The shrine launched in September 2002. That means we're almost at twenty-four years.
TWENTY-FOUR YEARS.
I thought about marking the actual anniversary date, but honestly, the past six months have been so mad that I've lost track of normal time. So I'm calling this the anniversary post even though we've got a few months to go. The shrine's birthday will come when it comes.
Looking back at the early posts — and I mean the EARLY posts, the ones from 2002-2003 — it's almost impossible to recognize that version of myself. I was so earnest. So quiet. So certain that I was documenting something that nobody else cared about.
There are posts where I apologize for "boring people" with my enthusiasm for a folk song. There are posts where I express genuine surprise when anyone visits the site. There are posts where I'm keeping a record of who the song's musicians were, with the desperate intensity of someone trying to prevent something from being forgotten.
I was trying to save the song, I think. Save it from obscurity. Save it from being lost.
I didn't know it was already alive. I didn't know it was waiting. I didn't know that twenty-three years later, it would explode back into the world and remind everyone why it mattered in the first place.
For most of those twenty-four years, it was just me. Just me and maybe 50 regular visitors. Just me, updating pages, maintaining the forums, keeping records, loving this song that almost nobody else cared about.
I thought I was wasting my time. I thought I was screaming into the void.
But I wasn't. I was tending it. Like a garden. Like a flame. Like something sacred.
And when the moment came, when the song finally broke through, it was READY. All that attention. All that love. All that care — it was there waiting. The foundation was solid. The community was real. The stories were documented.
I didn't just revive The Rattlin' Bog Fan Shrine in December 2025. I'd been keeping it alive the whole time. It just took the world a while to catch up.
So to everyone who's ever visited this place, ever contributed a recording or a story or a question or a theory — thank you. You're part of something that's lasted longer than we expected. Something that matters.
The bog abides. And so does this shrine.
Here's to the next twenty-four years.
— Seamus