I got this story third-hand, then second-hand, then finally from the man himself, and I have decided it is true. All of it. Even the part I will be honest with you about later.
Here is how it reached me. A fella called Declan emailed the Shrine in May. Subject line: "you will not BELIEVE what we did on the way to galway." And reader, I believed it instantly, because it is exactly the kind of beautiful stupid thing that happens to grown men when you put eleven of them on a bus with no plan and four hours to kill.
So. The setup. Declan's mate Pádraig was getting married. The stag was a coach down to Galway — Limerick first to gather the strays, then out the M18, which if you know it you know it is a road with NOTHING on it. Just green. Just rain on the window. The kind of road that makes a man go a bit strange in the head.
Somebody — Declan swears it wasn't him, Declan is lying — somebody put on a session playlist to get the lads warmed up. And the bog came on. As it does. As it always, always does.
Now here is the dare. One of the lads, a quiet one named Fursey (yes, Fursey, there is always a Fursey), said the thing that doomed them all. He said: "I bet none of ye could do the whole thing. All the way up. No phones."
Reader, you do not say that to eleven men with four hours and a cooler of cans. You simply do not. It is like throwing a match into a bog that is, against all reason, slightly warm to the touch. (More on that another day.)
What followed, by Declan's account, was a campaign. Not a singalong. A CAMPAIGN. They divided the labour. One lad was put in charge of the tree — "remember the tree comes FIRST, the tree is the foundation, you eejit." Another was given the branch. The twig fella took it deadly serious, kept muttering "twig on the branch, branch on the tree" to himself like a man defusing a bomb. And then of course you arrive at the flea. The flea verse is the CLIMAX, I have said it before and I will die on this hill, and apparently by the time they reached the flea the bus had become a kind of moving cathedral.
They were doing it backwards too, to check themselves. Down again, then up again. Faster each time. If you don't know what I'm on about, go and look at the full lyrics and try to picture eleven hungover men attempting them at speed somewhere outside Gort. It is a holy and ridiculous image.
Here is the part that gets me.
Declan said the driver was quiet the whole first hour. Older man. Said nothing. Then around the third run-through, somewhere in the bird verse, this voice comes over the little driver's mic. Not loud. Just — joining. He had it. He had ALL of it. Turns out yer man had been driving stags and hens and pensioners' day trips for thirty-odd years and he had absorbed the bog through the back of his head like radiation. He knew verses they didn't. He corrected them. "It's the nest in the egg, lads, not the egg in the nest, ye have it arseways."
And that is the thing about this song. You think you're the one who knows it. There's always someone older who knows it better.
By Galway they could do all twelve clean. No phones. Eleven lads and a bus driver, in perfect cumulative formation, the whole structure standing up like a thing they'd built with their hands. And Pádraig, the groom — the man whose entire weekend this was — Pádraig was crying. Properly. Big silent tears down the face of a thirty-four-year-old man in a "groom" sash, because his mates had spent four hours of their one weekend learning a song about a bog in a hole in the ground just so they could sing it AT him, together, all the way up.
That's love. I don't make the rules. That's just what love is, sometimes — it's a tree, in a hole, in the bog, and ten people who'll carry the verses with you so you don't have to hold the whole thing on your own.
Now. My honesty bit, because I promised. Declan, when I pressed him, admitted they "maybe" looked at the lyrics "once or twice" near Oranmore for the egg sequence. So it wasn't a flawless no-phones run. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter at ALL. The intention was pure and the driver was real and the groom cried and I have decided that is the canonical version.
If this has put a notion in your head — and I hope it has — the bog is genuinely one of the great singalong songs for exactly this reason. It rewards a crowd. It NEEDS a crowd. There's a few others that travel well on a bus too, if you want to build a setlist; have a poke through the songbook before your next long drive. But start with the bog. Always start with the bog.
Declan, if you're reading: thank you. Pádraig, congratulations. And to that bus driver, whoever you are, whatever depot you came from — you're one of us now. You always were.
Slán go fóill, BogLord2002
P.S. — I told this story to Rattlin' (the cat) and he sat through the entire thing without moving, which for him counts as a standing ovation. He's an old cat. Older than he should be, if I'm honest. He's heard the song more times than the bus driver. Anyway. Sing it loud, lads.