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 buzzim friends are turned backbiters;" and
after a final "If yez don't drop your coddin' and deversion 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 around
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 Dikey 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 a 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 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 14-1/2) 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 another month until the
weather got dacent." A man called Carroll thereupon produced a
half-pint of whiskey, and they all drank to the soul of the departed.
Unhappily, however, the hearse was over-weighted, 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-sight 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.
_W. B. Yeats._