Michael Moran was born in 1794 in Faddle Alley, off the Black Pits in Dublin’s Liberties area. At two weeks old he was blinded by illness but, despite this early set back, he developed an astounding ability to memorise verses and made his living from reciting poetry, much of which he composed himself.

He performed all over Dublin, regularly appearing at Grafton Street, Capel Street and Henry Street. He became known as Zozimus from a reference in one of his popular recitations about the life, conversion and death of St Mary of Egypt, who was discovered in the wilderness in the fifth century by the pious Bishop Zozimus.

Michael “Zozimus” Moran was described as being a “tall, gaunt, blind man, dressed in a heavy, long-tailed coat and a dinged high hat, armed with a blackthorn stick secured to his wrist by a thong and finished by an iron ferule”. It is said that he began each performance with the verse “ye sons and daughters of Erin,/Gather round poor Zozimus, yer friend;/Listen boys, until yez hear/My charming song so dear”.

In later life, after years of walking the streets of Dublin, his voice grew weak and he lost his only means of livelihood. He ended up feeble and bedridden and died in Patrick’s Street, Dublin on the 3rd of April 1846. He had dictated directions for his funeral to Reverand Nicholas O’Farrell

I have no coronet to go before me,

Nor bucephali-us that ever bore me;

But put my hat and stick and gloves together,

That bore for years the very worst of weather,

And rest assured in spirit will be there

May of A-gypt and Susannah fair.

And Pharaoh’s daughter – with the heavenly blushes –

That took the drowning goslin from the rushes.

I’ll not permit a tomb-stone stuck above me,

Nor effigy; but, boys, if still yees love me,

Build a nate house for all whose fate is hard,

And give a bed to every wandern’ bard”

Because Michael “Zozimus” Moran feared the grave robbers who were rife in Dublin in the mid 1800s, he made arrangements to be buried in Glasnevin Cemetery which had high walls and was guarded day and night. His epitaph reads “My burying place is of no concern to me, in the O’Connell circle let it be, as to my funeral, all pomp is vain, illustrious people does prefer it plain”.

A memorial was placed on his grave in 1988 by the Smith Brothers, Submarine Bar, Crumlin and the popular folk music band, The Dublin City Ramblers.