Many of the descendants currently live in Springfield, Massachusetts and some former residents still live on the Dingle peninsula, within sight of their former home. The inhabitants were evacuated to the mainland on 17 November 1953. They were inhabited until 1953 by a completely Irish-speaking population. The Blasket Islands (Na Blascaodaí in Irish - etymology uncertain: it may come from the Norse word "brasker", meaning "a dangerous place") are a group of islands off the west coast of Ireland, forming part of County Kerry. The centre, which is operated by the Office of Public Works, was opened in 1993 and overlooks the panorama of the Great Blasket and its family of surrounding islands. This community produced an extraordinary amount of literature, referred to as The Blasket Library, which includes classics such as The Islandman, Twenty Years A Growing and Peig. These books together also show where all the ideas came from in the Poor Mouth which satirises this style of literature.The Great Blasket Centre on the mainland in Dún Chaoin, on the tip of the Dingle Peninsula, is an interpretative centre / museum honouring the unique community who once lived on the Great Blasket Island. It well worth a read particularly if it is read along with The Islandman, Twenty Years a Growing and the Western Island. It shows what people did to make a living, entertainment, customs of birth, death, marriage, religion and much more. Peig's autobiography gives a fantastic insight into the lives of ordinary people in rural Ireland in the late 19th and early 20th century, in this case Na Blascaodaí - the Blascket Islands. Despite being an Irish learner, however, I decided to read it in English just in case and to save my Irish reading for more contemporary reading material! You can see why - it is exceptionally rural and old-fashioned and religion is present all through the text which many people felt associated Irish with all things backward looking and damaged the language.Ĭoming at it as someone from Scotland who didn't have to answer interpretation questions on it and who has a suitably positive and modern view of Irish and Scottish Gaelic (which I speak) I was able to take a more open-minded view on Peig. Generations of school children in Ireland had to read through Peig Sayer's autobiography as a set text in Irish language classes and many therefore hold a negative view of the book as I myself do with Shakespeare and other works of literature I had to study at school. 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." 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. 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. ![]() laid out as expertly and as calmly as if twelve women had tended him." Her own farewell to life had the same clear-eyed simplicity: "People will yet walk into the graveyard where I'll be lying I'll be stretched out quietly and the old world will have vanished." Peig said of her son Tomás, 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 woman's 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. 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 Ireland's traditional storytellers.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |