OGUIHEEN:PITY YOUTH DOES NOT LAST PAPER COVERS: Reminiscences of the Last of the Great Blasket Island's Poets and Storytellers (Oxford Paperback Series) - Softcover

OGUIHEEN, Micheál

Softcover

ISBN 10: 019281320X ISBN 13: 9780192813206

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1981

Synopsis

Micheál 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.

About this title

Review

Part of a unique and remarkable Irish literary archive ... compelling. (Neil Johnston, Belfast Telegraph, 24/6/00)

Synopsis

'The tide spreads a mantle of silk Around the Great Blasket Island' So wrote Micheal O'Guiheen of his beloved island home. But by 1953 the authorities had evacuated the Great Blasket and its traditions were vanishing. Micheal O'Guiheen, 'the Poet' of the book, was the son of Peig Sayers, who wrote 'An Old Woman's Reflections'. But while that was a celebration of the good times, and her son's schoolmate Maurice O'Sullivan's 'Twenty Years A-Growing' was a book of laughing youth, this takes the story to sombre middle age. It tells of sunny times clouded over only by unconscious intimations of mortality, not only of youth but also of an irreplaceable culture: the consternation caused by a passing comet, the drudgery of a turf-gathering expedition turning into a carefree rabbit hunt. This first and only English edition of O'Guiheen's 'cri de coeur' is supplemented by translations, from the author's own poetry, previously only available in the original. The Blasket Islands are three miles off Ireland's Dingle Peninsular. Until their evacuation just after the Second World War, the lives of the 150 or so Blasket Islanders had remained unchanged for centuries.

A rich oral tradition of story-telling, poetry, and folktales kept alive the legends and history of the islands, and has made tier literature famous throughout the world. The seven Blasket Island books published by OUP contain memoirs and reminiscences from within this literary tradition, evoking a way of life which has now vanished.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1981
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 019281320X
• ISBN 13: 9780192813206
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 163