Journey back in time to see the reality of how the islanders lived and appreciate the unique isolation and beauty of the Great Blasket. The story of the Blasket Islands and its people are presented at the Ionad an Bhlascaoid, the Blasket Centre in Dún Chaoin (Dunquin).ĭuring the summer months it is possible to visit the Great Blasket Island by boat. The way of life on these remote Atlantic islands has been documented by the islanders who dictated or wrote their stories down, and from these came three great works: the autobiography of the story-teller Peig Sayers, which became a set text in Irish schools The Islandman by Tomás Ó Criomhthain, whose elegant, dry memoir was a lament for a passing way of life and Twenty Years A-Growing by Muiris Ó Súilleabháín, who wrote about what it was like to leave the island forever.

Sadly, the once vibrant Blasket Island community declined as a result of the persistent emigration of its young people, until eventually the Island was abandoned in 1953 when only 22 inhabitants remained. About 150 people lived there in 1840, but after the Great Famine that had decreased to 100. The population is said to have reached a peak of 176 in 1916. People are recorded to have been living on the Blaskets in 1597 but the population ebbed and flowed. This stunning archipelago of islands are renowned for their magnificent beauty and rugged wildness literary heritage of the Great Blasket, An Blascaod Mór magical marine life – seals, whales and dolphins puffins and array of sea birds the “Cathedral Rocks” of Inis na Bró the most westerly lighthouse of Ireland - An Tiaracht and our famous “Sleeping Giant”, An Fear Marbh (Inis Tuaisceart). On the most western point of the Dingle Peninsula, Ireland and Europe, are The Blasket Islands (Na Blascaodaí).

Peig sayers dingle