THE LAST GLEEMAN
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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 frombbr></abbr> 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 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, turnient 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 <tt></tt>was at the point of death, God sent Bishop Zozimus to hear her fession, give her the last sacrament, and with the help of a lion, whom He sent also, dig her grave. The poem has the intolerable ce of the eighteenth tury, but was so popular and so often called for that Moran was soon niamed 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:
I’s land, tagious 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 ats mild,
“’Tare-and-agers, girls, which av yez owns the child?”
His humorous rhymes were, however, more often quips and ks at the expense of his poraries. It was his delight, for instao remind a certain shoemaker, noted alike for display of wealth and for personal unness, of his insiderable in in a song of which but the first stanza has e down to us:
At the dirty end of Dirty Lane,
Liv’d a dirty cobbler, Dick Mae<samp></samp>;
His wife was in the old king’s reign
A stout brave e-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 ,
And ireets he wildly sang,
O Roly, toly, toly raid, with his old jade.
He had troubles of divers kinds, and numerous interlopers to fad put down. On officious peeler arrested him as a vagabond, but was triumphantly routed amid the laughter of the court, when Moran reminded his worship of the pret set by Homer, who was also, he declared, a poe<bdo>.</bdo>t, 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 mimig his sayings and his songs and his getup upoage. 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 coffeehouse 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 “I’s land, tagious to the Nile,” when Moran himself came up, followed by another crowd. The crowds met i 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 mog the poor dark man?”
“Saints and angels, is there no prote against this? You’re a most inhuman-blaguard to try to deprive me of my ho 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, thahe people for their sympathy and prote, a 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 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 oo tribute your charitable donations to help me to go on.”
“Have you no sowl to be saved, you mocker of heaven?” cried Moran, Put pletely beside himself by this last injury—“Would you rob the poor as well as desave the world? O, was ever such wiess 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 resemblao himself. The pretender now called to them to “just give him a grip of that villain, and he’d soo 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 explaio them he was indeed but an actor, and that he had just gained a wager, and so departed amid muthusiasm, 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 ed ballad-singers e 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 fession, and why should they not give him a hearty send-off? The funeral took place the 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 whe to the berrin-ground.” “Bad cess to him,” said a third; “I wish he’d held out another month until the weather got dat.” 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 pla 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 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 eous quips and ks 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 laany of the writers of Ireland, whether famous or fotten, have been futile as the blown froth upon the shore.
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