Host: Dan Kennedy
Dan: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. And this month is Irish Heritage Month. So, in this episode, we're traveling all over the Emerald Isle to celebrate the tradition of Irish storytelling. This week, we have three stories for you, one from The Moth and a couple others from two of our favorite Irish storytelling groups.
First up is Michael Devlin. Michael told this story back in 2015 at a Moth GrandSLAM in Dublin. The theme of the night was Fish out of Water. Here's Michael, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Michael: [00:00:42] So, there I was, driving down the N11 with my female companion. I don't know if you know the N11, but it's the main road between Dublin and Wexford. There are two landmarks on that motorway, both of which are pubs. One is called the Beehive and the other is called Jack Whites. We're fast approaching the Beehive when all of a sudden, my female companion burst into laughter. Spontaneous, uncontrollable laughter. I know I'm not the funniest man in the world, but I do have my moments where that certainly wasn't one of them, because I wasn't even talking. [audience laughter]
So, eventually, when she composed herself, I said, “Come on, share the joke.” She pointed to a field we just passed, and she said, “See that field.” In that field we just passed, there was a sheep dancing. [audience laughter] And I said, “A dancing sheep? Really?” I said, “Was it ballroom or contemporary? Because contemporary would be a bit unusual.” And she said, “No, no, no, really. There was a sheep dancing. He was lying on his back with his feet in the air, and he was waving them back and forth as if he was some mad rave or disco or something.”
And I said, “You know what that means?” Because I heard it somewhere before. I said, “That means he is in grave danger or more precisely, she is in grave danger. Because what happens is at lambing season, the female sheep, they ewes, they get big and heavy, and sometimes when they lay down, they can inadvertently flip over. They're in grave danger, because they can't eat, but they get very distressed and they're prone to predators, particularly foxes.”
As I'm explaining this, there's a voice in my head saying, “Do not get involved. Keep on driving. This is your problem.” [audience laughter] But then, I know that's not possible, because there's another side of my personality which is intent on saving the world and everybody in it. [audience laughter] And it's telling me to turn that car and turn it around now. So, I go as far as the Beehive and I turn around, and then I drive 10 kilometers in the wrong direction, trying to cross the motorway.
So, I cross the motorway. I'm on the way back here, and then the first problem presents itself, which is to say that I'm looking for a sheep in the field of sheep in County Wicklow. There's sheep everywhere. [audience laughter] I don't mean to cause offence when I say this, but to me, one sheep looks pretty much the same as the next. [audience laughter]
So, I'm driving along, crawling for about 10 minutes, and then I stop the car and we get to the field. It's true enough, there's the sheep in the field, but this time his feet are totally rigid like this. And I think, oh, my God, please don't tell me I'm too late. So, I stop the car, jam on the brakes, get out, hit the hazards and look out. I'm surveying the situation and I'm not liking this. I'm not liking this one bit, because I'm a city boy and what we have in our hands is most definitely a rural situation. [audience laughter] [audience applause]
So, I turn to my female companion and I motion to her to stay at the car. I said, “This could be dangerous, but baby, I'm going in.” [audience laughter] So, I hop over the crash barrier, over the barbed wire fence, down an embankment, over two electric fences. And as I'm doing this, the sheep in the field start to walk away in the distance, except for the upturned sheep and his little sheep buddies. I'm so amazed and impressed by this, because sheep are timid and placid little creatures. And here they are, they've overcome their fear to stand by the fallen comrade. I think, this is amazing. These must be like the sheep equivalent of the Marines. [audience laughter] No man gets left behind. But as I'm thinking that, they got buggered off too. So, that was that theory out the window. [audience laughter]
So, I'm moving closer, I'm moving closer and it's just me and the upturned sheep lying there with his feet in the air. I got to tell you really don't know what thoughts are going to go to your mind until you're faced with this sheep spread eagle before you. And the first thought in my mind was, please, God, don't let anybody see this, because it just looks so wrong. [audience laughter] And the second thought, is this thing going to attack me? Because I know you never hear of anybody being attacked and killed by a sheep. It's not up there with grizzly bear attacks and shark attacks, I get that. But this thing is cornered and I've never cornered a sheep before, so I don't know. [audience laughter]
They do have teeth. Not big, sharp canine teeth, but teeth nonetheless. [audience laughter] And the sheep is scared, and I'm scared and it's debatable as to which was more frightened. So, I'm thinking, in the interest of my safety and the sheep's dignity, I should stay away from either end. I go around, and I take a deep breath, and I bend down, and I grab two handfuls of wool and then I lift with all my weight. And the sheep, which turns out to be about 98% wool, flips over and he lands on his feet. [audience laughter] I'm standing there and I feel this this power, this strength to something like some Superman, some superhuman.
And I'm thinking, maybe I should wear my underpants on the outside of my trousers [audience laughter] from that day forth, or maybe get a cloak with an S in the back to indicate my newfound superhero status. But the S would have to be made out of wool, because, after all, I'd only save the sheep. As I'm thinking this, the sheep is walking in the distance, and then it stops and turns to face me. As we look into each other's eyes, I feel it. I feel the connection, because we both know that I've just saved his life. And then, we turn away and we walk back to our previous existence. She’s to take her place in her flock and me to take my place in the human race and I don't look back. I can't look back, because I know she's walking out of my life [audience laughter] and I know things will never be the same again, because this may be just one small sheep for mankind, but it was one giant sheep for me.
[cheers and applause]
Dan: [00:05:33] That was Michael Devlin. Michael, his wife and their two young children live in Ireland, a place they love dearly. His hobbies are cycling, having a quiet pint and being at one with nature. And he says, thus far he's been unable to combine all three simultaneously.
He's appeared on stage three times, twice for The Moth and once for a badly mistimed stage dive. And he says he found all three experiences to be “Most enlightening.” When we asked Michael if he had any photos he wanted to include as extras for his story, he went above and beyond and he recreated his encounter with the sheep, which I think has got to be the most amazing extra we have ever offered. Just head to themoth.org, you won't be disappointed.
Since Michael told this story, our program in Dublin has grown into an independent entity, produced by the wonderful Julien Clancy and hosted by Colm O'Regan. And that program is actually where we found our next storyteller, Claire Nevin. Here's Claire, live from the Dublin StorySLAM.
[applause]
Claire: [00:06:50] So, three years ago, I went to Istanbul to visit a friend of mine. I was living in Cyprus at the time, so it's a very short flight. He'd just broken up with his boyfriend, and he was really down in the dumps. He said, “Come on over, we'll go out and I'll show you around. It'll take my mind off things.” And I went. We had a great first day. I went around seeing sights, the mosques, the market, the Grand Bazaar. Absolutely beautiful. And that night, he said, “Look, I really just need to get my mind off this breakup and I'd love to go out.” He said, “There's this amazing bar. It's like one of Istanbul's biggest gay bars. It's in Taksim Square. It's massive, it's brilliant. Let's go.” So, I said, “Okay.”
So we went, and sure enough, he met someone and they were dancing with each other. And I said, “Okay, I'll go and sit down here, wait till they're done, hope he doesn't forget me and go off and leave me in the middle of Istanbul.” I was having a text conversation over Google Translate with someone from Lebanon, going back and forth between Arabic and English. [laughs] And so, anyway, the guy who my friend had been dancing with came back and he said, “Oh, you're looking for your friend, he's over here.” So, he brought me over and we went home and that was fine.
And the next day, we were having dinner and his phone rang. It was Mustafa from the night before. He said, “It was very nice to meet you. Do you want to go out and see Istanbul?” And I said, “Okay, yeah, if you think it'll take your mind off things, let's go.” And Borchai said, “Yeah, please, let's go. It'll be fun.” We went anyway to where we're meant to be picked up. So, we got into the car and there was somebody we didn't know in the car. We were driving along, and I remember thinking, I hope we're going where they say we're going. I could see Taksim Square, and we were going for a drink in Taksim Square and I was reassured by seeing the signs.
And suddenly, we weren't going towards Taksim Square anymore. They'd taken a right and they started winding up this a little alleyway with cobblestones, middle of nowhere, no lamps, like Ottoman Istanbul. I said, “Okay, it's a bit strange.” And then, they parked the car and he said, “Oh, I'm just going to let my friend out here, and then we'll keep going.” I remember looking behind me like the alarm bells were ringing, and I could see all-- Just because it was pitch dark, I could see just the cigarette butts. When it's in the dark and you can just see when the person inhales it lighting up-- I could see a bunch of these lights going off with cigarette butts. I said, “Oh, fuck, I better go out here.”
And so, I went to get out, and then they all converged on the car and they leapt in. And next minute I could hear [imitates sound] I said, “Oh, shit.” So, about four of them got in. I asked Borchai would he translate, let me know what they were saying. And they're saying that he deserved to die, because he was gay, and I deserve to die because I was his friend, guilty by association. There was a lot of aggro and they had the guns held up to us and everything. I was really calm though, honestly. Heart was pounding, but I was calm enough.
And so, then it was almost very businesslike, they wanted our money, they wanted our jewelry and everything. And so, they wanted to get the code for our bank cards. We wrote down some numbers on a piece of paper, and they went away and just like a long wait ascended. I actually was like, “Right, this is going to end soon, one way or the other.” I don't know how this is going to end. But then, it was awful because I started to actually think like they might actually kill me. I was 23, and I said, “Oh, I'm so stupid. I'm about to die at 23 because I was a trusting kind of idiot.” And then, I said, “I really wish that all those years of Catholic education hadn't put me off religion. I really need someone here to just prayed or something.” Like, jeez, I have nobody. I was thinking, please, will someone help me, please. I don't care who it is, Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, anyone. Help me. Help me, please.
I'm not joking. As soon as I actually asked for help, this police van started coming down. We were in the middle of nowhere here. Police van started winding down. I said, “Right, we need to get out here now.” And I nudged Borchai and I said-- I was in the middle of the passenger seats. I was wedged between a gunman and Borchai. And I said, “We need to get out of here.” Borch said, “No, I'm not going. They're going to shoot us.” I said, “They’re going to shoot with us anyway. We have to try.”
And then, the guy beside me, he realized I was trying to orchestrate the great escape. [audience laughter] And so, he started pulling at me and yanking at me. I got great strength, I just punched and punched and punched. And the police van was going by and I managed to get hand free. I was all twisted and contorted and I put my hand out and I opened the door and I timed it so it slammed into the police van as the police van was going by. [audience cheers and applause]
Thanks. [laughs] And then, we jumped out and there was shots firing in the air, like the police were obviously trying to stun them. Borchai had jumped into the police van because he said, it's a logical thing to do-- No, but I was angry. So, I started running along down the alleyways of Istanbul with the police shouting, “You little bastard, I got to kill you.” [audience laughter] And the police were like, “Go back. Go back.” We kept running and running and running. And eventually, they got him anyway and they handcuffed him.
And then, we were brought to the prison that night to testify and say what had happened. We were brought to the hospital to see if we were okay. And the police brought us in to a little room afterwards, and did all these Facebook profiles of who they thought it was going to be. And said, “Is it this guy or this guy, this guy?” Because it only caught one of them. You see, there was about four involved. And I was like, “Yeah, it was him, it was him, it was him.” And then, policeman said, like, “This is one of Istanbul's--" I think he’s Istanbul's top criminal gang. He said like, “We've been looking for these guys for years.” I was like, “Sure, I've only been here 24 hours.” [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause]
I’m like, “Do your job. I mean, call me if you need a hand next time. No problem.” [audience laughter] Eventually, they did actually get the three others in the months that passed and into serving 24 years now is what he-- I don't want to know what they did before. So, yeah, very lucky to have escaped that one. Yeah, sometimes I'd have fears now or different things, but I think the problem is not having the fear. It's like just going forward and trying to deal with them.
At the very end of the two days, I was going back to get on my plane to go back to Cyprus. I was passing through the check or immigration and I handed my passport. He saw my name, the policeman, he goes, “Nevin.” Apparently, my last name is Nevin, Claire Nevin. And he said, “That's a Turkish.” He started speaking to me in Turkish. I was like, “What?” And he said, “Turkish name. You're Turkish.” I said, “No, I'm not Turkish.” [chuckles] And he said, “Apparently, it's a Turkish surname and first name.” And so, I said, “Well, what are Nevin people like?” Because everybody knows, oh, these Nevin’s are like this, the Riley’s are like this. I presumed it'd be like Ireland, that they'd have an idea of Nevin people. [audience laughter] And so, I was like, “What are the Nevin’s like?” And he said, “Nevin people, happy people, lucky people.” I said, “You're dead right.” [laughs]
[cheers and applause]
Dan: [00:14:11] That was Claire Nevin. Claire splits her life between Ireland, France and Switzerland, where she's currently working for the United Nations. Claire decided to participate in the Dublin StorySLAM after being told by more than one person that she should definitely document her crazy tales of lucky escapes and unexpected silver linings. She's a strong believer that there's always something to laugh about, even in the worst situations.
To find out more about the Dublin StorySLAM, just check out the extras on our website, themoth.org. They actually have their own all Irish storytelling podcast, and it's really cool. You can find it on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Finally, for our third story on this week's podcast, we go to Belfast, Northern Ireland, with Paul Doran. Paul told this story at an event put on by Tenx9, a project that he cofounded with Pádraig Ó Tuama back in 2011. Here's Paul.
Paul: [00:15:11] I waved to my father. We all waved to my father. He was one of many thousands of people on a march in Derry in Northern Ireland in 1972. It was a cold Sunday in January, and we watched standing on the hillside near our house. It was just another civil rights march, and one of many that had happened across Northern Ireland at that time. Didn't have a name though. It would get a name later.
We waved and my father didn't wave back. I don't think he saw us. And then, we turned and went home. We lived a short distance away, so we went home. Sunday afternoon, sat in front of the fire, watched TV and thought nothing more of it. We were watching from what I remember, The Black Beauty series. And that was on the commercial channel, because the BBC was showing a very high-minded Victorian drama, [audience laughter] which I checked out because I couldn't remember exactly what it was.
Now, let me explain to you about my dad. My dad was born in 1930. He was called Tony Doran. He married Anna in 1952. They eventually adopted five children. My dad had a decent enough job. He was a telephone engineer. So, he had a van that went with the job. And more importantly, we had a telephone which was a great scarcity in 1972 where we lived. So, it was like a drop-in center for anyone who needed to use the phone. Once you'd used the phone, you put ten PEA into the little wooden shell encrusted box that sat beside the phone in the hallway. A box which my brother, who was less scrupulous than me, would often raid for change. [audience laughter]
So, my father was a very intelligent man. He had a great interest in liberation theology. We had books full of liberation theology. He was very keen on struggles in South America at the time, and in Rhodesia, as it was at the time, and South Africa. So, that was where his interests laid. So, that's no surprise then that he would be on the civil rights march in 1972.
So, there we were watching our TV drama of the Sunday afternoon as you do in the middle of winter, and my father, out of nowhere, just burst into the house, burst through the front door, burst into the living room. He was demented, he was ranting, he was raving. He was talking about people being shot. He was talking about unarmed people being gunned down in front of him by soldiers. He didn't know what was going on. He just knew that dreadful things have been happening.
So, we turned over to the BBC for the news, because at that stage, we trusted the BBC. The announcer came on and said, “Six people have been shot dead at an illegal civil rights march in Londonderry.” And my father went bananas, he said, “Six people, blah, blah, blah. More than six people. I counted the umpteen dead bodies.” They went on and said that the soldiers opened fire after the protest had turned violent and my father again went bananas. They were unarmed civilians gunned down.
He was just not recognizable from the man who had left us that day to go out on that march. He was ranting, he was raving. He got on the phone and he phoned the BBC and he yelled down the line to whatever poor unfortunate happened to answer at the other end saying, “You're telling lies. That's not what happened. I was there. I saw it, blah, blah, blah.” I don't have very strong memories about what happened in the immediate aftermath of that. I was six, life goes on. I do remember a row of eight coffins in our local church. And that image stays with me. But as I say, we just got on with our lives.
And then, something appeared in our house, which was quite bizarre, but as children, you accept whatever happens. Tape recorders suddenly popped up. Now, nobody had tape recorders in those days. We had a great time with them. We were making mixtapes before mixtapes were even a thing. [audience laughter] We were pretending to be radio disc jockeys. [audience laughter] My more serious older brother was pretending to have serious documentary chats. [audience laughter] As children, you just accept what's around you. We never really got to the bottom of it, never really understood why we had so many tape recorders in our house.
And then, there were a series of raids, very, very close. Raids are when the army comes into your house in the middle of the night and gets everybody up and searches. There were raids on our street, up the street, down the street, but they hadn't come to our house. I remember coming down one morning, and the fireplace was filled with unspooled cassette tape ready to be burnt. And of course, we're children, we don't ask questions. You just accept it. We have to go to school. No time for questions. No time for questions and there's no time for answers or explanations.
My father's health deteriorated. He went off for a retreat up in Belfast, which sounds like a contradiction in terms. [audience laughter] But he did. I remember he sent us a postcard from the retreat house that he was staying in. I think he was away for a week. He was bad with his nerves, as they said in those days.
Now people talk about stigmas and mental health. I have to say there was no stigma about being bad with your nerves. Everybody had somebody in the family who was bad with their nerves. This was the 1970s. There was a woman down the street whose husband was politically active. She was bad with her nerves and was hospitalized. There was the man up the street. His wife died the day after she gave birth to their ninth child. He was bad with his nerves and was often in his bed of an afternoon. And the woman next door to him with her eight children, one of whom had a severe mental disability, she was bad with her nerves.
So, there was no stigma and it was not unusual. But tensions were rising in the house you could feel it. There were more and more arguments, and these arguments would be going on at all hours of the day. My father was drinking more and more. On the 25th wedding anniversary, my mother had prepared a special meal for us all. Of course, my father didn't turn up. When he eventually did turn up, he was drunk and she was very cross, needless to say.
The funny thing about arguments in our house, is that they would be going on in the middle of the night. This was a small house we were in. This was like social housing. I always thought if I go down in some American drama, and I say, “Oh, please stop fighting,” they'll stop fighting and they'll give me a hug, and everything will be fine. [audience laughter] Of course, that's not how it went. You walk in and you're told, “Get out. Get back up to your bed,” and they right on continued. So, that's just the way it was.
Eventually, my father had to retire at 45, and my mother had to go back to work. And she got a job in the local shirt factory, which is where all the women who had little or no education ended up. My father became a house husband, a very poor one, I have to say. Campbell's Scotch broth out of a tin when we came home from school every day, and then we got a proper dinner when my mother came home from work. He buried himself in systems to beat the bookies. He was always determined he was going to beat the bookies, and he had small wagers. That's how life went on for a long time.
But then, the drinking became more and more and more. And eventually, it got to the point where I just couldn't deal with them. And so, I went to Belfast and to university when I was 18 and I never lived in that house again. So, they continued their lives and I continued mine. I mean, we were always in touch, but life went on.
Anyway, in 1998, Tony Blair announced that there was to be an inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday. There had been an inquiry before, but at best, it was considered soft, and at worst it was just considered a whitewash. And I wondered, what did my father make of this? I never really got a chance to ask him, because he died the following year. My mother found him unconscious on the floor of the living room one morning, put a blanket over him, thinking he was asleep, because it was a drunken sleep, because that's how things were. But he never regained consciousness, and he died four days later in hospital.
Several years after that, I got an email from my brother saying, “Oh, have a look at this. It's a statement dad made to a solicitor who was working for the Bloody Sunday Inquiry.” I read the statement and it outlined what he had seen that day. He told of seeing people shot down, people dying in front of him, people running amok and panic and terror in his hometown, and soldiers with no regard for life or safety for anybody else running amok on the streets, and how he had come home and he had said to his wife, “I have to do something about this.” And she had said, “What would the good of that be? I'd be left here with five children of my own and you'd be in prison.”
But we learned more from that small statement as to what happened that day than we ever learned from him. He never told us about it. I suppose now people would say it was PTSD. I have no doubt it was. But in those days, it was bad with the nerves. And telling the solicitor what he never told us, I imagine he expected that this time there would be justice. Sadly, he didn't live to see it.
[cheers and applause]
Dan: [00:25:17] That was Paul Doran. Paul grew up in Derry in Northern Ireland, and has worked as a journalist for 25 years. At Tenx9, nine storytellers get 10 minutes to tell a true story however they see fit. The program launched in Belfast. But since has gone global. They've also launched their own podcast and we're going to have links to that, plus more information about Tenx9 and also about the Dublin StorySLAM. That'll all be in the extras for this episode of the podcast. Just hit our website, themoth.org.
A quick reminder that The Moth's third book, Occasional Magic, is out now. The book is a collection of stories adapted from our Mainstage shows. These are tales about when in the face of challenging situations, people found moments of beauty, wonder and clarity. And really, is there anything more Irish than that? You can find it wherever you buy your books, and I hope you guys check it out.
That is it for this week's episode of The Moth podcast. I hope you check out the book. Thanks for listening. And until next time from all of us here at The Moth in New York, have a story-worthy week.
Julia: [00:26:25] Dan Kennedy is the author of Loser Goes First, Rock On and American Spirit. He's also a regular host and storyteller with The Moth.
Dan: [00:26:33] Podcast production by Julia Purcell and Paul Ruest. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.