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.

The often bleak tone of the book is established from its opening words: “ I am an old woman now, with one foot in the grave and the other on its edge. Peig depicts the declining years of a traditional, Irish-speaking way of life characterised by poverty, devout Catholicism, and folk memory of the Famine and the Penal Laws. Parody of the type reached its zenith with Flann O'Brien's satire of an tOileánach as an Béal Bocht ('the Poor Mouth'). The movement swiftly found itself the object of some derision and mockery – especially among the more cosmopolitan city dwellers of Ireland - for its often relentless depictions of rural hardship. Flaherty's documentary Man of Aran address similar subjects. Tomás Ó Criomhthain's memoir an tOileánach ('the Islandman', 1929) and Robert J. Peig is among the most famous expressions of a late Gaelic Revival genre of personal histories by and about inhabitants of the Blasket Islands and other remote Irish locations. Her surviving children, except for her son Micheál, emigrated to the USA and live with their descendants in Springfield, Massachusetts. She is buried in the Dún Chaoin Burial Ground, Corca Dhuibhne, Ireland. She was moved to a hospital in An Daingean, Co. She continued to live on the island until 1953, when the island was abandoned due to declining population. Over several years from 1938 she dictated 350 ancient legends, ghost stories, folk stories, and religious stories to Seosamh Ó Dálaigh of the Irish Folklore Commission. He then sent the manuscript pages to Máire Ní Chinnéide in Dublin, who edited them for publication.

Peig was illiterate in the Irish language, although she received her early schooling through the medium of English. In the 1930s a Dublin teacher, Máire Ní Chinnéide, who was a regular visitor to the Blaskets, urged Peig to tell her life story to her son Micheál. He recorded them and brought them to the attention of the academic world. Flower was keenly appreciative of Peig Sayers' stories and tales. The Norwegian scholar Carl Marstrander, who visited the island in 1907, urged Robin Flower, of the British Museum, to visit the Blaskets. She and Pádraig had eleven children, of whom six survived. Peig moved to the Great Blasket Island after marrying Pádraig Ó Guithín, a fisherman and native of the island. She had expected to join her best friend, Cáit Boland, in America, but Cáit wrote that she had had an accident and could not forward the cost of the fare. She spent the next few years as a domestic servant working for members of the growing middle class produced by the Land War. She spent two years there before returning home due to illness. At age 12, she was taken out of school and went to work as a servant for the Curran family in the nearby town of Dingle, where she said she was well treated. Her father Tomás Sayers was a renowned storyteller who passed on many of his tales to Peig. She was called Peig after her mother, Margaret 'Peig' Brosnan, from Castleisland. Seán Ó Súilleabháin, the former archivist for the Irish Folklore Commission, described her as 'one of the greatest woman storytellers of recent times' She was born Máiréad Sayers in the townland of Vicarstown, Dunquinn, County Kerry, the youngest child of the family.

The Irish Way - Peig Sayers 1873–1958 was an Irish author and seanachaí born in Dunquin (Dún Chaoin), County Kerry, Ireland.

Peig sayers decendants