Máiréad "Peig" Sayers (/ˌpɛɡ ˈseɪərz/; 29 March 1873 – 8 December 1958) was an Irish author and seanchaí (pronounced [ˈʃan̪ˠəxiː] or [ʃan̪ˠəˈxiː]) born in Dún Chaoin, County Kerry, Ireland. Seán Ó Súilleabháin, the former Chief archivist for the Irish Folklore Commission, described her as "one of the greatest woman storytellers of recent times".

She was born Máiréad Sayers, in the townland of Baile an Bhiocáire, Dún Chaoin, Corca Dhuibhne, County Kerry, the youngest child of the family. She was called Peig after her mother, Margaret "Peig" Brosnan, from Castleisland. Her father Tomás Sayers was a locally renowned expert on the oral tradition and passed on many of his tales to Peig.

Through her father's influence, Peig also grew up upon a rich oral tradition of Irish folklore, mythology, and local history, including local folk heroes like Piaras Feiritéar, faction fights at pattern days and market fairs before the Great Famine, and the lingering memory of Mass rocks and priest hunters under the Penal Laws. The custom of bothántaíocht (people visiting neighbours at night to swap news and stories) was strong and Peig’s brother Sean used to bring her along, and Peig heard and remembered a large number of stories about the past. Peig was very sociable and enjoyed the company of older people as well as girls her own age.

At the age of 12, she was taken out of the National school and went to work as a domestic servant for the Curran family in the nearby town of Dingle. The Currans were members of the growing Irish Catholic middle class produced by the Government-funded breakup and sale of the Anglo-Irish landlords' estates after the Land War. Peig later recalled that the Curran family were kind employers and treated her very well. The Curran children, however, were forbidden by their parents, who desired for them to move up in the world, to learn the Irish language and so, at the children's request, Peig taught the local vernacular to them in secret.

After she grew to adulthood, Peig was promised during the "American wake" of her childhood best friend, Cáit Boland, that Peig would soon join her as part of the Irish diaspora in the United States. Cáit later wrote, however, that she had had an accident and could not forward the cost of Peig's passage.

Instead, Peig moved to the Great Blasket Island after her brother arranged for her to marry Pádraig Ó Guithín, a fisherman and native of the island, nine years her senior, on 13 February 1892. Pádraig and Peig had eleven children, of whom only six survived their mother. Three died in infancy, and an eight year old girl, Siobhán, died from measles.

Norwegian linguist and Celticist Carl Marstrander stayed on the island while studying the Corca Dhuibhne dialect of Munster Irish in 1907 and later persuaded Robin Flower of the British Museum to similarly visit the Blaskets. In turn this led the great English Celticist Kenneth H. Jackson to visit during the summers of 1932-37, and Peig's storytelling influenced his ideas about oral tradition considerably. Flower and Jackson were keenly appreciative of Peig Sayers' storytelling skills. They recorded her and brought her stories to the attention of the academic world.

After the Easter Rising of 1916, Peig hung up a framed picture of the 16 executed Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army leaders in the family's cottage in Great Blasket island. During a search of the island by the Black and Tans during the subsequent Irish War of Independence, a terrified Pádraig Ó Guithín ordered his wife to take the picture down before she got them all killed. Even though Peig indignantly refused, the search party did not harm anyone in their family.