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. The books were not written by Peig but were reminiscences which she dictated to others. Sayers is most famous for her autobiography, Peig, ISBN 0-8156-0258-8, but also recounted folklore and other stories which were recorded in Machnamh Seanmhná/An Old Woman's Reflections, ISBN 978-0-19-281239-1. 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 Dingle, County Kerry where she died in 1958.
She continued to live on the island until 1942, when she left the Island and returned to her native place, Dunquin. 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 (Patrick Guiheen), a fisherman and native of the island, on 13 February 1892. 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. Anytime I go home I go down to Peigland and sit by her grave and dream I am her, off up the road with little Cait to school.She was born Máiréad (Margaret) Sayers in the townland of Vicarstown, Dunquin, County Kerry, the youngest child of the family. Peig has touched my life and I have lost the book so many times when friends did not return it. I want to go live on the blaskets islands or sit by Peigs grave and tell her what a wonderful life she had, not a hard one as she imagined with the cruel seas ect., life is much harder here in this big bad world. This book is on the circu, of the schools in ireland, and I always remember my own daughter coming home to me from the dunquin,dingle, great blaskets area, from a school trip and from then on calling me "girl" I was annoyed with her for her familarity, until I learned she was as she called it studying Peigland, and peig called her mother girl. I felt her pain when she left dunquinn for the island and felt her joy when she was welcomed to the island and it's people.
I ran up the road to school with her and her friend Cait, and my little bones shivered as hers did. As i turned each page I was peig sayers of the great blaskets.
I've read and re read this book, and think it's wonderful.
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