This one made me emotional, so I'm going to try to explain why without getting too sappy.
Back in 2003, there was a girl called Aoife — CelticDreamer_Aoife, you might remember her from the old forums — who got in actual TROUBLE at her school for teaching The Rattlin' Bog to her classmates. Not in a cool way. The teacher pulled her aside and told her that folk songs from internet websites "weren't part of the curriculum" and she shouldn't be distracting other students with them.
I remember her forum post about it. She was gutted. She LOVED that song, and she just got told, effectively, that it didn't matter.
Now, twenty-three years later, I'm getting EMAILS from actual teachers asking me for OFFICIAL lesson plans. They want to teach The Rattlin' Bog as part of their music curriculum. In schools. To children.
One teacher from Droichead Átha wrote: "We've integrated 'The Rattlin' Bog' into our secondary music program as an example of living oral tradition and iterative songwriting. Students are transcribing verses and learning about the mathematical patterns in folk music. They love it."
LOVE IT. Children in Irish schools are learning about the song I've been obsessed with for twenty-four years, and they LOVE it.
There's a curriculum guide being developed by the Irish Educational Music Association. It's called "Understanding Recursion Through Folk Song" and it uses The Rattlin' Bog as the primary example.
I'm not going to cry about this. I'm not. But I am thinking about Aoife getting told off in 2003, and I'm thinking about all the kids NOW who get to learn this song in school, officially, proudly.
The bog creates. And it creates again. And it creates again.
— Seamus