![]() ![]() This is not mere following of fashion, but a return to what was in fact the case: Many of us who grew up in the pre-television which lasted well into the 1970s in some parts, well remember how it was the women who were the storehouses of the past how often it was the woman - always known by her first name - who had a liking for cards and who told the most nuanced fireside stories. There may also be a new appreciation of Peig as a real female and as a female teller of tales. The new digital and social media age, with its acceptance of mixed platforms, has maybe paved the way for a new appreciation of the ancient art of oral storytelling, the format employed in this book tempts us to think. In any case, Peig’s stories were mostly written down and not recorded at all. ![]() Made on a wire recorder plugged into the electricity, they have survived while other wax recordings have not. The recordings themselves are remarkable. While the focus traditionally has been on the Blasket “writers” it is arguable if proper deference has never been accorded to the ephemeral spoken or oral tradition of the island certainly not in book form, and certainly not in the kind of multi-platform approach here where the dialogue prompted by live interviewers is included, the whole book is both in Irish and in English and accompanied by CDs of the original recordings. The west Kerry scholar and later senator, author of the highly entertaining Jimín Mháire Thaidgh is among the team of the Irish Folklore Commission to interview and record Peig in hospital in 1952. Peig had no singing voice, but she had “the gift of talk” – caint are barra na teanga as she puts it as Gaeilge, laughing at her "drake’s singing voice" with An Seabhac, Padraic O’ Siochfhradha. Interviewed in the Kerry Irish, by people she knew well over the decades, there is a relaxed, almost fireside approach, albeit Peig was for much of the recordings in a hospital bed at St Anne’s in Dublin in 1952. ![]()
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