Right. Lads. Sit down. We need to talk about something nobody talks about and it has cost more good singers more dignity than I care to count.
Pint pacing.
Specifically: how do you drink a single pint of stout across the FULL cumulative version of the Rattlin' Bog — bog, tree, branch, twig, nest, egg, bird, feather, flea, and onward into the deep verses — without either (a) being bone dry and parched by verse six, or (b) being so far ahead of yourself that you're slurring "and on that flea there was a... a... a thingy" by the time it actually matters. Because the flea verse MATTERS. It's the climax. I will die on this peat.
Now. I want to be clear before the priest of moderation in the comments gets going. This is not a guide to getting locked. This is the opposite. This is a guide to PACING, which is the most underrated skill in trad, and possibly in life. A man who can pace a pint can pace anything. (I cannot pace anything else. Just the pint. Leave me be.)
So here's the science, and by science I mean thirty-odd years of fieldwork in the back room of the pub I'm not going to name because they don't need the foot traffic.
The first mistake everyone makes is they sup on the chorus. Big satisfying gulp after the call-and-response, feels earned, feels right. WRONG. The chorus comes around constantly in a cumulative song — that's the whole engine of the thing, every verse loops back through the whole list — so if you drink on every chorus you are essentially drinking continuously. You will be a puddle. I've seen it. I've BEEN it, around 2004, and we don't speak of the Ennis incident.
Here is the actual method. The verses get longer as you go, yeah? Verse one is just "bog." Verse two is "tree and bog." By the time you're nine, ten verses deep you're reciting half a shopping list backwards at speed. So you do your drinking on the SHORT verses, early, while there's still slack in the song, and you go dry and disciplined through the long ones. Front-load your sips. A modest pull on the first three or four verses while the lung capacity required is low. Then nothing — NOTHING — from about the bird verse onward, because from there you need every scrap of breath and concentration to get the list out clean and fast.
Think of it like a hill. You eat your sandwich at the bottom, not halfway up gasping.
There's a rhythm to it once you feel it. Sip, sing, sing, sip, sing, sing, then lock the glass DOWN and commit. The lockdown phase is the test of a real one. Anyone can drink. Holding a full-ish pint steady on the table through the flea verse while a room of people scream "AND THE FLEA ON THE BIRD" at you — that's where the men are sorted from the boys. Don't touch it. Earn it.
And the reward — this is the part nobody tells you — the reward sip comes on the FINAL chorus. The big one. The whole bog assembled, the room hoarse and delighted, and you lift the glass and you finish strong. That last mouthful tastes better than the whole pint before it. I'm not exaggerating. Pacing isn't deprivation, lads. It's delayed delight. The monks knew this. Probably.
A few field notes from the trenches.
Don't do it with a fresh pint that's still got the head settling. You'll be staring at a creamy unsettled glass through verse two going mad. Start the song when your pint's about a third down and properly settled. This is a real consideration and I will not be told otherwise.
Half-pint people: I see you, I respect you, but you have a harder job, not an easier one, because there's less margin for error. One greedy sip and you're rationing foam by verse eight. Pace HARDER.
The non-drinkers and the drivers — and god bless every designated one of ye, you're the reason the rest of us get home — the exact same logic works with a lemonade or a tea or whatever you're having. It was never really about the drink. It's about the breath and the timing and not making a holy show of yourself when the list gets long. Pacing is pacing.
If you want the actual mechanics of getting the cumulative list out without losing the thread — the breathing, where to gulp air, how to not collapse the whole tower of verses — that's a different sermon and I wrote it already over in how to sing the Rattlin' Bog. Read that first, honestly, then come back here for the drinking strategy. The two go together like the flea and the bird.
And if you're entirely new to the words, get them under your belt sober first off the lyrics page before you go adding stout to the equation. Walk before you bog.
That's it. That's the whole of it. Sip early, lock down late, finish on the last chorus, and treat the flea verse with the reverence it's owed. Do that and you'll get through all twelve with your voice intact and your dignity mostly intact, which is the best any of us can hope for of a Saturday.
Now go practise. Responsibly. With water nearby. I'm not your da but I'd like you to drink some water.
Slán go fóill, BogLord2002
P.S. — Rattlin the cat does not pace anything. He inhales his dinner in roughly four seconds flat and then sits looking at me like I've wronged him. No discipline in that animal. Beautiful, but no discipline.