eoin P O'Murchú discusses setting recordings of her voice to modern ambient music for the YouTube generation, we see Peig as a prop in a stage play looking at the language today, and Sharon Granahan shows the world her Peig Sayers tattoo, pointing to the storyteller's resilience as an inspiration.Īnd while poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill's newly-commissioned work, Hitler is Dead, paints imagery of a living Peig, the lasting image of the documentary has to be a little chat that Sinéad herself has at Sayers' grave to end the story - an apology for misconception, and a new-found appreciation for an unfairly-maligned icon.Coming from Peig Sayers's famous autobiography, first published in 1936 in Irish, this passage deals with the deaths or emigration to America of most of her remaining loved ones. Demand for her work at the city's Siopa Leabhar remains steady, while a new book on her legacy, Níl Deireadh Ráite, has done well. ![]() Over 25 years since Peig's work left the curriculum, we find that the Gaelgeoirs and artists of present-day Dublin have developed a real relationship with her work. Here we find that the piety and sainthood ascribed to Peig Sayers is no reflection on the real person - the gifted storyteller alluded to earlier emerged in over 350 stories told to various archivists - fairy stories, comedies, and slices of daily life - while friendships on the island crossed old lines between Catholicism and the Church of Ireland.Ī flirtatious and bawdy nature reveals itself in these chats, as a fondness for cursing might take some by surprise ('a balm to the heart'), while a fondness for young folklorists might not be such a shock - referring to one young scholar as 'The Handsome Boy' in correspondence, and remarking of 'a mother's love' for another. Sinéad then proceeds via boat to the Great Blasket, where we meet various islanders, discussing life for Peig as it would have been when she arrived after an arranged marriage, and making the best of bleak circumstances. Sinéad Ní Uallacháin: on a mission to get to the bottom of Peig Sayers' legacy, and perceptions of her place in Irish culture Ní Dhálaigh also stripped back some of the piety and sombre nature of the Peig caricature, telling of a fondness for tobacco, and the odd mood swing in its absence! "Peig was the Netflix of the time," says Ní Dhálaig, outlining a different side to Sayers' legacy, one of a full house where friends and neighbours would gather to be entertained. Heading home for Corca Dhuibne, a homeplace she shares with the great storyteller, Ní Uallacháin makes for the Blasket Centre, where she speaks with Máire Ní Dhálaigh, who sets about righting a long-held wrong. She filled her brief well," remarks a clearly-awed Ní Uallacháin. One of the documentary's real standout moments, though, comes when existing recordings of Peig's storytelling are played from reel-to-reel tape, revealing a raspy, colourful voice that betrays a natural orator. Pictures of a broadly-smiling old woman, taking obvious joy in speaking with others, cast her in a new light. It's one thing to see old pictures and read tales that reinforce perceptions of Sayers as a doom-sayer, especially when set against excerpts of others' work satirising her life and legacy.īut when Ní Uallacháin steps into the archives at the National Folklore Collection at UCD, history springs to life. A constant of the documentary, in fact, is questioning her suitability for the syllabus in the first place - a decision attributed to the early Irish governments' attempts at placing an established Irish canon in schools, as well as selective interpretation on her son Maidhc's part when writing stories down. It was never Sayers' intention to be placed on the curriculum in the first place, of course. Many people of a certain vintage point to her writing as a deterrent from learning Irish ("That bitch ruined my life!", exclaims one person, in a story). ![]()
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