I don't even know where to start.
The train to Cork. The walk to the campus. Finding Siobhán and the Irish Music Society waiting by the Arts Building. The sun came out. CAME OUT. In February, the Irish sky decided to cooperate.
Three hundred students in the quad. I'm not exaggerating. Three hundred. Milling about, tuning instruments, warming up their voices, and they were all there because of the RATTLIN' BOG.
Siobhán counted them down from ten. And then—
Three hundred voices. Rising up across that quad. The opening verse, everyone together, building from the first line. "In the bog down the lane in the wood" — and it was like the song itself was MANIFESTING, becoming real, taking physical form.
I stood there with tears running down my face. I'll be honest about that. I CRIED. An old man in the middle of three hundred university students, all singing about a bog, and I was sobbing.
They went through verse after verse. Some of them had phones out filming, which used to bother me but in that moment I didn't care. LET THEM FILM. Let the whole world see this. The song has ESCAPED THE PUBS. It's in the wild now. It belongs to everyone.
When they finished — when the last verse faded out and three hundred people stood together in the quad, grinning like they'd just accomplished something MAGNIFICENT — the whole place erupted. Cheering. Laughing. And someone started it again, and they sang it a second time, even louder.
Siobhán introduced me to the crowd afterwards. Said I was the "guardian of the Rattlin' Bog," which is the nicest thing anyone has ever called me. People wanted to talk to me. Young people. They wanted to know about the song, about the website, about why I'd kept it alive all these years.
I told them the truth: I never thought I was keeping it alive for anyone but myself. I was just trying to make sure something beautiful didn't disappear.
And now it never will.
The craic was MIGHTY. The absolute craic.