[174]. The last of the old Dublin ballad-singers, who assumed the respectable name of Zozimus, and is said to have been the author of the ditties wherewith he charmed his street auditors, was wont to chant the legend of the Finding of Moses in a version which has at least the merit of originality:
“In Egypt’s land, upon the banks of Nile,
King Pharoah’s daughter went to bathe in style;
She took 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 baby in a wad of straw;
She took it up, and said, in accents mild—
Tare an’ agurs, girls! which av yez owns this child?”
The Babylonian analogue, as translated by the Rev. Prof. A. H. Sayce, in the first vol. of the “Folk-Lore Journal” (1883), is as follows: