Michael Moran was born about 1794 off Black Pitts, in the Liberties of Dublin, in Faddle Alley. A fht 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 a street ers 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 eg chamber, where every movement of the day and every ge 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, Kearhe blind fiddler from Wiartin from Meath, M』Bride from heaven knows where, and that M』Grane, who in after days, wherue 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 iing a wife, but rather was able to pid choose, for he was just that mixture amuffin and of genius which is dear to the heart of woman, who, perhaps because she is wholly ventional herself, loves the ued, 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 ho 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 Maglinne, could that friend of kings have beheld him in prophetic vision from the pillar sto Cork. Ahough 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 m when he had finished his breakfast, his wife or some neighbour would read the neer to him, and read on and on until he interrupted with, 「That』ll do—I have me meditations」; and from these meditations would e the day』s store of jest and rhyme. He had the whole Middle Ages under his frieze coat.
He had not, however, Maglinne』s hatred of the Churd 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 er, 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』 i?」 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 arouhe best-known of his religious tales was St. Mary of Egypt, a long poem of exceeding solemnity, densed from the muc