When she was seven, the family peace was disturbed by her brother Sean's new wife who came to live with them. As the youngest child, Peig was cherished by her parents she was particularly close to her father whom she described as a quiet, sensible man. America was a magnet for its young people, and there was a long-established process of chain migration whereby emigrant relatives and friends would send the passage money back to other relatives and friends in Ireland. (These Irish-speaking areas, called the Gaeltacht, were gradually being eroded by the spread of English.) The region was also being eroded by emigration for it was one of the poorest in Ireland and still very much dependent on potatoes as a staple food. The Dingle Peninsula was an area of outstanding scenic beauty and, by the time of Peig's birth, one of the last bastions of the native Irish language. She was always known as Peig, after her mother. Six months later in March 1873 their last child was born. The Sayerses then moved to the town-land of Vicarstown, near the village of Dunquin at the westernmost tip of the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, in late 1872. He had lived through the Great Famine of the 1840s but after his marriage to Peig Brosnan of Castleisland their first nine children had died in infancy.

Her father Tomás Sayers was a renowned storyteller who passed on many of his tales to his youngest child Peig. According to family tradition, the Sayers family was originally of English origin but by the mid-19th century had become completely gaelicised, dispossessed and poor, ekeing out a living in the remote southwest of Ireland. Swedish folklore scholar Bo Almqvist maintains that it would be hard to find Peig Sayers' match as a storyteller anywhere in the world. Born Máiréad (Margaret) Sayers in Vicarstown, Dunquin, County Kerry, Ireland in March 1873 (exact date unknown but christened on March 29) died in Dingle, County Kerry, on Decemyoungest child of Tomás Sayers and Máiréad Ní Bhrosnacháin (Margaret 'Peig' Brosnan) Sayers educated at Dunquin National School married Pádraig Ó Guithín (Patrick Flint), in February 1892 children: two daughters, four sons.

Peig sayers books