Translated from the Irish by Bryan MacMahon
Máiréad ‘Peig’ Sayers (1873–1958) left school at twelve and never learned to write but became one of Ireland’s greatest storytellers and an embodiment of a Gaelic literary revival, just as an ancient rural culture was vanishing forever. Sayers was born on the Dingle Peninsula in western Ireland and her father was a storyteller. She worked as a domestic servant and moved to the Blasket Islands after marrying Pádraig Ó Guithín, a fisherman, in 1892. They had eleven children, of whom six survived. Robin Flower, an English poet and scholar who worked at the British Museum, visited the Blaskets and recorded Peig’s stories, which then reached an academic audience. In the 1930s, a Dublin teacher and regular visitor to the Blaskets encouraged Peig to tell her life story to her son Mícheál. Peig dictated her biography, published in 1936 and went on to dictate more than 350 folk tales to Seosamh Ó Dálaigh of the Irish Folklore Commission. In 1942, she returned to her birthplace on the mainland, Dunquin. All Peig’s surviving children, except for Mícheál, emigrated to the United States. The population of the Blasket Islands dwindled and the last twenty-two residents, all Irish speakers, were evacuated by the government in 1953.
While the children were growing up the school wasn’t a stone’s throw away from them and I was easy in my mind while they were attending school. I was terrified they’d be drowned on the beach because they were obsessed with the notion of going there when they were small. The breed of the sea was in them. Often I’d smash their toy boats. Then again, while they were attending school they could have little recourse to the strand for when they’d come home from school I’d put them drawing turf and at night they’d have their lessons to occupy their minds. Scarcely an evening passed without Cáit O’Brien paying us a visit.
You can well understand that at that time poor people weren’t too hot in their skins. Potatoes and fish was their fare with now and again an odd mouthful of meat—good wholesome food—that’s what they had at that time. At certain times of the year there was milk but, my word, it’s often we had to do with very little of that same. The children grew up and, thanks be to God, they never went to bed hungry. They were cross enough when they were small but then again, sense never comes before age. But alas and alas, death gored us! It swept three of my family in their infancy and then measles took Siobhán, a fine bouncer of a girl eight years old.
But no one in this life is exempt from the law of God and it gives me pleasure to think that they are before me in the Kingdom of Heaven and my prayer is that the God of Glory will grant myself and those of my children still alive never to break His law in this life in such a way as would separate us on Judgement Day, but that my little family will rise up from the dead about me and that we’ll all be united in the Kingdom of God.
Well! I had buried four of my children and, worse still, their father’s health was broken for he caught a cold out fishing and he was making no headway towards recovery.
One day, I had buried my fourth child and it was no wonder that I was troubled in my mind. As the evening was fine I decided to go out so I took up a stocking from the window in order to be knitting, but to tell you the truth, I hadn’t much mind for work that same evening. I drove the cow back before me and let her into the field for I reckoned that I could do no better than sit down for a while herding her.
I sat on the bank above the beach where I had a splendid view all around me. Dead indeed is the heart from which the balmy air of the sea cannot banish sorrow and grief. The passage between the Great Blasket and Beginnis is like a little harbour and it looks most attractive when the weather is calm. As I had no interest in the work I put down my stocking on a tussock and began to look away out to sea at the thousands of seabirds flying here and there in search of a bite to eat. Every bird from the stormy petrel to the cormorant, from the sand-snipe to the gannet was there and each variety of bird had its own peculiar call. There were many thousands of small seagulls; some, hovering lightly, were searching for little sprat or other morsels of food. Whenever one of them found a mouthful she’d utter a call and straightaway thousands of others were down on top of her. Such scuffling and pecking no one ever saw before! They were all entangled in one another trying to snatch the morsel from her.
At last I grew tired of watching the gulls and I turned my gaze to the south—towards Iveragh and Dingle Bay. It was a beautiful view. The whole bay was as calm as new milk, with little silver spray shimmering on its surface under a sunlight that was then brilliant. To the south Slea Head stood boldly in view as if it would stand there for ever—not a stir out of the water at the edge of the rocks nor in the creek itself so that even an old woman need not be troubled if she were sitting in a sheltered nook by the edge of a rock—for there was no fear of her being drowned! Dunmore stood out before me and Liúir too, like its watchdog, its crest covered with seagulls and cormorants resting at their ease; the Seanduine—Old Man Rock himself—was grinning beside them, his skull covered with a fleece of seaweed—though a person might say that it was high time for that same skull to be shaken and stripped by the mighty and insolent ocean waves that were forever crashing down upon it. Maol, or Baldie Bank, looked so peaceful and mild-tempered that you wouldn’t think he ever did hurt or harm, though the old people said that it was on that rock the King of Spain’s ship was wrecked long ago. And that finished the vessel and all on board—God save those who hear the tale!
Out before me stood Dunquin—the fresh colour of summer on its fields and gardens—this was where I had spent my early days. Many the fine evening I was on top of that hill, Mount Eagle, when I was young and airy and with no responsibility whatsoever to carry. Away to the north stood the headland of Ceann Sratha and there also lay the mouth of Ferriter’s Cove and Dún an Óir. Binn Diarmada appeared both triumphant and stately; the sunlight glistened brightly on its sides and on the deep scars the mighty ocean had wrought upon it. From Fiach to Barra Liath was one great sea harbour; it resembled a single sheet of glass and indeed, an observer might see it as a great city lying under a magic spell.
A sigh welled up from my heart and I said aloud: ‘God! isn’t it an odd person indeed who would be troubled in mind with so much beauty around him and all of it the work of the Creator’s hand?’
I jumped with fright as a voice came from behind me. ‘Isn’t it time you were going home?’ the voice said—it was Seán Eoghain who spoke.
‘I daresay it is, Seán,’ I told him, ‘but to tell the truth I haven’t much mind to do so.’
‘That’s no wonder, my poor woman,’ said Seán. ‘Everyone feels lonely after a death of a child.’
‘Not child, Seán,’ I said, ‘but children.’ I would have preferred any other topic of conversation at that time and so as to change the subject I said. ‘Look, Seán! There’s Hy-Brasail to the north!’
‘You devil you, where?’ said Seán for he was a man with curses to burn. He turned on his heel.
‘No doubt about it, but it’s a lovely view on a summer afternoon,’ he said. ‘A person would take his oath that it’s some enchanted land.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ I said. ‘I often heard Eibhlís Sheáin say that she herself saw Hy-Brasail appearing in that very place one autumn evening while she was cutting furze on the Brow of Coum.’
‘The devil sweep yourself and Eibhlís Sheáin,’ Seán replied in a humorous way that was meant for my good. ‘And when you go to Hy-Brasail that you may never leave it! Get up and go home for yourself. ’Tis time for you to be off now!’
‘You’re right, I suppose,’ I said, and I took up the stocking that lay beside me; indeed I hadn’t much work done that afternoon.
It has been said that there is no joy in life without its own sorrow to accompany it. I thought I had finished with the woes of the world for those of my family who lived were now grown men. Muiris and Pádraig were fishing for themselves and Mícheál and Tomás were coming to maturity after them. Even if their father’s health had failed they weren’t depending on him; their uncle was giving them a hand and well able he was to do so.