The Last Gleeman
823 Words
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 comer, 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, "Ali,
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 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:
- Writer
