The Time I Started The Rattlin' Bog on a Bus from Limerick

I've told this story at Cruise's about a hundred times, but I've never written it down properly. It deserves to be written down. It deserves to be preserved for the ages. Because it was, without exaggeration, one of the top three moments of my entire life.

The Setup

It was last October. I was on the Bus Eireann from Limerick to Dublin. I'd been down in Limerick visiting a mate, and I was on the half two bus, which meant I'd had a pub lunch and was in excellent form. The bus was about half full. Mix of people — students heading back to college, a few older folks, a couple of lads who looked like they were coming from a match.

I had the window seat about halfway back. No Discman — I'd left it at my mate's house, the eejit that I am. So I was just sitting there, looking out the window at the Tipperary countryside, and I started humming.

The Hum

I didn't even realise I was doing it at first. It was just the chorus, barely audible. "Ho ro the rattlin' bog, the bog down in the valley-o..." Just a hum. Not even words. Just the melody.

The woman in the seat across the aisle glanced at me. She was maybe fifty, sixty. Reading a book. She glanced at me, and then — I swear this happened — she smiled. And she started humming too.

Not loud. Not intrusive. Just... joining in. Two people humming the same tune on a bus through Tipperary.

The First Voice

It was one of the students a few rows back. I don't know if he heard us humming or if it was just coincidence — maybe the song was already in his head, maybe these things just happen — but he started singing. Quietly. "Ho ro the rattlin' bog..."

And that was it. That was the spark.

The Escalation

The woman across the aisle went from humming to singing. I went from humming to singing. One of the match lads joined in. Then the other. Then someone near the front turned around in her seat, grinning, and joined the chorus.

By the time we hit the first verse — the bog, the tree — there were about eight of us singing. Not organised. Not planned. Just people who knew the song, singing it together on a bus.

By the third verse, it was fifteen people. A man who'd been asleep woke up, looked confused for about three seconds, and started singing. A teenager who I'd assumed was too cool for anything took out her earphones and joined in.

By the flea verse — and I get chills just writing this — the WHOLE BUS was singing. Every single person. The students, the match lads, the sleeping man, the reading woman, the cool teenager. All of them. Singing at full volume, getting the words wrong, laughing, clapping.

The Driver

We were somewhere around Kildare when the driver joined in.

THE DRIVER.

He was singing the chorus over the bus intercom. Just the chorus — he had a bus to drive, after all — but he was singing it. Through the speakers. "HO RO THE RATTLIN' BOG."

The cheer that went up. I thought the roof was going to come off the bus. People were laughing, high-fiving strangers, the whole bus was rocking with the clapping. We did the entire song from top to bottom, flea verse and all, with the bus driver providing the chorus through the PA system.

The Silence After

When we finished — when the last "bog down in the valley-o" faded out — there was this moment. This perfect, golden moment of silence. The whole bus, breathing together. Strangers who'd become a choir for five minutes.

And then someone near the back shouted "AGAIN!" and we did the whole thing AGAIN.

The Aftermath

When I got off the bus in Dublin, people were shaking my hand. A woman gave me a biscuit from her bag. The driver gave me a thumbs up as I stepped off. The student who'd been the first voice found me on the pavement and said "That was class."

I walked through Dublin with a stupid grin on my face for the rest of the evening.

What It Means

I've been thinking about this a lot. What happened on that bus? How does a song make that happen? How do thirty strangers go from silence to communal singing in the space of ten minutes?

The answer, I think, is that The Rattlin' Bog belongs to everyone. It's not my song. It's not anyone's song. It's a song that lives in the collective memory of a whole country — maybe a whole archipelago — and when someone starts it, people recognise it the way they recognise their own name.

I've written about why it's the greatest song. This is why. Not because of the structure or the melody or the history. Because of what it does to people. Because of a bus full of strangers singing together through the midlands, and a driver on the intercom, and a woman with a biscuit.

That's magic. Real, actual magic.

BogLord2002

P.S. — I rang Bus Eireann to try to find out who the driver was so I could thank him properly. They weren't sure what to do with my call. Fair enough.