The last of the race of genuine Dublin ballad-singers,
who rejoiced in the _nom de guerre_ of "Zozimus" (ob.
1846), used to edify his street patrons with a slightly
different reading of the romantic story of the finding
of Moses in the bulrushes, which has the merit of
striking originality, to say the least:
In Egypt's land, upon the banks of Nile,
King Pharaoh's daughter went to bathe in style;
She tuk her dip, then went unto the land,
And, to dry her royal pelt, she ran along the strand.
A bulrush tripped her, whereupon she saw
A smiling babby in a wad of straw;
She tuk it up, and said, in accents mild,
"_Tare an' agers, gyurls, which av yez owns this child?_"
The story of the finding of Moses has its parallels in
almost every country--in the Greek and Roman legends of
Perseus, Cyrus, and Romulus--in Indian, Persian, and
Arabian tales--and a Babylonian analogue is given, as
follows, by the Rev. A. H. Sayce, in the _Folk-Lore
Journal_ for 1883: "Sargon, the mighty monarch, the king
of Agane, am I. My mother was a princess; my father I
knew not. My father's brother loved the mountain land.
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