Right. Let me give you the straight answer first, because that's what most of you are here for, and then I'll ramble, because that's what I do.
Ten verses. That's the standard, the one I've documented, the one you'll hear at ninety percent of sessions. Bog, tree, branch, twig, nest, egg, bird, feather, flea — and then the tenth where it all comes crashing back down to the bog again. Ten chains, ten things hanging off each other, ten chances to lose your place and embarrass yourself in front of a room of people who already knew the words. That's the version on the lyrics page. If you came here for a number you can write on a worksheet or repeat to a mate down the pub, write down TEN and away you go.
But you asked, and the honest answer is that it depends entirely on who's singing.
See, the thing people don't understand about a cumulative song is that it doesn't really HAVE a fixed length the way a normal song does. A normal song, your "Danny Boy" or what have you, has a shape. Verses, a chorus, an end. You finish it. The Rattlin' Bog isn't built like that. It's built like a chain, and a chain can be however long you've got the lungs and the memory to make it. Every new verse is just another link. There's nothing in the song itself that says "stop now." The bog doesn't care. The bog goes on forever if you let it.
So when someone says it has ten verses, what they mean is "the ten verses I learned are the ones that feel complete to me." A fella in Cork might do nine and swear blind that's the whole song. My nan did eleven and would've fought you over it. A school choir somewhere does six because that's all they had time to teach before the Christmas concert. None of them are wrong. That's the bit that drives the precise, tidy-minded people mad. There's no central authority. There's no Official Rattlin' Bog Council issuing rulings. (Although if there were, I'd like to be on it, and I'd like a hat.)
Now. The eleventh verse.
This is where it gets contentious, lads, and I mean contentious. The standard eleventh, where you sing it, is usually the FLEA — "and on that flea there was a..." — and depending on the tradition that "something" might be a germ, a hair, a speck, a bite, a smaller flea (genuinely), or in one beautiful version a man from Limerick gave me, ANOTHER bog, which I think is the most profound thing the human race has ever produced and I won't be taking questions. The eleventh verse is contested not because people doubt it exists but because nobody agrees what's ON the flea. It's the frontier. Past the flea you're off the map.
And then there's verse twelve, and I have to be careful here because that one has a whole strange life of its own and I've written about it elsewhere and I don't want to start something. People email me about verse twelve. Verse twelve that "officially" doesn't exist. I'll leave it at that for today. (I won't. I never can. But I'll try.)
The reason the count wobbles so much from place to place is mostly just oral tradition doing what oral tradition does, which is forget things, add things, and quietly improve things over a hundred and fifty years of pub closing times. Each region trimmed it or stretched it. Each granny had her own running order. If you want the proper deep-dive on which bits change where, I put the whole regional mess into the variations guide, and you can lose an afternoon to it the way I have. And if you're more worried about getting your verses in the RIGHT sequence — which is its own minefield, because some people put the egg before the bird and some after — I sorted that out as best I could over on the correct verse order. I say "correct." I mean "the one I'll die defending."
Here's the thing I actually want you to take away, though, more than any number.
The question "how many verses does it have" assumes the song is a finished object that somebody once completed and we've all been copying ever since. It's not. It's alive. It's still being sung wrong and sung longer and sung shorter in a thousand kitchens and back rooms RIGHT NOW, and every one of those is a real version of the real song. Ten is the answer you write down. The true answer is: as many as the room can hold before somebody loses the thread and the whole thing collapses into laughing. And honestly? That collapse IS the song. That's the bit I love. That's the rattlin'.
So. Ten if you need a number. Eleven if you're brave. Twelve if you've heard something you maybe shouldn't have.
Slán go fóill, BogLord2002
P.S. — Rattlin' sat through me singing all ten verses at the kitchen table while I checked this post and left exactly on the word "bog" in the final line, every single time, which is either a coincidence or the most musically gifted cat in County Clare. He's getting on a bit and still does it. I've stopped questioning him.