“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 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 a few shillings into his hand, and turning to the crowd explained to them he was indeed but an actor, and that 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 14 1/2) 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 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 when we get to the berrin-ground.”  “Bad cess to him,” said a third; “I wish he’d 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 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 place in 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 can 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 outrageous quips and cranks 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 lack so many of the writers of Ireland, whether famous or forgotten, have been futile as the blown froth upon the shore.

REGINA, REGINA PIGMEORUM, VENI