No More Learning

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 buzzum 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:

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 Dickey 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
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?