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We thank you. From Prick's, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison, producer of this radio show. And in this hour, we bring you a special program recorded live in Dublin, Ireland, at the Sound Alive Festival.

This was the first time we ever produced a show in Ireland, a place known for its raconteur's.

The show took place at the Grand Lodge of the Freemasons Hall in Dublin. It's a gorgeous building. It's only recently opened its doors to the public. The theme of the evening was Don't look back. And the host is writer and performer Liam Ferguson.

So when I asked our first storyteller, looking back, is there a night when you went out when you should have just stayed home?

And he looked at me and he said, yes, I don't remember very much about the night, but the following morning I was told I tried to chat up a broom.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Colm Oregan.

I'm a stand up comedian, and my toughest ever gig I had to do was in a lawyer's office in Dublin.

It was early December 2010 and a few weeks previously, I was boarding a train to Belfast.

The timing is important because around this time, Ireland was broke and 80 years of independence had been given up for 10 years of a property boom. And foreign creditors are in the country telling us how to spend our own money. On the other hand, I was feeling quite chipper at that time, he said. I had bought a house at the height of the boom and it had gone down in value to almost nothing.

But I'd managed to channel my rage into humorous commentary on the economy, and everybody wanted to know the lighter side of the financial crisis.

That day, just before getting on the train to Belfast, I'd been giving an interview to BBC News.

BBC News wanted to know what I thought about the economic crisis.

I was speaking for Ireland and my self-importance wasn't in any way dented by the fact that during the interview my nose started to run and the entire news watching population of the BBC saw my snout. But other than that, everything was good on the train. I rang my wife to see whether any new emails. I was quite an email obsessive checker because I'm self-employed. Every email might be a job.

I rang her and I said, Are there any emails? And she said, Collum, you checked half an hour ago, relax, but I'll check. And she did. She looked and it was a new email and I didn't recognise the name of the person it was from, so I was excited. This could be a corporate gig, which is the holy grail of gigs for comedians. It involves lots of money not performing that well and being in an unsuitable environment.

In many ways the opposite of the month.

Will I read the email? She said, and I said, do, please. So she read the email and she skim read it. As you know, when you read out loud and you don't read all the words. So she read blah blah blah at an event on Friday, the 29th of December, blah, blah, blah, identified my client by name, blah, blah, blah, grossly defamatory, blah, blah, blah, substantial damages.

And she eventually realised that what she was reading out was a lawyer's letter. And she said, Colum, I think they're suing you because of a joke you told. What on earth did you say? And immediately I flashed back to that fateful day.

I was doing a gig for a lunchtime gig for a group of businessmen, comfortably well-off people, men in their 50s and 60s.

The kind of demographic that you would aim an anti prostate cancer campaign at the gig was going well.

They liked my schtick about the economy, and I chimed with them because we were all looking for someone to blame. And my idea was that the to blame, it was the billboards. You see, Ireland had experienced the worst ever property boom and bust in history. And I figured it was because of the billboards that circled all the property developments all around the country, the billboards that wanted you to buy an apartment by selling you an idea of the lifestyle you would be buying into by showing you photographs of the kind of people who were going to be your neighbors once you moved in.

The photographs were after another man who looked a little bit like George Clooney is tightly cropped, hair flecked with gray.

He was probably putting on some cufflinks on his way to a charity ball, perhaps are a sexy woman eating some sexy food suggestively, maybe a bit of asparagus. This was four years ago, so asparagus was still sexy for us in Ireland.

What they were trying to say was that if you bought the apartment, these people would be your neighbors. And one or both of them, depending on your proclivity, would bring you in as soon as you moved in and have sex with you on the floor.

That's the lifestyle they were trying to sell. And the audience liked this.

And then I told a joke about one particular property development and one particular property developer identified him by name. And I didn't know he was in the audience.

Now, I can't tell you for legal reasons what the joke was, so you're just going to have to trust me when I say that it was really funny.

So in order to experience the situation, think of something else funny.

Laugh at that and you'll be in the situation.

He came up to me afterwards after the show, and we exchanged pleasantries and then he walked away and I thought that was that.

But it turned out he was walking away to his lawyer's office to send me a letter.

So here I was on the train to Belfast, listening to that letter being read out. And I was scared because I had just recently given up my job to become a full time standup comedian. And I suddenly felt very alone. It's the scariest. There's lots of scary situations you will encounter in life, but the one you leave your job and you're just on your own and then you get sued, that's a pretty scary one.

And then I felt enraged. I felt he was bullying me with the solicitor's letter. And in the solicitors letter they said things like what you said went far beyond the bounds of comedy. And I had imagined a property developer and a solicitors sitting down with a whiteboard to work out the bounds of comedy. But I felt intimidated. I felt bullied. And how dare they clamp down on my free speech? I was David. They were Goliath. And then I got excited because this could be my big chance for publicity.

I could go to court with this and strike a blow for art against money. And this I would be David. There would be Goliath. I would be in court with all the big shots, city lawyers and for some reason against all rules of jurisprudence, the judge would allow me to address the court for 15 minutes and I would change minds. There would be spinning headlines the following day which said things like financial security for hitherto unknown comedian as TV deal is offered.

So I went to my solicitor and I was excited and I told her the story and she said, Colum, I need you to tell me how. What did you say during the gig? And I told her what the way I'm telling you now in a kind of an offhand way. And she said, no, I need you to tell me exactly how you said it, because I need to know the context, because if this goes to court, we need to be able to convince a judge that what you said was funny.

So I stand up there. So I stood up at the edge of the table and as I say, I've done some tough gigs in my day. But 20 minutes in front of a solicitor who didn't nod or smile once, just took notes and from time to time interrupted to legally clarify some of the jokes I was telling.

So you're saying. So where were these billboards that this asparagus was on and I said, I'm not sure. In fact, I'm not really sure whether it was asparagus, it might have been lettuce. Was it asparagus or was it lettuce?

We need to know. I don't know what these jokes aren't intended to be quizzed in a legal way. Well, they're going to be quizzed in a legal way column.

And after I was finished, she paused for a bit. And then she gave me one of the toughest reviews I've ever had as a comedian when she said, I think column, we would have difficulty persuading a judge that what you said was funny.

So I think I think he has a case for defamation, and I think you should apologize and I was furious.

I said, how can I draw back on this? This is art fighting against money. How can I apologize? And then she showed me some of the costs that might be involved. A thousand euro just for being there, 10000 euro for a discovery. If it went to court, it could cost 250000 euro. So I said, OK, I'll apologize. And but I was deflated by the whole experience. I felt that I when she said, why don't you go home and have a think about it.

And I went home and I fell down because this is not how this was supposed to end this glorious story of the little guy fighting the big guy and all for this just because it was going to cost me, I was going to have to roll back on my principles. And then I read a reread the letter. I hadn't really read the solicitor's letter properly. The first time solicitors letters, lawyers, letters are written in times new Roman font, which is the scariest of all typefaces.

I think we'd all feel a little better if a lawyer's letter was written in Comic Sans, it just wouldn't hurt as much.

And I read and I read page two of the letter and on page two I noticed this line which said that. Several others who were there that day also pointed out to my client the serious nature of your allegations, and then it started to fill in for me that perhaps what was going on was not this battle to suppress free speech, but the fact that this man had been slagged off and laughed at in front of his people by his peers. And he was just plain heart.

And I started to realize that sometimes it's not necessarily big principles are involved, not necessarily the little guy versus the big guy, not necessarily that the little guy is always right, because I had taught myself I was fighting the man here as me, a little guy striking a blow against the man. And I realize instead I was just striking a blow against a man. And that's not that funny. As it turns out, sometimes David may have been a bit of an asshole and Goliath might just have been minding his own business.

Thank you very much.

Former Oregon ladies and gentlemen, Kolyma region is a comedian and author, radio host and podcast. Hailing from the small county court village of DropZone, he's written six bestselling books and written and presented five comedy radio series. He writes regularly in the Irish Examiner and has a podcast about mathematics.

We'll be back in a moment with more stories from this live show in Dublin, Ireland. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by an Atlantic public media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRICK'S.

This is the Moth Radio Hour from Prick's. I'm Jay Allison. You're listening to a live moth event held in Dublin with the theme. Don't look back. Here's your host, Lynn Ferguson. All right.

Gorgeous ones. When I asked her next storyteller, looking back, is there a night when you went out when you should have just stayed home?

She answered, yes. The night Nelson Mandela died, I didn't find out till I got home.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Karen Guiora.

OK, I'm 20 years of age, I'm the shop steward in Dunstall Henry Street in Dublin, and I receive an instruction from our union called Mandate that we're no longer to handle South African produce because of apartheid.

We knew very little about South Africa. We didn't know how to pronounce or spell apartheid, but we followed the union instruction.

We went around the store to find out what was South African, it was mainly outbound oranges and grapefruit and inform management that we were going to follow this instruction. We were immediately put on cash registers. And I remember sitting there myself, Mary Manning and Liz D.C. and this woman coming up with two outs and grapefruit in her basket.

And we looked at each other and we prayed that she wasn't going to come to one of us, but she did.

She came to Mary Manning and Mary Manning refused to handle South African produce and was suspended. We came out on strike. And that was the first day, the 19th of July 1984, at a quarter past twelve on a Thursday, and I remember as well that the Dunstall antiapartheid strike started.

As I said, we knew very little about South Africa. We knew there was discrimination, but we didn't know what sort of discrimination it was about.

And we were a few days on the picket line and a man called Nimrods Ajaka came onto the picket line and he started telling us about what was South African and what was apartheid all about. He was an exile from South Africa and he'd been living in Ireland for about 15 years.

And he told us what it was like to be a black person living in South Africa. You couldn't sit on the same seat as a white person. You couldn't use the same toilet. You had to be out of the cities and the towns that white people lived in by a certain time. And you had to have a passbook to leave your township. And he described what apartheid was like in one of the best ways that I can describe it. It was like a pint of Guinness.

The majority of the people living in South Africa were black and the majority were white.

And like a pint of Guinness, the whites sat on top of the black and because of Nimrod and what he was telling us about South Africa. That changed for us personally, it no longer became a union structure. We were never, ever going to handle South African goods until apartheid had gone and freedom for everybody in South Africa had been achieved. The strike went on.

A union official told us it may take a couple of weeks. We were six months on strike when we got an invitation to meet Bishop Desmond Tutu.

He was coming from America, going over to Oslo to pick up a Nobel Peace Prize. And he said, I'd like to meet the Dunstall strikers in London.

So as we did being shop workers, we got in a car and we drove and took the ferry over to London to meet Bishop Desmond Tutu, who was about to collect Nobel Peace Prize.

And I remember being there, and it was the first time that we really had any media interest. And the cameras are there and this small little man comes into the room and people that know me know I'm not a very huggy person. So the first thing he does is comment holds us. And I'm like, oh, God.

And then he told us and the media how proud he was of us and how brave we were.

And for somebody like that to say that it just brought more passion to us than we ever had before.

And he told us that he would go back to South Africa and he would tell the ordinary workers, the ordinary black workers in South Africa, that they weren't on their own, that there was people from other countries that cared enough to do something about apartheid.

That was in December of 84. We were six months on strike. We went through a long winter. And then as the first anniversary of the strike happened and we were getting very little support from the government, from a lot of Irish people and from the trade union movement. But we stuck to our guns.

Bishop Desmond Tutu asked us to come to South Africa to see for ourselves what apartheid was all about.

And we had no money to go because we had earned when we were working about eighty five pounds a week, we were now on 21 pounds a week.

The union would only give us a thousand pounds and the trip was going to cost about 8000.

So one night in Dublin City, we got as many supporters as we could together and we went round every pub in Dublin City raising funds for that trip. And we raised seven thousand pounds in 1985 to go on that trip to South Africa. That was the support we got from ordinary working class people.

And the trip was organised and we headed off to Heathrow and was about to board the plane, British Airways plane to Heathrow or in Heathrow to go to South Africa.

And we were stopped and held for a number of hours there. They wouldn't let us on the plane because the South African authorities wouldn't allow the plane to land. Eventually, through negotiations, we boarded the plane to be told afterwards that the captain had told all the passengers that we were the reason the plane had been delayed for so long.

We were all separated. We weren't allowed to sit together. So you can imagine the atmosphere. We were quite terrified. And remember, we're only 20.

The youngest of us was 17, the oldest was 24. The rest of us were all twenty.

We arrived Enhancements Airport, which is now, by the way, called Oliver Tambo Airport. And when we arrived on each side of the tarmac, there were soldiers. We thought this was the norm. We arrived in to get our passports checked and soldiers came and asked us, were we the group from Ireland?

We said we were immediately there was about 40 armed soldiers around us with machine guns. We were escorted upstairs. We were held under armed guard for eight hours. We did not know what was going to happen to us because we had heard stories of people disappearing once they got to South Africa and South African black South Africans themselves disappeared.

Eventually we were informed that we were going to be sent back on the same plane. But while we were there for eight hours, we couldn't even go to the bathroom where two women soldiers would come in with us and the door would have to stay open. When we got eventually back on the plane, we were disappointed that we were leaving. But one sense, we were relieved that we were safe and going up the steps of the plane. I never forget when I got to the top of the stairs, I turned around and I put my fist up and I said, we will be back when South Africa is free.

And Sandra, one of the strikers, pushed me in and said, get that into the plane.

When we arrived back in Heathrow now we left on a Monday at 12 noon, and this was now a Wednesday at seven a.m. in the morning, none of our families knew where we were at all. So you can imagine the worry.

When we arrived in Heathrow, we were told by the captain that all passengers must remain seated, that the police were boarding the plane.

We looked at each other and said, oh, God, here we go again. We're going to be thrown out of Britain as well as everything else. But we weren't. We were escorted into a press conference.

11 workers, 10 young women and one young man, and we're in a press conference with all of the media from the U.K., the Irish media, the press media, asking us what happened, what was going on. And we were there was a headline saying The most dangerous people in the world.

And that was the Dunstall strikers. When we got back from South Africa and London, a mass picket was organized. Now, up to that moment, there was very little support for the strike. There was a lot of lip service paid, but not real support.

On that day, the Saturday, there was nearly 7000 people on that picket line. You couldn't walk up or down Henry Street for the amount of people that were out there supporting us. So thank you to the South African apartheid government for kicking those.

As I said, the strike continued and then in October of 1985. The most amazing thing happened as well. We were invited over to address the United Nations in New York. Can you imagine shop workers picketing outside on stores day in, day out? And they want the U.N. wants us to talk to them.

So I go over and a colleague, Michelle Gavyn, comes over with me. And when I got to do my speech, I was terrified in South Africa. But I think I was nearly more terrified than this because there were old people in suits.

And you know what I would say posh people, rich people, people that were really important, not just Donz little workers from Dublin and Ireland.

And when we got to do our speech and I did it the first time ever recorded in the U.N., that was actually standing applause because we were just ordinary, everyday people standing up for what was right. And that made a difference to everybody that was sitting around that room that day. Eventually, the government started to take some notice of us and they brought in a boycott of South African goods when we started the strike.

There were two anti-apartheid movement, one in Cork and one in Dublin.

By the time the strike ended, which lasted for two years and nine months, there was more than 36 anti-apartheid groups and they were done stores, support groups are formed anti-apartheid groups after that.

So the momentum was really good.

The government in Detroit introduced the boycott on the 1st of January 1987, and we are the first.

Ireland is the first Western country to actually put a boycott of South African produce.

In place, and that was a direct result of the work of us, the Dunstall strikers, moving that in such a way, then we kind of all drifted apart and so, you know, tried to get work and tried to go back to some sort of normal life.

And then all of a sudden, we couldn't believe Nelson Mandela was released from prison. And we're watching individually by ourselves.

This man is free. Can you believe it?

Did we ever think we'd see the day?

And then we find out he's coming to Ireland and he wants to meet the Dunstall strikers, our idol, the person that we had, you know, idolized for so many years. And, you know, we lost so much and we gained so much because we had so much passion about what he represented. And when we met him and I looked up to him and his very tall man, I thought, oh, my God, you are the person that I have always wanted to meet.

And now I'm standing here. And it was totally surreal. And he shook hands with us and he said, You are so brave. He gave us his medal of bravery.

Nelson Mandela was. And I just couldn't believe it, and when he said we were so brave, all of the bad feeling, all of the the hurt that we went through on those bad winters, and Don's just totally fell away because he acknowledged what we did and we didn't care about anybody else. He did.

I wasn't at home the night Nelson Mandela died.

I was actually in the book. And when I came home, my mom had actually rang me. And she's here in the audience to tell me who died.

I thought, oh, God. It was heartbreaking.

And the following morning, we got a call to go up to Dublin, to the Mansion House next door to sign the Book of Condolences.

And I'm living in Kerry and have been for the last 26 years. And when I got in my car, I was just going down the drive and I got a phone call to bring the passport just in case I thought I was ever going to happen.

And when we got up to the Mansion House, we signed the Book of Condolences and Nexavar all within an hour, we're told we're going to the funeral of Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

All of us. When we went into Sian's airport, we we were scared why we were so nervous, everything went well and we're going through arrivals and it's the Irish embassy in Johannesburg, in Pretoria, coming to collect us the Dunsworth strikers.

And to bring us to our hotel and then the rest of the strikers come and join us the day later, and we're all there and we're back in South Africa and South Africa's free.

Karen Gearan, ladies and gentlemen. Karen Gearan had trouble finding work in Dublin after the strike. She has lived in Kerry for the past 26 years and works in the community development sector. Here again is your host of this evening of Live Storytelling in Dublin, Ireland, Lynn Ferguson.

When I asked our next storyteller, looking back, is there a night when you went out when you should have just stayed home? He said plenty.

Actually, he said, especially when my mom told me to stay and watch a DVD and I went out anyway and got drunk. And then he wanted to say he said, Sorry, Mom. Unfortunately, his mom's not here tonight. She's going to.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our next story, Taylor Dotto, McCormac.

So last October, I got a call from my mom and I was in college and I answered the phone and she says, Darral, have you seen the comments made about you? And I said, No, ma'am. And she sounded quite worried. And I said, relax, it's OK. And she goes, If you don't and you haven't seen them, please don't look at them. And I said, I'll be fine and don't worry, I'll be grand.

And a few weeks prior to this, I had done my first professional acting job and I was to do it two to three minute video of me urging young people of Ireland to come out and vote for the referendum on the campaign. And it was two, three minutes for me speaking English and Irish. And I was really proud of it.

And when my mom was talking about there's a Facebook thread of a picture of me and it was a comment section and it was OK for people to discuss whether to vote yes or no. Unfortunately, a few people, very small amount of people made some kind of comments about my skin color and kind of judging my nationality, basically. And I kind of didn't really feel affected for some strange reason, I kind of felt I was not affected, it didn't do didn't make me feel bad.

I kind of felt mostly embarrassed for the people I came out to, maybe like I'm very sorry about that. I heard what happened. And I was like, no, it's OK. The truth was, my mom kind of felt a bit more effective than I was because she spent her whole life trying to get me to avoid this kind of thing where people would make kind of comments about my parents.

And she grew up and Pnina and left when she was 21 and she met my dad in California. She went and she became a nanny over there for a summer and he was only about 21 as well. He was a soldier in the American army and they had their summer romance and she became pregnant and she got very scared and came back to Ireland like the scared little girl she was and she gave birth. So I grew up and Nina and I met my dad twice.

I don't really know him that much. But for a man I've met twice, he has a massive effect on my life and an influence on my life just because of his color. And I remember growing up in China and a lot of from what I remember was young kids my same age, kind of looking at me and staring at me. And, you know, we really prolonged there is a kind of. And I asked my mom, Mom, why are these other kids staring at me?

And she'd always come out with the answer is because you're so handsome and part of me. I didn't believe it fully.

But I got to an age where I was a bit I was kind of getting too old before she could keep saying that. And I remember the first time I actually kind of encountered racism. One of the first times I remember I was playing soccer in my dream and my local state named Derrick. And I was playing with my cousins. And there was another guy who was also part of this state, but a different section. And he came out and played with us and I was only about 11.

And we're playing soccer. And I made a bad challenge. And the Clippers clipped his ankle and he turned around me and said, fuck off, you black bastard. And being 11, I think he was around 20. I was obviously taken aback by it. And I went home to my mom and I told my mom this guy called me a black bastard. And she goes, Well, Darrell. You're going to have to find a time where you can defend yourself, you know, I guess, but this guy was a lot older than me, you know, so she got up and she goes, OK, where does he live?

So me, my uncle and my mom went over to this guy's house and this is like 11 o'clock and she knocks on the door and the guy's dad comes out and my mom goes, Where's your son? I'd like to have a word with him and. He gets he gets his son and a son comes out and my mom goes, I would like you now to apologize to my son for what you call him earlier. And he apologized. And then my mom said, I just want you to know that my son will grow up to be a bigger man than your son will ever be.

And I just remember walking away from the house absolutely chuffed, just being like, go, man.

So we walked home and because, you know, I just felt very good about it.

About two years later, it's kind of another time where I experienced a bit of racial abuse and I was walking through an estate called Cormick Drive and Kamata I was kind of known to be a bit of a rough estate. And I used to walk through and I used to be a particular kid called Steve, and he used to kind of shout things at me.

And, you know, sometimes they were funny. Sometimes they were like, why don't you go back to Charlestown, you know? And I'm like, you can do a bit better than that, Steven, come on. And what he would he would continually shout things at me, and it kind of made me confused because I was kind of like, well, I feel the exact same as anyone else in this town.

I grew up here.

I played hurt him and it continued for quite a while. A few weeks went by. And one particular time I was walking to school and I was coming up by the cinema and he came behind me and he was doing the same thing again. And I remembered the way my mom walked up to that door of your mom's house and and gave it to him. So I just stopped and I looked to the ground to try and find something. And all I could see was a chestnut.

So I picked up the chestnut and I turned back around. I looked at him and I roared fuck off.

And I threw the chestnut at him. The best thing is I missed. I didn't hit him. He kind of laughed at me and I walked towards school about two days later.

Who do I bump into as I'm crossing the road, but Stephen? And he's crossing this way and I'm crossing that way and I'm kind of waiting here and I'm like, I'm now about to get my head punched in and I'm not a fighter at all. I was raised by two mothers, my mom and my grandmother. So I've no mean streak in me. I can talk right.

And I can talk more aware of any situation. But this time I felt like I was just going to have to suck it up.

And he came over to me and he just put out his hand and he said, I'm very sorry about what I said the other day. And I was kind of awkward because I was like, oh, I don't expect this. I'm still waiting for a punch to come up my face. But he just said, I'm sorry. And I said, it's all right. And don't get me wrong, growing up in China, I've had a great childhood and it wasn't all doom and gloom apart from these kind of two situations.

I mean, I played hurling with Nina OGX, my local hurling club. I felt like I was some sort of shorn of a helping hand.

And I remember when I was in school, I got elected from my student for the student president and at the time, Barack Obama was elected the first black president.

And everyone was like, Daryl, you're the first black president of CBS and. Bush. I was lucky because my mom was always there, as well as enjoying being different and standing out, there was a flip side and my mom protected me from that flip side. And although she's a Facebook warrior, always message me, I'm only now starting to realize how grateful I am for that. And she gave me the space to allow me to just be myself and grow as a person, no matter what color.

And I suppose I just want to say thank you, ma'am. Daryl McCormack was born and raised in County Tipperary in 2014, he graduated from the Conservatory of Music and Drama in Rathmines. Here's an excerpt from the promotional spot that caused the stir in both English and Gaelic.

Every Irish citizen has a vote, no matter what the politicians or the media or any other group in the country want. Only you and I have the power to make the decision by voting. Is Faizullah Guccifer on Sarah and a vote of all this? Is Comecon out there in the poultry? Hamgyong no n Kroupa LSH here it's Liquidnet at heart and hooked on Kinnison a Yaniv Travolta Zahav.

For more, visit the Mosig. We'll be back in a moment with more live storytelling from Ireland. Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange PR NextG.

This is the Moth Radio Hour from PUREX. I'm Jay Allison, producer of this show. You're listening to a special edition with stories recorded live at an event held in Dublin, Ireland. And here's your host, Lynn Ferguson.

So looking back, is there a night when you went out and you should have just stayed home is? Well, I asked my next storyteller and he said to me, yes.

Many of them, he said, but I'm not so sure it made much difference to the outcome. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Peter Pringle. It was the week before Christmas. And I was sitting in the death cell and partly Shia prison. Some weeks previously. I had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death by the special criminal court for a murder I did not commit. The special criminal court is a nondurable court. As I sat in that dead cell, which was a very dismal place.

Where the windows had been blocked off, where there was no natural light. And a bank of fluorescent lights overhead, which were never turned off day or night. And which, after a little while began to burn my eyes. I was forced to be always in the presence of at least two gaolers. And I would sit quite close to me. One day I heard them having a conversation. And they were discussing what role they might have to play in my hanging.

One said to the other, Seamus, did you were you told also that two of us would have to participate in his execution?

And this was said as if I didn't exist, as if I was not there, as if I wasn't a human being. And Seamus said, yes, that's right. And he said, what do you think we're going to have to do? And the third guy that he said. We have whatever we have to do, they're going to have to pay us extra money because this is not our usual job and so we're going to have to get a bonus for doing this work.

And they went on to discuss what role they might have to play. And they came to the conclusion that at my execution, two jailers would be positioned underneath the gallows.

And when my body came down to the trapdoor, each jailer would have to pull out one of my legs to ensure that my neck was broken quickly.

And I was if I wasn't there, it was if they weren't speaking about me. And I was very angry and upset and disturbed by this. But it illustrates the inhumanity of the death penalty. It even affects the jailer's. Because they're not allowed to speak to the condemned prisoner. Because. It wouldn't do them any good to learn to like the prisoner or to respect the prisoner. Because how can you call bloodily helped to kill somebody that you like, that you respect?

Now, this was in the year 1980. And I was 26 years since this state had executed anybody. And there was a body of opinion which said that it was unlikely they would carry out the execution.

But when I heard these jailers discussing their role in my execution and the fact that the authorities had told them that would be a role for them in my execution, there was no doubt in my mind.

The I facing death. And I tried as best as I could to distance myself from that. And as best as I could to curb my anger. Christmas past. In a lonely, dismal way, without any contact with the outside world, without any contact with my loved ones. And shortly after Christmas, as the post was being delivered to prisoners, Gaoler came and handed me a postcard. And this postcard was extraordinary. It was written by a woman whom I did not know, and she told in the postcard how the day after Christmas Day, she was walking on the shore as based south of Dublin, grieving for her brother, whose name was Peter.

Who had been to see a man in an accident that he had lost his life. And she remembered that there was another Peter who was facing death. And you see, I had been a fisherman and I had spent a long time at sea and she remembered that there was another sea man named Peter who was facing death, and she thought she would write to me to wish me well. And to pray that I would not be executed. And when I got that card.

It just lifted my heart. That lady whom I didn't know. Restored my humanity to me. And lifted my spirits. I've had I knew with a certainty. That I was facing death, I wish I knew with certainty that the worst thing that they could do to me would be to kill me. And until such times as they did that. I was my own person. While they could imprison me physically, they could not imprison my mind or my heart and my spirit.

And so it was within those realms of myself. That I determined that I would live. And so it was within that that cell was around myself in that small space around myself, I had my own sanctuary. And I learned. To almost totally ignore what was around me. Sometime later, almost six months later. Eleven days before my execution date. My sentence was commuted from the death sentence to 40 years penal servitude without remission. And I was placed back out into the general prison population.

Now, I knew I couldn't possibly face 40 years there, and I determined to try to prove my innocence. And I studied law in the prison and I took my own case. And with the help of a human rights lawyer named Greg ONeil, we took the case to the Court of Criminal Appeal.

And in May of 1995, my conviction was overturned and I was released from the special criminal court.

It was almost surreal. And when I stepped outside the court, I was faced with a huge crowd of media people. With our cameras and the microphones and we're all showing them into my face and throwing questions at me and wanting me to do things like give a clenched fist salute and all that nonsense.

And I didn't have a moment to myself. And then my lawyer took me and we went to the television station and we had an interview for the news, and afterwards my friends and I organized a party and we went to this big party and everybody was drinking and happy and enjoying themselves and talking to me and clapping my back and and and I wasn't really in it.

I hadn't had time to assimilate. My liberty. And that night, I stayed with a friend in the suburbs of Dublin. And the following morning, I woke up early and I went downstairs. The rest of the household was still asleep. And I went down to the back garden at a lovely back garden, was stretched way back from the house. And I walked down the back garden and the sun was shining and I felt so good and I began to breathe in the fresh air and the colors and the greenery and hear the birds singing.

I'm down at the bottom of the garden. There was an old old Appletree. And I went up to this apple tree and I put my hand out and they touched the back of the tree, which is Naude. And I was thinking about this tree, which had been growing there for countless years, season in and season out every year, producing its fruit, shedding its leaves, producing Uli's and just carrying on its business in nature, oblivious of the big city around it, oblivious of the hatred and the anger and the injustice and the wars and degradation and the hunger and everything that goes on.

Just simply being in nature. And I put my arms. I put my arms around that three. And I wept. Thank you. Peter Pringle is a human rights and anti death penalty activist who lives with his wife, Sandy Jacobs, in the west of Ireland. Together, they founded the Sunny Center Foundation USA, a nonprofit organization with a sanctuary in Ireland.

We met Peter and his wife, Sunny, through a workshop at the Moth's Community program conducted with the Innocence Project, an organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted prisoners.

For links and more information, visit the morgue. That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time. And that's the story from the mall.

Your house this hour was writer and performer Lynn Ferguson. The stories were directed by Catherine Burns, Jennifer Higson and Sara Austin Ginés, the rest of the most directorial staff, including Sara Habermann and Meg Bowles Productions, report from Whitney Jones, Julianna Clancy and The Sounds Alive Festival special. Thanks to Lorelei Harris, Shanté Mooney and Sean Rock's most stories are true is remembered and affirmed by the storytellers.

While the events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City supervised by Paul Wuest, our theme music is By The Drift. Other music in this hour from Regina Carter and Mark O'Connor. The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison with Viki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation committed to building a more just verdant and peaceful world. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by the Public Radio Exchange RIKSDAG for more about our podcast.

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