I listened to it seven times before I could type this.
A user called SeancháiofGalway posted a recording to the forum on Tuesday. They said: "My grandmother is 94 years old. She's been in a care home in Galway for two years. She doesn't remember much anymore. But she remembered this. I recorded her singing last week. I think you should hear it."
The recording is 47 seconds long.
It's their grandmother's voice — clear, wavering slightly with age, but completely present. And she's singing a verse of The Rattlin' Bog that I've never heard before. A full verse. Complete. With melody. With structure.
"On the flea there was a drop, a rare drop, a rattlin' drop, And on the drop there was a world, a rare world, a rattlin' world, And in the world there was a bog, a rare bog, a rattlin' bog, And on the bog there was a hole, a rare hole, a rattlin' hole..."
And she keeps going. The verse spirals inward — smaller and smaller, deeper and deeper — and then it REVERSES. She starts singing back outward again. And when she reaches the beginning again, she LOOPS. She sings it a second time, but slightly different. And then it loops again.
The song is CIRCULAR. It eats itself. It regenerates.
When I first heard it I thought: "This woman learned this from someone. This is real oral tradition." Her grandmother probably learned it from someone in the 1950s. Her grandmother's grandmother, stretching back.
But then I thought: How many verses ARE there? Does the song have an ending? Does it WANT to end?
I'm not sleeping much. I keep listening to that recording. I keep noticing new things. The rhythm. The way she breathes. The way the verse seems to breathe WITH her.
SeancháiofGalway says his grandmother won't sing it again. She said, after that one recording, "I've sung what needed singing." And she won't perform it again.
I don't know what to do with that. I don't know what to do with any of this anymore.
— Seamus