Martin the Pigeon Man on the streets of Dublin: new video removes all doubt that he is Maltese

Fours years ago, an Irish reader who had worked in Malta for three years, but who had moved back to Dublin, sent me a video of Martin, known as the Pigeon Man, who had been living on the streets of that city for many years, sleeping under bridge, and who had caught the attention of a photographer and film-maker, Donal Moloney.

“I watched this and immediately said to myself, this guy’s Maltese,” my Irish friend said. “I’d know that accent anywhere.”

I agreed – no doubt about that, that is a 100% Maltese accent from the milieu in which I grew up. Just four words and I’d know it anywhere. Even 15 years on the streets of Dublin can’t kill it.

Others were not so sure: fights and arguments broke out on the comments board. But interestingly, the Maltese people who said that he doesn’t sound Maltese, or that the accent isn’t familiar, were people who to whom the accent really wasn’t familiar.

They were not making it up. But those who grew up in my neck of the woods, at the same time or earlier, didn’t even bother discussing the accent or whether he is or isn’t Maltese. They moved straight to trying to work out who he is and how he came to be there. Like me, they had no doubt.

Today on LinkedIn I found Donal Moloney’s new video of Martin. Mr Maloney has since befriended him, makes sure he is provided for, takes him for drives, talks to him, makes sure he has what he needs. Martin doesn’t want to leave the streets. He spends his days reading in the public library.

I watched this video, which features from more of him talking than the original ones, and quite frankly, it’s impossible that he’s anything other than Maltese. And you can really narrow it down, too: his particular manners, courtesy, mode of speech, insistence on always being spick and span and well turned out even off the streets. I would recognise that anywhere: that man had an army officer for a father, or a senior civil servant in the days when it meant something.

And once more I wonder what it was that brought him to where he is now, but it is by the accounts of those who know him, like Donal Moloney, where he wants to be. And so it is none of our business, though I am nonetheless enthralled. Mr Moloney’s continued interest in him seems to have done Martin a lot of good, at least going on what we can see in this new video.