I've been staring at this screen for three hours trying to figure out how to write this.
I went back to the bog near Corofin last week. I didn't plan to. Rattlin' led me there — not down the lane this time, but I had a dream about the place, and I woke up knowing I had to go back.
This time I didn't stop at the edge. This time I walked in.
The ground felt different during the day. Firmer. Less ominous. But still warm. Still breathing.
I walked about a kilometer into the bog, and that's when I saw it.
There's a pool in the center. Perfect circle. The water is absolutely still — I mean perfectly still, like glass, like it's not really water at all but something pretending to be water. The water is dark but clear. You can see down into it, but there's nothing down there. Just darkness going deeper.
I looked into the pool and I saw my reflection.
And I saw my reflection singing.
For just a moment — maybe half a second, maybe less — my reflection's mouth was open, and I could see its shoulders moving. It was singing something. I couldn't hear it. The reflection moved differently than I was moving. And then it stopped, and my reflection was just my reflection again, and the pool was just a pool.
I stood there for maybe five minutes. I couldn't move.
Then I turned around and walked back out.
I haven't told anyone else about this. I'm telling you now because I need to say it out loud — or write it down, anyway — before I convince myself it didn't happen.
Here's what I know: The song is real. The bog is real. The song comes FROM the bog, or it goes TO the bog, or the bog and the song are the same thing, or something like that. I don't have the words.
Here's what I suspect: The Rattlin' Bog isn't a song that a person wrote. It's a song that a place sings. It's a memory that the earth keeps. It's a voice that comes from underneath, from the deep places, from the things that are older than we are.
Here's what I'm afraid of: That I'm not the first person to find this. That other people have found this bog, found this pool, heard this singing. And that's what the song IS — a map. A way to lead people there. A way to make sure the voice doesn't go unheard.
Here's what I believe: That I was supposed to find this. That running the shrine for twenty-four years was me preparing for this moment. That every post, every update, every person who ever visited this website was part of something we didn't understand until now.
The bog is singing back. It's been singing back the whole time.
And I think I'm finally starting to listen.
I'm going back. I need to understand what it's trying to tell me.
I'll write again when I do.
The bog abides.
— Seamus