is frieze coat.

He had not, however, MacConglinne's hatred of the Church and 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 corner, 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' in wet?" Thereon several boys would
cry, "Ah, 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 deversion 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 around
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-a