Standing back L to R : Mary Curran ( Anne Moloney’s grandmother), Ogie Mehigan ( Anne’s first cousin) Eileen Scully nee Curran (Anne’s mother) Unfortunately, Anne has no photo of herself with Peig since she was very young when Peig died, but she secured from another member of her family this photo of Peig with them. This Curran family is the family of Anne Moloney of Cherrytree Drive. The bean an tí, her boss, was kind to her and she loved the children, particularly Seáinín. Peig describes her time in the Curran house with affection. The first of these tréimhsí was spent with a family in Dingle. In her biography, Peig describes 2 periods she spent “in aimsir”, i. Recently I discovered that a Listowel family have a close family link with Peig. This rare photo of Brendan Behan and Peig was posted online by a Michael Murphy. The most famous of the chroniclers of life on The Blasket was Peig Sayers. The Great Blasket at its peak had only 176 inhabitants in 1916. Even more extraordinary is the number of writers produced by one small isolated island off the west Kerry coast. People often marvel at how Listowel has produced so many writers. I am an islandman at heart and will be until the day I die.” Mike says ” Some people cannot get the island out of their system. I think about it every day and still dream about it every night. His preventable death and the subsequent delay in getting to the mainland for a coffin was the impetus the islanders needed to put pressure on the DeValera government to relocate them. The weather was too bad and the sea too rough to get him to the mainland or to bring a doctor from the mainland to him. In 1964 just before Christmas, Seainín ÓCearna contracted meningitis. It was the tragic death of Mike’s brother, Séanín, which led eventually to the complete evacuation of the last remaining 22 citizens in 1953. When Mike was growing up on the Great Blasket, the island people had no post office, no shop, no car, no electricity, no phone, no running water, no church, no doctor or nurse, no horse, no proper roads, no machinery and no pub .
I read a review of the book by Darragh MacManus and that review has spurred me to read the memoir itself. Michael Carney was born on the island in 1920 and lived there until he was 16. Only 10 native islanders survive and all are very elderly. The Blasket islands have been uninhabited since 1953.
The co-author, Michael Carney, is the last person born on the Great Blasket, the only inhabitable one of the 6 islands, to write an account of life there.
This book has been much in the news recently.
0 kommentar(er)
