Literary notes about bog (AI summary)
Across many literary works, "bog" emerges as a versatile term that oscillates between a tangible natural setting and a metaphor for inescapable difficulty. In its literal sense, authors employ the bog to evoke an atmosphere of marshy wilderness and physical impediment, as seen when a traveller’s horse sinks in deep mud or when a moor is depicted as a quagmire underfoot [1, 2, 3, 4]. The word also takes on figurative weight, symbolizing mental or emotional entrapment—suggesting a state of being mired in pessimism or moral uncertainty [5, 6]. Additionally, its presence in historical and folkloric texts lends it an archaic charm, with references that link bogs to eerie locales and even supernatural entities [7, 8, 9]. Through these varied applications, "bog" enriches narrative landscapes by merging the physical with the metaphorical in both subtle and striking ways.
- But presently the traveller's horse sank in up to the girths, and he observed to the boy, "I thought you said that this bog had a hard bottom."
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau - I got out at the next station, a little place whose name I scarcely noted, set right in the heart of a bog.
— from The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan - Right across the lower part of the bog lay a miry path.
— from The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle - We left her standing upon the thin peninsula of firm, peaty soil which tapered out into the widespread bog.
— from The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle - We have got one foot out of the pessimistic bog, but the other one sinks all the deeper.
— from The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy by William James - When he had joined the Freemasons he had experienced the feeling of one who confidently steps onto the smooth surface of a bog.
— from War and Peace by graf Leo Tolstoy - 1 "Ply the goad for us on the horses 2 into the bog, 2 to see can we take some of them."
— from The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Táin Bó Cúalnge - And long it was they dared not see The dreadful face of majesty, Supposing that some monstrous frog Had been sent down to rule the bog.
— from Fables of La Fontaine — a New Edition, with Notes by Jean de La Fontaine - Our familiar word bogey , a sort of nickname for an evil spirit, comes from the Slavonic word for God— bog .
— from Demonology and Devil-lore by Moncure Daniel Conway
