Peig Sayers, Blasket Island Storyteller, Is Born in Dunquin, Co. Kerry

Máiréad “Peig” Sayers (29 March 1873 – 8 December 1958) was an Irish author and seanchaí born in Dún Chaoin, County Kerry, Ireland.

Seán Ó Súilleabháin, the former Chief 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, Dunquin, Corca Dhuibhne, County Kerry, the youngest child of the family. She was called Peig after her mother, Margaret “Peig” Brosnan, from Castleisland. Her father Tomás Sayers was a locally renowned expert on the oral tradition and passed on many of his tales to Peig.

Through her father’s influence, Peig also grew up upon a rich oral tradition of Irish folklore, mythology, and local history, including local folk heroes like Piaras Feiritéar, faction fights at pattern days and market fairs before the Great Famine, and the lingering memory of Mass rocks and priest hunters under the Penal Laws.