I need to write this down because if I don't, I'll go mad.
I was doing some boring admin work on Friday — updating the site's domain records, checking registrations, all that riveting stuff — and I decided to look up the full registration history of rattlinbog.fun.
I registered the domain in September 2002. That's what I've always said. That's what I remember.
But when I went into the registrar's archives, I found something else.
There's a registration attempt for "rattlinbog" going back to 1997.
NINETEEN NINETY-SEVEN.
That's five years before I bought the domain. Five years before I even HAD proper internet access. Five years before I started obsessing over this song publicly.
The registration is incomplete. Someone tried to register it — just "rattlinbog," not with the .fun suffix — but it lapsed. It was never activated. The registrar's records show no owner name, no contact information. Just... a ghost registration attempt.
Someone else was thinking about The Rattlin' Bog online in 1997. Someone else thought it was worth registering as a domain name.
I don't know who. I can't find out who. The registrar has no additional information. No email. No name. No trace of who tried to claim this piece of the internet five years before I did.
When I finally bought rattlinbog.fun in 2002, I thought I was the first. I thought I was creating something new.
But maybe I was just the first one who followed through.
Maybe someone else was waiting.
Maybe someone else has been waiting the whole time.
I don't sleep well anymore. That's not news anymore, I realize, but this particular fact keeps me awake in a different way.
Who else knows about this song? How far back does it go? And why don't I have any answers?
— Seamus