The Rattlin' Bog (trad; Roud 129) Week 243, 9 November 2025 скачать в хорошем качестве

The Rattlin' Bog (trad; Roud 129) Week 243, 9 November 2025

So, my theme for most of this month will be 'campfire songs'*, ie ones suitable for singing round a campfire (simple and easy to join in with), and for most or all of these that's probably where I first heard them. (*since this month is Bonfire Night (aka Guy Fawkes Night, 5th November), and it's the time of year when fires are lit inside - and recently I got the 1977 edition of "The Scout Fire and Folk Song Book" which reminded me of a lot of this sort of song.) "The Rattlin' Bog" is an Irish variant of the song also known as "The Tree in the Wood", "The Tree in the Valley", "The Everlasting Circle", "The Green Grass Grew All Around", etc. All version are cumulative songs, and most of the other versions complete a circle; "The Rattlin' Bog" (aka "The Bog Down in the Valley") does not (in the lyrics for this that I have seen), but follows a sequence in which each new thing is smaller than the one before. The adjective "rattlin'" means "splendid" in the context of this song. This song is one I learnt as a kid, either in scouts or on an outdoors activity holiday with my local youth centre (I have a song book produced for one of these in 1982 which includes this). The verses I have sung are the ones in the youth centre songbook, the last thing added being a feather ("on a chick...in a tree in a bog..."). It's possible to go smaller (some versions have a flea) but I felt nine verses was enough! For more notes and lyrics see: https://mainlynorfolk.info/cyril.tawn... and: https://balladindex.org/Ballads/ShH98... This song has its own Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rat...