Known affectionately as "the Queen of Gaelic Storytellers," Peig Sayers here offers reminiscences of the daily events that made up her life (such as seal catching, collecting turf for roofs, preparing for a funeral wake) alongside the tragedies of drownings at sea, pilgrimages, and the news of the 1916 revolution in Dublin City. It is a unique record of an essential part of the oral Gaelic tradition.

Using remastered recordings of Peig Sayers made in 1952 by the Irish Folklore Commission, Pádraig Ó Héalaí has produced an accurate, lively and illuminating testament to Peig's unique style of oral storytelling, with her recordings dictated faithfully into Irish, and translated with with deft understanding into English. Accompanied by audio CD.

On an Irish Island tells the remarkable story of a remote outpost nearly untouched by time in the first half of the twentieth century, and of the adventurous men and women who visited and were inspired by it. In a love letter to a vanished way of life, Robert Kanigel brings to life this wildly beautiful island, notable for the vivid communal life of its residents and the unadulterated Irish they spoke well into the twentieth century. With the Irish language rapidly disappearing, Great Blasket became a magnet for scholars, linguists, and writers during the Gaelic renaissance. As we follow these visitors—among them John Millington Synge, author of The Playboy of the Western World—we are captivated both by the tiny group of islanders who kept an entire country’s past alive and by their complex relationships with those who brought the island’s story to the larger world.

Peig Sayers was one of the most renowned storytellers in the Irish tradition. Born in 1873 in Baile an Bhiocáire, Dún Chaoin, County Kerry, Peig married into the Great Blasket where her fame as a storyteller began. Peig's recollections were never written down but dictated to others, and in the process often edited or shortened. As a result they often became the object of satire, such as Flann O'Brien's The Poor Mouth, and in the school book version that many generations of students were confronted with, Peig's recollections are often the cause of unhappy memories. Using original sound recordings from the BBC and RTÉ Archives, this book features transcriptions of Peig's own speech, annotated and translated by Professor Bo Almqvist and Dr Pádraig Ó Héalaí. Including a link to the original audio material, now we can listen to Peig's own voice as she tells us her stories and meet her in a way never possible before.

From patriots to pirates, warriors to writers, and mistresses to male impersonators, this book looks at the unorthodox lives of inspiring Irish women. In times when women were expected to marry and have children, they travelled the world and sought out adventures; in times when women were expected to be seen and not heard, they spoke out in loud voices against oppression; in times when women were expected to have no interest in politics, literature, art, or the world outside the home, they used every creative means available to give expression to their thoughts, ideas and beliefs. In a series of succinct and often amusing biographies, Marian Broderick tells the life stories of these exceptional Irish women.

Exploring the fascination of Irish folklore and storytelling for collectors, scholars, writers, and readers, this book offers a comprehensive overview of the complex relationship between oral traditions and literary practices in Ireland. The rich contributions build upon existing studies of the nature and importance of Irish folklore, acknowledging the symbiotic relationship that exists between storytellers of oral narrative on the one hand, and literary storytellers on the other. The book deepens our understanding of the creative use of oral traditions by leading Irish writers, such as W.B. Yeats, Padraig Pearse, Peig Sayers, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, and Anne Enright. Fresh perspectives are offered on the continuing evolution of folklore collection and scholarship in Ireland, while new contexts are provided for evaluating the diverse ways in which Irish writers have drawn on traditional narratives, beliefs, and practices, exemplified by the blending of folklore and individual creativity. This collection is a timely treasury for those interested in Irish writing, identity, life, and ideas. *** "Two sections immediately captured this reviewer's attention: the essays on the modernist project in creating the National Folklore Collection fascinate, and Margaret O'Neill offers tremendous insight into Anne Enright's postmodern work utilizing a psychoanalytic lens, particularly regarding the funeral tradition of keening." - Choice, July 2015, Vol. 51, No.11 [Subject: Irish Studies, Literary Criticism, Folklore]

Tomas O'Crohan's sole purpose in writing The Islandman was, he wrote, "to set down the character of the people about me so that some record of us might live after us, for the like of us will never be seen again." This is an absorbing narrative of a now-vanished way of life, written by one who had known no other.