An Introduction to BOG MAN by JOHN MCALLISTER

When the editors of Requiems for the Departed asked me to write a story for the anthology, an image of a bogman immediately clicked into my head. And that’s where it stayed for month after month until near the deadline.

All I had to go on was the fact that bogmen were either the victims of murder, or sacrificial victims. Then memories came to me: a story I read years ago about pre-history life around Stonehenge, where the Druid chose as that year’s offering a woman, who had annoyed him; a lone hill near Coalisland, in County Tyrone rising out of the bogs; and the seeming chance that some bog roads are maintained as important county roads and others abandoned to nature.

I don’t particularly believe in ghosts and things that go bump in the night, but I do have experience of something out there, of portents and signs, so I buy into the crows and the old washerwoman foretelling the death of Cúchulainn, which I have used in my story.

The rest came from two evenings spent turf cutting as a child and the feel of freedom that open spaces give me.

The story also allows me to make a belated apology by dedicating this story to Sorley O’Dornan. On the way to the bog, riding on the bar of his bike, I managed to poke my foot between the spokes. We cartwheeled into the — luckily dry — ditch.

Image by Sam Bosma

Edited by Gerard Brennan & Mike Stone

Requiems for the Departed
Irish Crime, Irish Myths.

Requiems for the Departed can now be pre-ordered on the Morrigan Books website.