Twenty thousand.
That's what landed in the shrine inbox this morning. The twenty-thousandth email since I set this whole carry-on up in 2002. I know it was the twenty-thousandth because I keep a little count in a notebook — yes, an actual paper notebook, the same one I've had for years, because I do not trust spreadsheets and I never will (don't @ me).
The email itself was lovely but, if I'm being honest, ordinary. A woman in Manitoba called Pam. She wanted to know if the flea verse came before or after the feather verse, because her grandkids were arguing about it at the dinner table and it had apparently nearly ended the family. I wrote her back the proper order (it's on the lyrics page if Pam's grandkids are reading, which they're not, but still) and I told her the flea verse is the CLIMAX and any household that fights over it is a household doing things right.
And then I closed the laptop and I just sort of sat there.
Twenty thousand.
So I did a foolish thing. I went digging for the very first one.
It took me the bones of an hour because the early emails are in an old archive folder that I, in my infinite wisdom in 2003, named "stuff." Not "Rattlin Bog emails." Not "shrine inbox." STUFF. Past me was an eejit. But I found it. Bottom of the folder, dated the 9th of October 2002, three weeks after the site went live.
It was from a fella named Davey in Coventry. And it said — I'm quoting it exactly, spelling and all —
"alright mate. found yer site looking for the words to the rattlin bog cos me dad used to sing it and he's gone now. cheers for putting them up. proper job."
That's it. That's the whole thing. No subject line. No greeting beyond "alright mate."
I read that this morning for the first time in twenty-three years and I had to go and put the kettle on, which is what I do when I don't want to admit I'm getting emotional.
Because here's the thing I'd forgotten. The very first stranger who ever wrote to me wasn't writing about the song really. He was writing about his dad. The song was just the door. And every single one of the nineteen thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine emails since has been the same trick — somebody comes looking for words to a daft cumulative song about a bog and a tree and a flea, and what they're actually carrying is a granny, or a wedding, or a funeral, or a kitchen they can't go back to, or a child they taught it to over a video call when they couldn't be in the same country.
I never planned for the shrine to be that. I swear to God. In 2002 I thought I was making a fan page for a song I liked. I had a hit counter and a MIDI file and a guestbook and I thought I was Bill Gates.
What I'd actually built, it turns out, was a wee post office for grief and joy. A place where you could send a bit of yourself out into the dark and trust that some lad in Ennis would write back. And I did write back. Not always fast. There were the years I was gone — you all know the story, I was off in Dublin being a different man and ignoring the best part of myself — and the emails stacked up unread, the same way the guestbook entries did. But the inbox kept doing its job whether I was minding it or not. People kept knocking.
Twenty thousand knocks.
I tried to do the maths on it (badly — Dr. Niamh would have a fit). Twenty thousand emails over twenty-four years. That's roughly two and a half a day, every day, including Christmas, including the days nobody should be sending emails about folk songs. Somebody, somewhere, every single day for over two decades, has stopped what they were doing and thought: I'll tell the bog fella about this. And that breaks me a little, in the good way.
I wrote Davey from Coventry back this morning, by the way. To the same email address, twenty-three years later. I don't know if it still works. Probably it doesn't. Probably he's changed providers four times and the message bounced into nowhere. But I told him I'd kept his email. I told him I still have it. I told him his dad's song put the whole thing in motion, and that twenty thousand people have come through the door he opened.
If it bounced, it bounced. Some letters you send for yourself.
I sat in the dark after that for a good while. Didn't even turn the lamp on. Just sat there with the tea going cold and Rattlin asleep on the printer like always, and I felt — happy. Not giddy. Not proud, exactly. Just full. Like the inbox was full and so was I.
Twenty thousand strangers were kind to me for twenty-four years. That's the actual headline. Not the song. The kindness.
Here's to twenty thousand more, lads. Keep knocking. I'll keep the kettle on.
Slán go fóill,
BogLord2002 (Seamus)
P.S. — Rattlin woke up the second I started crying, walked across the keyboard, and typed what I can only describe as "8uuuuuuj." I'm choosing to read it as the bog approving of all this. P.P.S. — Davey, if you ever do see this: proper job yourself, mate.