She dictated her biography in Gaelic to her son Micheál in 1936, the manuscript was published as 'Peig: The Autobiography of Peig Sayers of the Great Blasket Island' and was for many years required reading in Irish schools.
Robin Flower, Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum, traveled to the island to record her tales. Sean O’Sullivan, author of "Folktales of Ireland," once said she was among the last great Irish storytellers. She developed a reputation as a seanachaí, an Irish word indicating a tale teller or oral historian. Living in a one room stone cottage, they produced eleven children, six would survive to adulthood. In 1892, she married Pádraig Ó Guithín from Great Blasket Island where she then moved, and there raised her family. Born Máiréad Sayers in Vicarstown, Dún Chaoin, County Kerry, Ireland, the daughter of Margaret Ni Bhrosnachain (Brosnan) and Tomás Sayers. She was moved to a hospital in Dingle a few years later where Sean O’Sullivan recorded more of her repertoire. In 1942 she returned to Viacarstown, and in 1947 Radio Éireann's Travel Unit visited, recording over an hour of her stories. Beginning in 1938, she related her store of tales to the Irish Folklore Commission.
All her surviving children except Mícheál emigrated to the USA to live with their descendants in Springfield, Massachusetts.Storyteller. She is buried in the Dún Chaoin Burial Ground, Corca Dhuibhne, Ireland. She was moved to a hospital in Dingle, County Kerry where she died in 1958. She continued to live on the island until 1942, when she returned to her native place, Dunquin. Over several years from 1938 Peig dictated 350 ancient legends, ghost stories, folk stories, and religious stories to Seosamh Ó Dálaigh of the Irish Folklore Commission. He then sent the manuscript pages to Máire Ní Chinnéide in Dublin, who edited them for publication. Peig was illiterate in the Irish language, having received her early schooling through the medium of English. In the 1930s a Dublin teacher, Máire Ní Chinnéide, who was a regular visitor to the Blaskets, urged Peig to tell her life story to her son Mícheál. He recorded them and brought them to the attention of the academic world. Flower was keenly appreciative of Peig Sayers' stories. The Norwegian scholar Carl Marstrander, who visited the island in 1907, urged Robin Flower of the British Museum to visit the Blaskets. She and Pádraig had eleven children, of whom six survived. Peig moved to the Great Blasket Island after marrying Pádraig Ó Guithín, a fisherman and native of the island, on 13 February 1892. She had expected to join her best friend Cáit Boland in America, but Cáit wrote that she had had an accident and could not forward the cost of the fare. She spent the next few years as a domestic servant working for members of the growing middle class produced by the Land War. She spent two years there before returning home due to illness.
At the age of 12, she was taken out of school and went to work as a servant for the Curran family in the nearby town of Dingle, where she said she was well treated. Her father Tomás Sayers was a renowned storyteller who passed on many of his tales to Peig. She was called Peig after her mother, Margaret "Peig" Brosnan, from Castleisland. She was born Máiréad Sayers in the townland of Vicarstown, Dunquin, County Kerry, the youngest child of the family. Seán Ó Súilleabháin, the former archivist for the Irish Folklore Commission, described her as "one of the greatest woman storytellers of recent times". Peig Sayers (1873–1958) was an Irish author and seanchaí born in Dunquin (Dún Chaoin), County Kerry, Ireland.