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 wishes that their quiver were full of such as he, for, free from the interruption of sight, his mind turned every movement of the day and every change of public passion 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, of Madden, the weaver, Kearney, the blind fiddler from Wicklow, Martin from Meath, M’Bride from Heaven know 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. 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 ragamufffin and of genius which is dear to the heart of woman, who, however conventional in 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, and upon one occasion when his wife had forgotten it, he flung a leg of mutton at her head. He was not, certainly, much to look at, with his coarse frieze coat with its cape and scalloped edge, his old courduroy 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 MacCoinglinne, 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, MacCoinglinne’s hatred of the Curch 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 some Biblical adventure. He would stand at a street corner, and when a crowd had gathered woudl 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? an I standin’ in wet?’ Thereon several boys would cry, ‘Ah, no! yez not! yer in a nice dry place. Go on with Saint Mary; go on with Moses’—each calling his favourite tale. Then Moran, with a 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 warning to the boys, ‘If yes don’t drop your coddin’ and diversion I’ll have some yez a case,’ begin his recitation, or parhaps still delay, to ask, ‘Is there a crowd round me now? Any blaguard heretic around me?’ Or he would, it may be, start by singing:—
Gather round me, boys, will yez
Gather round me?
And hear what I have to say
Before ould Sally brings me
My bread and jug of tay.
The best-known fo his religious tales was Saint Mary of Egypt, a long poem of exceeding solemnity, condensed from the much longer work of a certain Bishop Coyle. It told how an Egyptian harlot, Mary by name, followed pilgrims to Jerusalem in pursuit of her trade, and then, on finding herself withheld from entering the Temple by supernatural interference, turned penitent, 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 Zosimus 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 at its worst, but was so popular and so often called for that Moran was nicknamed Zosimus, 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 int he following ragamuffin fashion:—
In Egypt’s land, contagious to the Nile,
King Pharoah’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 bullrush tripped her, whereupon she saw
A smiling babby in a wad o’ straw.
She tuk it up, and said with accent 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 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, Dik 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, lik his clan,
And in the streets he wildly sand,
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 beggar-man. He had to face 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 a 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 fourty-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&rsquos 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’se 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:—
‘It is 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?’ crid 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 halfpence. 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 out a few shillings into his hand, and turning to the crowd explained to them he was indeed but an actor, and the 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 o 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 the burst out with, ‘It’s cruel cowld, isn’t it?’ ‘Garra’,‘ replied another, ‘we’ll be as stiff as the corpse when we get to the berrin’-ground.’ ‘Bad cess to him,’ said a third; ‘I wish he’s 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 overweighted, and they had not reached the cemetery before the spring broke, and the bottle with it.