Do the words bag and rag rhyme with the words leg and peg..?
If you were born and raised in the Pacific NW, then YES, they do!!
I was a teenager before I realized that not all of America refers to soda as pop, but it wasn’t until age 34, as I was stepping across southern California, that my walking friend Shay Emmons noticed that we say bag differently than the rest of America.
It happened all of the sudden, as I was broken mid-sentence: “Ha! Wow! What did you say!? Say that again!” Shay said.
“Say what again?” I asked, quite puzzled.
“Say bag!”
“Bag?” My confusion continued.
“Haha! I love the way you pronounce bag!” she remarked.
I was still confused. I didn’t understand the difference between my pronunciation of bag and Shay’s.
“You say  bayg [like 'leg']. The word is bag,” she clearly explained, pronouncing the “a” as one would in the word bad.
“So, you don’t say bayg like the word leg..?” I asked her, ignorant as ever.
“No. The word is ‘bag’ [like 'bad'].”
That was three years ago. I had no idea we say bag any differently than anyone else, and even if both pronunciations had otherwise been pointed out, I’m sure I would have just assumed it would be a word with pronunciations as flexible as the words either or route.
But no, across the years and the miles since, I’ve found that Shay’s bag is clearly the winner– and since then, I somehow notice every time the word is about to come out of my mouth. And I’ve been saying bag Shay’s way– as I’ve preferred to assimilate across the States more so than stand out with my unique local pronunciation.