MICHAEL MORAN was born about 1794 off Black Pitts, in the Liberties of
Dublin, in Faddle Alley. A fortnight after birth he went stone blind
from illness, and became thereby a blessing to his parents, who were
soon able to send him to rhyme and beg at street corners and at the
bridges over the Liffey. They may well have wished that their quiver
were full of such as he, for, free from the interruption of sight, his
mind became a perfect echoing chamber, where every movement of the
day and every change of public passion whispered itself into rhyme or
quaint saying. By the time he had grown to manhood he was the admitted
rector of all the ballad-mongers of the Liberties. Madden, the weaver,
Kearney, the blind fiddler from Wicklow, Martin from Meath, M’Bride
from heaven knows where, and that M’Grane, who in after days, when
the true Moran was no more, strutted in borrowed plumes, or rather
in borrowed rags, and gave out that there had never been any Moran
but himself, and many another, did homage before him, and held him
chief of all their tribe. Nor despite his blindness did he find any
difficulty in getting a wife, but rather was able to pick and choose,
for he was just that mixture of ragamuffin and of genius which is dear
to the heart of woman, who, perhaps because she is wholly conventional
herself, loves the unexpected, the crooked, the bewildering. Nor did
he lack, despite his rags, many excellent things, for it is remembered
that he ever loved caper sauce, going so far indeed in his honest
indignation at its absence upon one occasion as to fling a leg of
mutton at his wife. He was not, however, much to look at, with his
coarse frieze coat with its cape and scalloped edge, his old corduroy
trousers and great brogues, and his stout stick made fast to his wrist
by a thong of leather: and he would have been a woeful shock to the
gleeman MacConglinne, could that friend of kings have beheld him in
prophetic vision from the pillar stone at Cork. And yet though the
short cloak and the leather wallet were no more, he was a true gleeman,
being alike poet, jester, and newsman of the people. In the morning
when he had finished his breakfast, his wife or some neighbour would
read the newspaper to him, and read on and on until he interrupted
with, ‘That’ll do—I have me meditations’; and from these meditations
would come the day’s store of jest and rhyme. He had the whole Middle
Ages under his frieze coat.
He had not, however, MacConglinne’s hatred of the Church and clergy,
for when the fruit of his meditations did not ripen well, or when
the crowd called for something more solid, he would recite or sing a
metrical tale or ballad of saint or martyr or of Biblical adventure.
He would stand at a street corner, and when a crowd had gathered would
begin in some such fashion as follows (I copy the record of one who
knew him)—‘Gather round me, boys, gather round me. Boys, am I standin’
in puddle? am I standin’ in wet?’ Thereon several boys would cry, ‘Ah,
no! yez not! yer in a nice dry place. Go on with _St. Mary_; go on
with _Moses_’—each calling for his favourite tale. Then Moran, with a
suspicious wriggle of his body and a clutch at his rags, would burst
out with ‘All me buzzum friends are turned backbiters’; and after a
final ‘If yez don’t drop your coddin’ and diversion I’ll lave some
of yez a case,’ by way of warning to the boys, begin his recitation,
or perhaps still delay, to ask, ‘Is there a crowd round me now? Any
blackguard heretic around me?’ The best-known of his religious tales
was _St. Mary of Egypt_, a long poem of exceeding solemnity, condensed
from the much longer work of a certain Bishop Coyle. It told how a
fast woman of Egypt, Mary by name, followed pilgrims to Jerusalem for
no good purpose, and then turning penitent on finding herself withheld
from entering the Temple by supernatural interference, fled to the
desert and spent the remainder of her life in solitary penance. When
at last she was at the point of death, God sent Bishop Zozimus to hear
her confession, give her the last sacrament, and with the help of a
lion, whom He sent also, dig her grave. The poem has the intolerable
cadence of the eighteenth century, but was so popular and so often
called for that Moran was soon nicknamed Zozimus, and by that name is
he remembered. He had also a poem of his own called _Moses_, which went
a little nearer poetry without going very near. But he could ill brook
solemnity, and before long parodied his own verses in the following
ragamuffin fashion:
In Egypt’s land, contagious to the Nile,
King Pharaoh’s daughter went to bathe in style.
She tuk her dip, then walked unto the land,
To dry her royal pelt she ran along the strand.
A bulrush tripped her, whereupon she saw
A smiling babby in a wad o’ straw.
She tuk it up, and said with accents mild,
‘’Tare-and-agers, girls, which av yez owns the child?’
His humorous rhymes were, however, more often quips and cranks at the
expense of his contemporaries. It was his delight, for instance, to
remind a certain shoemaker, noted alike for display of wealth and for
personal uncleanness, of his inconsiderable origin in a song of which
but the first stanza has come down to us:
At the dirty end of Dirty Lane,
Liv’d a dirty cobbler, Dick Maclane;
His wife was in the old king’s reign
A stout brave orange-woman.
On Essex Bridge she strained her throat,
And six-a-penny was her note.
But Dickey wore a bran-new coat,
He got among the yeomen.
He was a bigot, like his clan,
And in the streets he wildly sang,
O Roly, toly, toly raid, with his old jade.
He had troubles of divers kinds, and numerous interlopers to face and
put down. Once an officious peeler arrested him as a vagabond, but was
triumphantly routed amid the laughter of the court, when Moran reminded
his worship of the precedent set by Homer, who was also, he declared,
a poet, and a blind man, and a beggarman. He had to face a more serious
difficulty as his fame grew. Various imitators started up upon all
sides. A certain actor, for instance, made as many guineas as Moran did
shillings by mimicking his sayings and his songs and his get-up upon
the stage. One night this actor was at supper with some friends, when
dispute arose as to whether his mimicry was overdone or not. It was
agreed to settle it by an appeal to the mob. A forty-shilling supper
at a famous coffee-house was to be the wager. The actor took up his
station at Essex Bridge, a great haunt of Moran’s, and soon gathered a
small crowd. He had scarce got through ‘In Egypt’s land, contagious to
the Nile,’ when Moran himself came up, followed by another crowd. The
crowds met in great excitement and laughter. ‘Good Christians,’ cried
the pretender, ‘is it possible that any man would mock the poor dark
man like that?’
‘Who’s that? It’s some imposhterer,’ replied Moran.
‘Begone, you wretch! it’s you’ze the imposhterer. Don’t you fear the
light of heaven being struck from your eyes for mocking the poor dark
man?’
‘Saints and angels, is there no protection against this? You’re a most
inhuman blaguard to try to deprive me of my honest bread this way,’
replied poor Moran.
‘And you, you wretch, won’t let me go on with the beautiful poem.
Christian people, in your charity, won’t you beat this man away? he’s
taking advantage of my darkness.’
The pretender, seeing that he was having the best of it, thanked the
people for their sympathy and protection, and went on with the poem,
Moran listening for a time in bewildered silence. After a while Moran
protested again with:
‘Is it possible that none of yez can know me? Don’t yez see it’s
myself; and that’s some one else?’
‘Before I can proceed any further in this lovely story,’ interrupted
the pretender, ‘I call on yez to contribute your charitable donations
to help me to go on.’
‘Have you no sowl to be saved, you mocker of heaven?’ cried Moran, put
completely beside himself by this last injury. ‘Would you rob the poor
as well as desave the world? O, was ever such wickedness known?’
‘I leave it to yourselves, my friends,’ said the pretender, ‘to give to
the real dark man, that you all know so well, and save me from that
schemer,’ and with that he collected some pennies and half-pence. While
he was doing so, Moran started his _Mary of Egypt_, but the indignant
crowd seizing his stick were about to belabour him when they fell back
bewildered anew by his close resemblance to himself. The pretender now
called to them to ‘just give him a grip of that villain, and he’d soon
let him know who the imposhterer was!’ They led him over to Moran,
but instead of closing with him he thrust a few shillings into his
hand, and turning to the crowd explained to them he was indeed but an
actor, and that he had just gained a wager, and so departed amid much
enthusiasm, to eat the supper he had won.
In April, 1846, word was sent to the priest that Michael Moran was
dying. He found him at 15 (now 14½) Patrick Street, on a straw bed, in
a room full of ragged ballad-singers come to cheer his last moments.
After his death the ballad-singers, with many fiddles and the like,
came again and gave him a fine wake, each adding to the merriment
whatever he knew in the way of rann, tale, old saw, or quaint rhyme.
He had had his day, had said his prayers and made his confession, and
why should they not give him a hearty send-off? The funeral took place
the next day. A good party of his admirers and friends got into the
hearse with the coffin, for the day was wet and nasty. They had not
gone far when one of them burst out with ‘It’s cruel cowld, isn’t it?’
‘Garra’,’ replied another, ‘we’ll all be as stiff as the corpse when
we get to the berrin-ground.’ ‘Bad cess to him,’ said a third; ‘I wish
he’d held out for another month until the weather got dacent.’ A man
named Carroll thereupon produced a half-pint of whiskey, and they all
drank to the soul of the departed. Unhappily, however, the hearse was
overweighted, and they had not reached the cemetery before the spring
broke, and the bottle with it.
Moran must have felt strange and out of place in that other kingdom he
was entering, perhaps while his friends were drinking in his honour.
Let us hope that some kindly middle region was found for him, where he
can call dishevelled angels about him with some new and more rhythmical
form of his old
Gather round me, boys, will yez
Gather round me?
And hear what I have to say
Before ould Salley brings me
My bread and jug of tay;
and fling outrageous quips and cranks at cherubim and seraphim. Perhaps
he may have found and gathered, ragamuffin though he be, the Lily of
High Truth, the Rose of Far-sought Beauty, for whose lack so many of
the writers of Ireland, whether famous or forgotten, have been futile
as the blown froth upon the shore.