#Peig blasket islands series

“I realised then how central music, song and dance were to the very fabric of life on the Blasket islands. “I had read the three books most closely associated with the Blasket islands: An tOileánach by Tomás Ó Croimhthain, Peig by Peig Sayers and Fiche Bliain ag Fás by Muiris Ó Suilleabháin,” Ríonach says. ‘I realised then how central music, song and dance were to the very fabric of life on the Blasket islands’

#Peig blasket islands series

Tom suggested the possibility of a series of CDs of music and song of the islands of Ireland, and Ríonach’s field work led to record label’s release of the Blasket island recordings. The original impetus for releasing a recording came from a conversation that Ríonach had with Tom Sherlock, of Claddagh Records. I was fortunate to meet some former Blasket islanders during my time there and to hear their music, and following those early years I became a field collector and archivist, and I started making recordings that were related to my own particular field of interest: song in Irish and music.”

Then I visited the Blasket island, and of course it’s a place of particular beauty. “My first visits to Corca Dhuibhne were in the 1960s,” she says, “and I was fascinated by the people, and the music and the scenery on the mainland. Ríonach Uí Ógáin Folklorist, Ríonach Uí Ógáin who curated this collection Ríonach Uí Ógáin, former director of UCD’s National Folklore Collection, is the force behind the original and current publications, and the intervening 30 years have done nothing to dim her enthusiasm for Blasket island music and song. It has also invited descendants of the islanders who are contemporary musicians to contribute to the collection, past and present coalescing to offer further colour and shade on the music of this most storied of our islands. Now, Claddagh Records has taken the decision to reissue this extraordinary collection of Blasket island music, in tandem with an updated and expanded hardback with lovingly researched and updated notes on all of the musicians. Singer and accordion player Breanndán Begley was deeply connected to the music of the islands and played no small part in sharing their tunes and songs, influenced in particular by the music of Muiris Ó Dálaigh. The island was evacuated in 1953, when the remaining islanders moved to the mainland. These writers richly described the interweaving of music, song and dance in island life, but it wasn’t until Claddagh Records released Beauty an Oileáin in 1992, a collection of music curated by Ríonach Uí Ógáin, that those musicians and their music reached the ears of listeners beyond the confines of west Kerry. For a place that never recorded a population above 200, An Blascaod Mór has produced a formidable body of literature, thanks to the writings of Tomás Ó Criomhthain, Muiris Ó Suilleabháin and Peig Sayers. Island life, and particularly that of the Blasket Islands, has loomed large in our literary history.