A Pity Youth Does Not Last: Reminiscences of the Last of the Great Blasket Island’s Poets and Storytellers

Micheal O’Guiheen was the son of Peig Sayers, “the Queen of the Gaelic storytellers.” The last of the Blasket’s celebrated poets and storytellers, he describes how the isolation of his youth was slowly eroded by the creeping of civilization across the three miles separating the islands from County Kerry, and the sadness of leaving the Great Blasket for the last time.”