THOSE WHO SING

[wolfmaid7]

I think i got it!!!! The reason i believe Drogon and Ghost are different and why their bond is different.

Remember what BR said about the Singers,more specifically the ones born with Red or green eyes.

"By these signs do the gods marked those they have chosen to recieve the gift."

There we have it.OOOO we are in dagerous territoy here boys and girls :devil:

[oursisthefury69]

@Wolfmaid while BR said that in reference to the Children, I definitely think that's important somehow; We have both Bloodraven and Ghost as albinos and Jojen with the moss green eyes, but Bran has neither so it cant be that essential

[Suzanna Stormborn]

I think i got it!!!! The reason i believe Drogon and Ghost are different and why their bond is different.

Remember what BR said about the Singers,more specifically the ones born with Red or green eyes as being those choosen by the gods.

There we have it.OOOO we are in dagerous territoy here boys and girls :devil:

Wait does Drogon have green eyes?

[MoIaF]

I think i got it!!!! The reason i believe Drogon and Ghost are different and why their bond is different.

Remember what BR said about the Singers,more specifically the ones born with Red or green eyes.

"By these signs do the gods marked those they have chosen to recieve the gift."

There we have it.OOOO we are in dagerous territoy here boys and girls :devil:

Excellent!

It seems then that these two (Drogon and Ghost) were chosen to guide both Dany and Jon. Guide them to what? We can only imagine.... :devil:

Wait does Drogon have green eyes?

He has red eyes, like Ghost. :D

[wolfmaid7]

Wait does Drogon have green eyes?

He has Red eyes like Ghost and BR.

Shaggy dog has Green eyes.

These are the signs Red or Green that the gods mark them by.

[Bael Abel]

Excellent!

It seems then that these two (Drogon and Ghost) were chosen to guide both Dany and Jon. Guide them to what? We can only imagine.... :devil:

He has red eyes, like Ghost. :D

Drogon's eyes are like fire, Ghost's eyes are like Blood. Both red, but different.

[wolfmaid7]

Drogon's eyes are like fire, Ghost's eyes are like Blood. Both red, but different.

Actually both Fire and Blood have been used interchangibly for them.

In A Dance with Dragon Jon had compared Ghost's eyes to two suns and two hot coals.But agreed red nevertheless. The important thing is there is a sense of destiny attached to them and why they are different from their siblings.

[Suzanna Stormborn]

Actually both Fire and Blood have been used interchangibly for them.

In A Dance with Dragon Jon had compared Ghost's eyes to two suns and two hot coals.But agreed red nevertheless. The important thing is there is a sense of destiny attached to them and why they are different from their siblings.

Drogon's scales are black, his horns and spinal plates are blood red,and his eyes are smouldering red pits. YUP!!! COOL!!!

[Disputatious]

Actually both Fire and Blood have been used interchangibly for them.

In A Dance with Dragon Jon had compared Ghost's eyes to two suns and two hot coals.But agreed red nevertheless. The important thing is there is a sense of destiny attached to them and why they are different from their siblings.

But surely the more important comparison was to the red of Weirwood leaves. It was that the which led Jon to think that Ghost was a creature of the old gods.

[wolfmaid7]

But surely the more important comparison was to the red of Weirwood leaves. It was that the which led Jon to think that Ghost was a creature of the old gods.

Oh i'm not disputing that,i'm saying look how things turned out,what people call "the gods" is basicaly magic and magic in nature is the constant symphony of trying to balance the scales.So even though the Targs come from a land that worship different incarnations of dieties. All in all its still magic at play,it just people who carve out wheter they are the Old gods,Rhllor etc. The idea of the song shows that they are all connected,to make it make sense sub " gods" for magic.

"By these signs do magic mark those chosen to recieve the gift".

[Eira Seren]

I think the "song" as a means of intimate bonding brings with it it's own "magic." It has its own frequency that only someone with the same instinct can hear. It causes both harmony and discord, communication and obstruction.

Whale songs come to mind as a real-world example, but also wolf songs which is why in myth and pop culture, they are often referred to benevolently, (as in Native American culture), and malevolently (in some European traditions), "as the children of the night

There is a pitch for every howl that brings with it its own meaning, and Martins use of animal sigils, or totems in combination with the tradtitions he grew up with, isn't an accident.

The Ghost of High Hart always requests a song of the BBWB, Jennys song, as payment for her prophesies. It is the same sad song that is sung by Tom of Sevenstreams at the sepulchre of Tristifer. It may be the same song in the that Robb tells Cat of while standing before the sepulchre.

This song seems to bring with it tragic events, or at least tied to tragedy.

Hmm, I like the whale and wolf song comparisons.

I'd forgotten about the Ghost and her sad song. . . interesting that it's a payment.

Daaang that GHH request gave me goosebumps,that is a nice catch.I wonder what is it in "that" song that resonates power?

Lol...Yes the idea of stones resonating is very common in new age beliefs.There are stones for healing,fertility etc.The idea of the natural language in the "song" is wonderfully put.Strategically, i wonder what is the end game to getting Dany the eggs and the Starks kids the pups.There was some planning for that.

This is a great angle of thinking,i don't think they were aware that they needed Dragonsong particularly they attempted a ritual without the Dragon's invitation.Drogon as an egg went through the whole Song summons with Dany and intuitivly she knew what she had to do.She needed her blood( the blood on the eggs in her dreams) and she would not burn.

That's a thought.

Yep,Patchface singing songs of "Woe"

Yeah, maybe the dragon wasn't prepared to sing for them at Summerhall. The idea that the animals are willing and contributing parties is pretty significant to the success of the bond, and to the nature of the song's magic, I'll bet.

Absolutely awesome thread that wont get the attention it deserves because its somewhere in-between the repetitive, obvious, clear-cut R+L=J type topics and the ridiculous Jon and Jamie are gay, (or Dany is Lucifer because she's popular with people who haven't read the books) threads.

People on this cite are rarely interested in actually joining together to discuss/discover bigger picture storylines like the origins of magic, what was the Doom, who are the Others; and instead would rather re-contribute to an idea like Jon being Rhaegars son, something that's been theorized for 18 years already

:cheers: Let's rock the boat.

What does one have to do in order to get a thread pinned?

[Lady Woodland]

Yes I agree, often the most interesting threads are overlooked because too much thought or reading is required, while threads like 'I hate Dany' or 'mustache twirling villains' are everyones favorite and fill up with 400 posts in one day. It's ridiculous.

so much this :agree:

GRRM has also made a trip to Australia & New Zealand, I'm sure he's drawn parallels from their indigenous culture as well, Aboriginal people have "Dreamtime" legends & stories about the natural world around them, creation, myths & about how they came to be, they are often sung in harmonies with primitive percussion instruments for rhythm. The Maori have a stomping, chanting fierceness for their tribal songs & stories.

Songs & rhymes, even nursery rhymes are culturally important too because a song is sometimes easier to remember due to it's rhyme, oral stories presented without song often lose pieces of the story, the melody & rhythm act as "clues" to remember all the important parts.

[wolfmaid7]

Hmm, I like the whale and wolf song comparisons.

I'd forgotten about the Ghost and her sad song. . . interesting that it's a payment.

Yeah, maybe the dragon wasn't prepared to sing for them at Summerhall. The idea that the animals are willing and contributing parties is pretty significant to the success of the bond, and to the nature of the song's magic, I'll bet.

:cheers: Let's rock the boat.

What does one have to do in order to get a thread pinned?

Sounds funny when you say it but that's a great way of putting it.Or i will add the individuals that were present may not have been chosen.They had the Fire and the Blood but no summons from the Dragons.

so much this :agree:

GRRM has also made a trip to Australia & New Zealand, I'm sure he's drawn parallels from their indigenous culture as well, Aboriginal people have "Dreamtime" legends & stories about the natural world around them, creation, myths & about how they came to be, they are often sung in harmonies with primitive percussion instruments for rhythm. The Maori have a stomping, chanting fierceness for their tribal songs & stories.

Songs & rhymes, even nursery rhymes are culturally important too because a song is sometimes easier to remember due to it's rhyme, oral stories presented without song often lose pieces of the story, the melody & rhythm act as "clues" to remember all the important parts.

Its amazing if you look at how "songs" have played a role in this story thus far and the way its placed in the tale its very overt,but i guess it's not the kind of thing people wan't to pay attention to.

[Dany's Silver]

I think there is a difference.It is the same difference i note with Jon and Ghost on the day they found the pups and again on the Skirling Pass.

Ghost is the only of the Direwolves who called to his proxy.He was the only one that heard,probably because Jon was going to leave him but again the importance is only Jon could hear it.His bond is different than the others too their Direwolves

I think the same thing happened with Dany,as with Jon.

As to the other Dragon riders for all we know they are long dead,not born yet or don't even realize they heard the song.Those petrified eggs might have been there forever if not for Dany.

You just reminded me of Tyrion borrowing a book from Winterfell on his way to the Wall ["the book a rumination on the history and properties of dragons." AGoT]. He recalls how he looked for the dragon skulls that used to be in the throne room:

Tyrion had a morbid fascination with dragons. When he had first come to King's Landing for his sister's wedding to Robert Baratheon, he had made it a point to seek out the dragon skulls that had hung on the walls of the Targaryen's throne room. King Robert had replaced them with banners and tapestries, but Tyrion had persisted until he found the skulls in the dank cellar where they had been stored.

He had expected to find them impressive, perhaps even frightening. He had not thought to find them beautiful. Yet there they were. As black as onyx, polished smooth, so the bone seemed to shimmer in the light of his torch. They liked the fire, he sensed. He'd thrust the torch into the mouth of one of the larger skulls and made the shadows leap and dance on the wall behind him. The teeth were long, curving knives of black diamond. The flame of the torch was nothing to them; they had bathed in the heat of far greater fires. When he had moved away, Tyrion could have sworn the beast's empty eye sockets had watched him go.

[...]

From there the skulls ranged upward in size to the three great monsters of song and story, the dragons that Aegon Targaryen and his sisters had unleashed on the Seven Kingdoms of old. [AGoT, pp. 121-22]

Also, this conversation between Tyrion and Jon:

"What are you reading about?" he asked.

"Dragons," Tyrion told him.

"What good is that for? There are no more dragons," the boy said with the easy certainty of youth.

"So they say," Tyrion replied. "Sad, isn't it? When I was your age, I used to dream of having a dragon of my own."

"You did?" The boy said suspiciously. Perhaps he thought Tyrion was making fun of him.

"Oh, yes. Even a stunted, twisted, ugly little boy can look down over the world when he's seated on a dragon's back." [AGoT p. 124]

I feel that Tyrion may be one who has heard the dragon's song (and I do not think he is necessarily a Targaryen for that to have happened).

Edit: I posted prematurely!

[Eira Seren]

If I remember correctly the Dragon Lord families of Valyria all used the dragon horn to tame their dragons except for the Targaryens.

Thus, it makes you wonder how were the Targaryens able to form a natural bond with their dragons without the use of the dragon horn.

Not sure. I wonder also why Dragonstone has all the gargoyles of various animals,some mythical.

I think i got it!!!! The reason i believe Drogon and Ghost are different and why their bond is different.

Remember what BR said about the Singers,more specifically the ones born with Red or green eyes.

"By these signs do the gods marked those they have chosen to recieve the gift."

There we have it.OOOO we are in dagerous territoy here boys and girls :devil:

Lol!!

I like those eyes.

so much this :agree:

GRRM has also made a trip to Australia & New Zealand, I'm sure he's drawn parallels from their indigenous culture as well, Aboriginal people have "Dreamtime" legends & stories about the natural world around them, creation, myths & about how they came to be, they are often sung in harmonies with primitive percussion instruments for rhythm. The Maori have a stomping, chanting fierceness for their tribal songs & stories.

Songs & rhymes, even nursery rhymes are culturally important too because a song is sometimes easier to remember due to it's rhyme, oral stories presented without song often lose pieces of the story, the melody & rhythm act as "clues" to remember all the important parts.

Maybe this is part of the reason that the Maesters often seem to have the wrong end of the stick (writing) when it comes to magic.

You just reminded me of Tyrion borrowing a book from Winterfell on his way to the Wall ["the book a rumination on the history and properties of dragons." AGoT]. He recalls how he looked for the dragon skulls that used to be in the throne room:

Also, this conversation between Tyrion and Jon:

I feel that Tyrion may be one who has heard the dragon's song (and I do not think he is necessarily a Targaryen for that to have happened).

Edit: I posted prematurely!

I agree, Tyrion doesn't have to be a Targ to hear it. If the dragons want to initiate a bond, why should there be a limit to who they can sing to?

Also, when I saw the quote about Tyrion and the dragon skulls. . . . 'The Bones Remember!'

[wolfmaid7]

You just reminded me of Tyrion borrowing a book from Winterfell on his way to the Wall ["the book a rumination on the history and properties of dragons." AGoT]. He recalls how he looked for the dragon skulls that used to be in the throne room:

Also, this conversation between Tyrion and Jon:

I feel that Tyrion may be one who has heard the dragon's song (and I do not think he is necessarily a Targaryen for that to have happened).

Edit: I posted prematurely!

When it comes to that dream i don't think it was a Dragon dream. Given what he said about dreaming he had one to basically toasting his family i would say it was a mixture of that and seeing yourself as master of one a creature that made men tremble.

Also,there is a pattern to the Dragon's choice ,"they" always choose a person with Targ blood.For whatever reason those are the people they naturally bond with.

Not sure. I wonder also why Dragonstone has all the gargoyles of various animals,some mythical.

Lol!!

I like those eyes.

Maybe this is part of the reason that the Maesters often seem to have the wrong end of the stick (writing) when it comes to magic.

I agree, Tyrion doesn't have to be a Targ to hear it. If the dragons want to initiate a bond, why should there be a limit to who they can sing to?

Also, when I saw the quote about Tyrion and the dragon skulls. . . . 'The Bones Remember!'

I don't think its a limit,but more of a preference and i really think there is something in the blood that makes them choose them.Who knows,but if any character has heard or will hear Dragonsong besides Dany we will know.

Keep in mind though the age the stones,they had been cold stone for possibly thousands of years and would have been there a thousand more.So Rheagal and Viserion's riders maybe long dead or not even born yet.Which means Dany who only heard Drogon sing to her may have woken Dragons that shouldn't have been woken.

[evita mgfs]

Author’s Notes: Here is a piece I wrote months ago dealing with the Children of the Forest. Maybe it will find a home here. I have spent over a year researching the VOICE and its adjuncts.

THE CHILDREN OF THE FOREST

George R. R. Martin grudgingly sprinkles his prose with information about the “children of the forest”, and readers must rely upon Old Nan’s titillating tales, Maester Luwin’s drab discourse, and a handful of others in-the-know like Osha, Jojen, and Meera, in order to piece together a fabric that advances an articulation of these enigmatic singers.

The main challenge with the CotF is that Martin writes of them cryptically, devising ambiguities that arouse reader curiosity and build suspense and tension. So much is open for interpretation.

Because of Martin’s conscientious editing, he orchestrates the release of new material in a timely manner that his fans eagerly await, especially when readers who are also writers know how difficult it is to create, populate, and “juggle” an entire world that exists only in the author’s head.

Each novel Martin publishes in his series ASoIaF, he strategically divulges literary clues about “mysterious” entities, families, and plot developments to sustain and incite reader interest. Martin exercises self-control, and by doing so, Martin demonstrates his respect for his readers and fans.

A delightful, engaging, and enthusiastic speaker, Martin guards his secrets like the ravens. Doing this is not easy, especially when he is coaxed by fans. However, Martin wants his readers to make their own decisions, but mostly he does not want to “spoil” his surprises by revealing too much information too soon.

For example, readers and writers had time to study four novels before ADwD, and in these first four, here and there is a mention of the children of the forest. But it is in ADwD that Martin delivers them.

Up until Bran meets “those who sing the song of earth” for the first time, he relied on others’ exaggerated, even misinformed tales; now he can study real specimens at his leisure and make his own decisions about them and the last greenseer who only has one eye, not three.

I salute the brilliant strategist in Martin who invites his readers to join Bran when he first meets these wise children whose existence had been doubted by many naysayers.

OBSERVATION 1: “DEAD MEN SING NO SONGS”

From the very first page of the Prologue in AGoT, Martin places “death” and “song” together and in a prominent location. Both words are in dialogue written for three men of the Night’s Watch tracking wildlings beyond the Wall.

During a heated discussion about whether dead wildlings are truly dead, Will and Royce reveal a myth from their youths:

"My mother told me that dead men sing no songs," he [Will] put in.

"My wet nurse said the same thing, Will," Royce replied. "Never believe anything you hear at a woman's tit. There are things to be learned even from the dead." His voice echoed, too loud in the twilit forest.

I point this out before visiting the “children” since these singers are associated with “song”, yet the first mention of song in the series is linked to the dead.

Of course, Will’s remark is innocent enough, and he may be invoking humor to ease the stress among the rangers. However, the fact that it is placed on the first page of the first novel of the Series is more than a happy coincidence.

LC Mormont said that the CotF could speak with the dead, so perhaps the wights are the upshot of using magic to communicate with the no-longer-living.

The wights are the dead walking, not talking. If they cannot talk, how could they sing? In order to sing, they need to breathe. So from what readers learn later, the wights have no voice singly or collectively. Perhaps it is a voice they seek.

If the dead no longer “breathe”, they have no voice.

ColdHands does not breathe, yet he speaks. Is he an exception? More later, now the children.

Observation 2: “THE SINGERS of the SONG of EARTH”

Martin titles his series “A Song of Ice and Fire”, and he arranges songs, verses, ballads, instrumentals, and sounds to set a rhythm or beat that compel the story forward while complementing action in the moment of the series.

A group most-associated with voices gifted in song are the “children of the forest”.

Leaf affirms, “The First Men named us children,” the little woman said. “The giants called us woh dak nag gran, the squirrel people, because we were small and quick and fond of trees, but we are no squirrels, no children. Our name in the True Tongue means those who sing the song of earth. Before your Old Tongue was ever spoken, we had sung our songs ten thousand years.”

• 
  

  Martin achieves a tone of superciliousness in Leaf’s clipped comments to Bran and Meera. She rejects the name that men have given to her and her like, which Leaf implies is an insult that mocks the children’s diminutive size.

  
  
  
• 
  

  Bran dislikes when he is called crippled, so perhaps he relates to their umbrage.

  
  
  
• 
  

  Or not. Meera and Bran take it upon themselves to make up names for the singers which helps them in their daily dealings with the singers.

  
  
  
• 
  

  “Bran and Meera made names for those who sing the song of the earth: Ash and Leaf and Scales, Blackknife and Snowylocks and Coals”.

  
  
  
• 
  

  The “names” are based on their appearances.

  
  
  
• 
  

  Even though Bran and Meera mean no disrespect when they impress the ways of men upon the children, assigning them a label like Leaf and Snowylocks even after they had been told of the singers’ aversion to epithets.

  
  
  
• 
  

  Bran wonders what the singers think of their new names, but only Leaf knows the language that Bran speaks, and Leaf probably finds her name Leaf a shallow name given to her because of her distinctive leafy attire.

  
  
  

“Those who sing the song of earth”

• 
  

  The singers are obviously a proud group who take their identity very seriously.

  
  
  
• 
  

  In the True Tongue, their names are long with lovely sound.

  
  
  
• 
  

  But “those” is a plural pronoun, and indefinite for it refers to no one individually with an honorific.

  
  
  
• 
  

  “Those” also is a vague reference, because it has no antecedent for clarity.

  
  
  
• 
  

  It seems the singers are “nameless” as individuals, but collectively, they share one name.

  
  
  

• 
  

  The subtext is in Leaf’s delivery and reader inference: ‘giants [dimwits] and men [dimwits] called us stupid names because we liked trees and were small. Ha Ha! We sang the song of earth 10,000 years in a really hard language called The True Tongue way before men even uttered their first words of the Old Tongue!”

  
  
  

At one point, Bran is told that even the ravens were smart enough to speak the really hard language that the humans forgot, but the ravens still “remember” – their bright black eyes “hold secrets”.

Leaf and her people have grounds for resentment. But Meera makes an observation:

“You speak the Common Tongue now.”

Leaf quips:

“For him. The Bran boy.”

• 
  

  Speaking Bran’s language is a tolerable duty for Leaf and she does so only because of Bran’s inability to speak or comprehend the language of those who sing. She has no great love for the words men speak.

  
  
  
• 
  

  Then Leaf establishes her credentials, revealing her long years studying.

  
  
  
• 
  

  Leaf calls Bran “boy”: she does not use his proper name. Since Leaf and her singers prefer being addressed collectively, it makes sense that she would not use his proper name.

  
  
  
• 
  

  But – boy is general and impersonal. Leaf is certainly not “warm and fuzzy”. She is “testing the waters”, keeping an emotional distance from the boy so she and he can have a prosperous working relationship.

  
  
  

“ I was born in the time of the dragon, and for two hundred years I walked the world of men, to watch and listen and learn. I might be walking still, but my legs were sore and my heart was weary, so I turned my feet for home.”

“Two hundred years?” said Meera.

The child smiled. “Men, they are the children.”

• 
  

  Leaf is boastful – she knows more of men than they know of themselves after 200 years of watching, listening, and learning.

  
  
  
• 
  

  Unlike men in general, Leaf took the time and applied her energies to the pursuit of knowledge.

  
  
  
• 
  

  Leaf is a wee bit smug when Meera asks in disbelief “200 years?” Depending on how the line is delivered, Leaf’s smile might convey just how silly men are who choose to label others in degrees of shallowness.

  
  
  
• 
  

  Leaf has a bit of attitude when she points out that men, not them, are the children – not full grown, not mature, not wise.

  
  
  
  
  

“Do you have a name?” asked Bran.

“When I am needing one.”

• 
  

  An early chapter in AGoT describes the old gods of the north as “nameless” and “faceless”, so those who are the choristers avoid emulating “men” and claiming an identity.

  
  
  
• 
  

  Leaf’s snappy response is “so Arya!”

  
  
  
• 
  

  They are not vain; mark their armor, sticks, leaves, and woven vines. They carry unassuming weapons, and their issues with the First Men are entrenched in their right to worship their gods in safety and in peace, and their totems or idols are cherished in the core of their beliefs. The “squirrel”/”Child” demand respect from invaders who steal their lands, destroy their homes, and blaspheme their gods.

  
  
  
• 
  

  And in whose blood flows the very same blood that nourished the bodies of these “First” Men. Stark!

  
  
  
• 
  

  Why “First”? Some of those who sing may very well resent the presumptive appropriation of this moniker– yes?

  
  
  
• 
  

  Could be these smart singers with their elaborate network have things all sewn up.

  
  
  

Bran reveals his deep respect for the CotF:

“Though the men of the Seven Kingdoms might call them the children of the forest, Leaf and her people were far from childlike. Little wise men of the forest would have been closer”.

• 
  

  Leaf’s tale of hiking 200 miles brought to mind “The Wandering Jew”, which I am sure has been mentioned by other scholars.

  
  
  
• 
  

  Sweet natured Bran admires these little wise folk of the forest. Leaf is not without an acute perceptivity, and Bran’s youth makes him an easy victim to manipulate.

  
  
  
• 
  

  Worse yet, Bran’s first association with Leaf is his own sister Arya whom Bran fears may be dead. Leaf sings sad songs. The Knight in the “old” Bran may aspire to chivalry.

  
  
  

OBSERVATION 3: SONG

In ADwD, Bran’s POV, he finally sees and hears a child, or singer:

“That was not Arya’s voice, nor any child’s. It was a woman’s voice, high and sweet, with a strange music in it like none that he had ever heard and a sadness that he thought might break his heart”.

• 
  

  Martin endows Bran with a sensitivity to feel what he hears: Bran has a physical reaction to the “high and sweet” voices that intone “sadness” that “might break his heart”.

  
  
  
• 
  

  Bran addresses the child’s “voice”. He associates the child with Arya, but she does not have Arya’s or ANY child’s VOICE.

  
  
  

“Sometimes the sound of song would drift up from some place far below. The children of the forest, Old Nan would have called the singers, but those who sing the song of earth was their own name for themselves in the True Tongue that no human man can speak. The ravens could speak it, though. Their small black eyes were full of secrets, and they would caw at him and peck at his skin when they hear the songs” (448).

• 
  

  Bran is not alone in being moved by the song of earth.

  
  
  

• 
  

  The song of earth have an effect on the ravens when they hear the singers. They “caw” as if trying to join their voices with the singers. They also peck at Bran’s skin, which suggests their nervous excitement.

  
  
  
• 
  

  The ravens may want Bran to join in the song as well.

  
  
  

“Where are the rest of you?” Bran asked Leaf, once.

“Gone down into the earth . . . Into the stones, into the trees. Before the First Men came all this land that you call Westeros was home to us, yet even in those days we were few . . . That was in the dawn of days, when our sun was rising. Now it sinks, and this is our long dwindling The giants are almost gone as well, they who were our bane and our brothers. The great lions of the western hills have been slain, the unicorns are all but gone, the mammoths down to a few hundred. The direwolves will outlast us all, but their time will come as well. In the world that men have made, there is no room for them, or us.”

• 
  

  These singers are so very wise, and Leaf is the singer who speaks for all the singers. When she says Westeros was once their HOME, Leaf surely realizes that Winterfell was once the home of Bran and the Stark family.

  
  
  
• 
  

  If being displaced was not bad enough, the other singers are in the earth, in stones, and in trees. It is like they were driven underground with the dead.

  
  
  
• 
  

  Leaf’s stories are strategically designed to win Bran’s sympathy. She focuses on their shared losses.

  
  
  
• 
  

  Leaf understands human nature, and Bran’s tender sensibilities allow him to relate to the plight of the singers.

  
  
  
• 
  

  The singers going underground is also similar to Bran and his companions hiding underground in the Winterfell crypts to escape death.

  
  
  
• 
  

  Leaf’s lesson on the singers’ dwindling, along with the giants, mammoths, unicorns, lions, and direwolves, definitely tugs at the heart strings. Leaf even mentions that the direwolves will die out, which is not the best thing to say to a crippled boy in a creepy cave with a corpse-like tutor whose greatest companion is a direwolf.

  
  
  

“She seemed sad when she said it, and that made Bran sad as well.”

• 
  

  Score! Leaf achieves her goal. She manipulates Bran’s emotions, causing him to feel sad for the way mankind treated them.

  
  
  

“ It was only later that he thought, Men would not be sad. Men would be wroth. Men would hate and swear a bloody vengeance. The singers sing sad songs, where men would fight and kill.”

• 
  

  These lines narrated by Bran’s character disclose his frustrations. Sad songs will not lead the singers to victory over their enemies. They need to be more like men – get angry, spread hate, and vow vengeance

  
  
  
• 
  

  It seems that Bran will be highly motivated to absorb knowledge at record speed – he has a purpose. His thoughts strongly insinuate that Bran will prove vengeance is the righteous path, and some bad men are deserving of a bloody death.

  
  
  

****Think voice/song, then go on:

AUTHOR’S QUESTION: What music have we experienced that made us sad and heart-broken?

AUTHOR’S RESPONSE:

I often “feel” music deeply, I confess. But if I had to select one piece of music that evoked a response like the one that Bran describes, I choose the haunting voice that opens James Cameron’s movie Titanic, composed by James Horner and entitled “Back to Titanic” – which you may hear at this site [it lasts maybe a minute]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOJB6wTo2wM

This piece was omitted from the original soundtracks. A haunting woman’s voice evocates emotions, and even without the visual aspect, the melody makes my heart hurt. It captures the tragedy and the sorrow that awaits the unsuspecting voyagers.

So, Martin hints at the “power” of music and song, suggesting that pleasing sounds will move most men not iron-hearted.

OBSERVATION 4: THE VOICE

Bran finds HIS VOICE in the Cave of Skulls, but readers learn of Bran’s escalating magic prowess in POV’s narrated by Theon’s various incarnations. Set at Winterfell’s godswood before the heart tree, Theon hears through the rustling of red leaves, which is Bran “flexing” his magic-muscles by manipulating the “wind”.

Bran speaks again to Theon when there is no wind to rustle the leaves. He says Theon’s name – he can enunciate, not like when he is in Summer or the ravens [at first]. Moreover, Bran achieves his goal of “touching” someone through his weirwood – here, a hand-shaped leaf brushes against Theon’s forehead. This is a symbolic gesture of forgiveness.

Bran, as a young weirwood sapling, leans over to touch “the warg” that is his bastard brother Jon Snow, who is having a wolf dream in his direwolf Ghost. It is as a result of this connection –the mute Ghost howls. Even Ghost will find his voice to sing with his pack.

Because of Theon’s physical and mental decline, most readers attribute Theon’s mystical communications with Bran via the weirnet as hallucinations, flights of fancy.

Whatever powers the singers have in their arsenal of magic tricks, their VOICES appear to have an effect on others.

The theme of finding a voice is a theory I have, and it includes all things associated with the oral cavity, tongue, vocal chords, neck, face, ears, teeth, and throat.

Bran and company enter the Cave of Skulls, a virtual charnel house with a pathway of bones that crunch beneath their feet. The entrance is called “mouth” several times.

Outside the cave, the wights are gathering. Why? Are they preventing Bran’s entrance? Are they trying to prevent Bran leaving? What are they attracted to? The VOICES? Are they gathering because of the song?

Are the wights in search of a Voice?

More MOUTH Allusions:

Leaf leads Bran and his companions through a cavern with stone teeth “hanging from its ceiling and more poking up through the floor. The child in the leafy cloak wove a path through them” (174).

“The ward upon the cave mouth still held” (452).

“Jojen had taken to climbing up to the cave’s mouth when the day was bright” (455).

The reference to teeth suggests a mouth. This description also correlates to Arya passing through the dragon’s mouth and over the stone teeth.

“She could feel its empty eyes watching her through the gloom, and there was something in that dim, cavernous room that did not love her. She edged away from the skull and backed into a second, larger than the first. For an instant she could feel its teeth digging into her shoulder, as if it wanted a bite of her flesh. Arya whirled, felt leather catch and tear as a huge fang nipped at her jerkin, and then she was running. Another skull loomed ahead, the biggest monster of all, but Arya did not even slow. She leapt over a ridge of black teeth as tall as swords, dashed through hungry jaws, and threw herself against the door” (AGoT).

Lord Brynden loses his voice when he does not exercise it regularly:

“The pale lord’s voice was dry. His lips moved slowly, as if they had forgotten to form words” (178).

After Bran’s first vision through the weirwood, which occurs after he eats the paste, his throat is dry: “his throat was very dry. He swallowed. “Winterfell . . . I saw my father” (458).

Martin uses the same word – dry – to describe Lord Brynden’s and Bran’s throats.

Visionaries sometimes have symptoms similar to BR and Bran’s after “seeing”. They often experience a depletion of energy, and even faint after seeing something profound.

Othor forces his hand down Jon Snow’s throat during the attack on Mormont in AGoT. Does he try to take Jon’s tongue? “Tongue” is referenced quite often by the singers in ADwD. Maybe the weirwoods need a tongue?

Lord Brynden tells Bran, “The children carved eyes in the heart trees to awaken them, and those are the first eyes a new greenseer learns to use . . . but in time, you will see well beyond the trees themselves” (ADwD 459).

• 
  

  The “eyes” are utilitarian and part of the education of new greenseers. Bran will appear in the godswood heart tree in Winterfell to attend the nuptials of Ramsay Bolton and Jeyne Poole, where Theon will assume the role of “Ward” of Lord Eddard Stark.

  
  
  

When Bran finds his father in a second vision, one after Lord Brynden and Leaf firmly impress upon him that he has not the powers to “speak” to his father, but “all that he could do was WATCH and LISTEN. “I am inside the heart tree, looking out of its eyes, but the weirwood cannot talk, so I can’t” (ADwD 459).

• 
  

  Then why do the children bother to carve mouths with opened lips in the trunk of the weirwoods?

  
  
  
• 
  

  The Voice that may speak through the heart tree will be ___?

  
  
  
• 
  

  Bran does communicate with Theon.

  
  
  

OBSERVATION 5: The Others’ Voices

The Others have a profoundly distinctive voice:

“The Other said something in a language that Will did not know; his voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking. […] Far beneath him, he heard their voices and laughter sharp as icicles” (AGoT ).

[Anyone care to offer a vocalist who could do this? My best is Rod Stewart.]

In ASoS, Sam Tarley stabs an Other in the throat with obsidian, and “He heard a crack, like the sound ice makes when it breaks beneath a man’s foot, and then a screech so shrill and sharp that he went staggering backward with his hands over his muffled ears, and fell hard on his arse . . .” (ASoS).

• 
  

  The Others’ strange language may be the tongue the singers have used for thousands of years. Or maybe the Others have developed their own language.

  
  
  
• 
  

  When Sam stabs, he hears ice cracking when his obsidian blade made contact with the Other’s throat. A screech that may have a windy kick to it sends Sam backwards.

  
  
  
• 
  

  The sound is so unpleasant that Sam uses his hands to cover his ears instead of using them to break his fall.

  
  
  
• 
  

  Does the screech suggest that the Others feel pain?

  
  
  

Martin maintains his winter theme when choosing words to describe the Singers’ voices:

“And they [children of the forest] did sing. They sang in True Tongue, so Bran could not understand the words, but their voices were as pure as winter air”.

OBSERVATION 6: Greek Mythology and the Sirens / Singers

I cannot discuss the singers without mentioning their equivalent in Greek mythology, at least in my mind. The Sirens’ are creatures with seductive voices who lure sailors to their deaths. No man can resist the Siren’s song.

However, one sea captain cheats death and hears the voices no mortal had lived to speak of, and that hero is Odysseus, the man of twists and turns, resourceful Achaean beloved of Athena who inspires all his brilliant ideas.

• 
  

  Homer writes: “So they [sirens] sent their ravishing voices out across the airand the heart inside me throbbed to listen longer”.

  
  
  
• 
  

  Martin writes: “It was a woman’s voice, high and sweet, with a strange music in it like none that he had ever heard and a sadness that he thought might break his heart”.

  
  
  

And:

• 
  

  “They sang in True Tongue, so Bran could not understand the words, but their voices were as pure as winter air” (ADwD).

  
  
  

In both Homer and Martin, the Sirens and the Singers have voices light as air and when they sing their seductive song “the heart” “throbbed” or “broke his heart”. ( Homer’s Odyssey, Fagles trans).

OBSERVATION 7: PETER PAN/ LEAF & SINGERS / REEDS

The children of the forest and even the Reeds reminded me of Peter Pan in appearance. The “cloak of leaves” is reminiscent to J.M. Barrie’s description of Pan in Peter Pan and Wendy: “He was a lovely boy, clad in skeleton leaves and the juices that ooze out of trees;” http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26654/26654-h/26654-h.htm#CHAPTER_I

Peter Pan flies with the help of pixie or fairy dust, which TinkerBell the fairy gives to him. He does not grow wings.

Bran Stark flies with greenseeing magic, and he does not grow wings. However, Bran can skinchange birds.

Pan has a band of mates called The Lost Boys, and they live at Neverland.

Bran has several companions and nears the Land of Always Winter.

OBSERVATION 8: ARYA

“Bran squinted, to see her better. It was a girl, but smaller than Arya, her skin dappled like a doe’s beneath a cloak of leaves. Her eyes were queer—large and liquid, gold and green, slitted like a cat’s eyes.

No one has eyes like that. *****

Her hair was a tangle of brown and red and gold, autumn colors, with vines and twigs and withered flowers woven through it” (ADwD 174-5).

****This may be an ON PURPOSE by Martin, a pun of words that speaks to Arya in Braavos who goes by many names and faces, including the appellation “no one” and the visage of a pussycat, the latter of whose eyes she borrows while she is blind.

OBSERVATION 9: ALICE and ARYA: DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

I cannot resist a nod to Lewis Carrol:

Bran knew. “She’s a child. A child of the forest.” He shivered, as much from wonderment as cold. They had fallen into one of Old Nan’s tales”.

OBSERVATION 10: SOUNDS

Martin marks the journey of Bran and company to the Cave of Skulls with long periods of silence shattered by harsh, discordant noises, such as the ravens screaming, their leathern wings flapping, even Hodor screaming “Hodor”: “Hodor hodor hodor hodor. Hodor hodor hodor hodor. Hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor.”

• 
  

  Martin’s decision to employ figurative language and poetic devices is evident in his repetition of words and sounds, in his forgoing commas when using items in a series, in his pattern of grouping words in some series of numbers. In the example above, the pattern of lines is four words, four words, then five words, all of which share a balance and a center.

  
  
  

· The words may be delivered musically, such as a chant or a lilt. Martin has fun with his omission of commas in similar examples, which contrast sharply with those instances the items in a series are mechanically and grammatically sound.

Once Bran and his group enter the Cave of Skulls, Martin’s language becomes more poetic and lyrical, an homage to those who sing the song of earth. The singers and their heart-breaking voices are one redeeming feature of the time spent in the Cave of Skulls.

As a matter of fact, Martin creates a rhythm by repeating key words and phrases intermittently over the course of Bran’s Cave of Skulls POV’s.

For instance, the phasing moon announces nightfall, but Martin’s language is repeated word for word. Actually, this is a great epic tradition: repetition of words and sounds which some scholars believe assisted the bards in memorizing long works for oral performances.

• 
  

  “The moon was fat and full” (ADwD 448, 452).

  
  
  
• 
  

  “The moon was a black hole in the sky” (ADwD 449, 455).

  
  
  
• 
  

  “The moon was a crescent, thin and sharp as the blade of a knife” (ADwD 454).

  
  
  

Repetition of key words and phrases establish transitions and tell the passage of time. Martin enriches his narratives through styling language with a myriad of poetic devices. He evokes a mental picture with the moon as a black hole in the sky, and he uses simile, the crescent moon is “thin and sharp as the blade of a knife”. These are but a few examples of how Martin makes music with words.

To demonstrate Martin’s poetic style, I will write in verse a passage from Bran’s last POV in ADwD:

The Cave of Skulls

Timeless, vast, silent

Were the caves

They were Home

To three score singers

The bones of thousands

Dead

Far below

The hollow hill

Martin elevates his prose to poetry, and in this he truly embraces the totality of the genre “great epic”. Only POEMS about the deeds of heroes are “great epics”.

Martin’s fondness for lyrical language sets a mystical, magical tone that permeates and thickens as Bran’s points-of-view may be less frequent and more cryptic.

In ADwD, Bran’s final POV is at the midpoint of my text, roughly. [but Bran demonstrates his prowess and control of his greenseeing magic by making several appearances to the heart tree in Winterfell in later narratives.[

OBSERVATION 11: HOSPITALITY AND GUEST RITE

The singers host Bran and his companions, providing protection, shelter, bedding, and meals. Bran sums up their meagre fare:

“They had cheese and milk from the goats that shared the caves with the singers, even some oats and barleycorn and dried fruit laid by during the long summer. And almost every day they ate blood stew, thickened with barley and onions and chunks of meat. Jojen thought it might be squirrel meat, and Meera said that it was rat. Bran did not care. It was meat and it was good. The stewing made it tender”.

The goats are kept warm and safe because they give cheese and milk, a life-saving commodity in a deadly long winter. However, goats are mentioned frequently in Greek tragedy and Homeric epic and myth. The goat is most likely offered to the gods as a sacrifice.

In one example of a sacrificial goat occurs in Homer’s Odyssey. In order to speak with the blind prophet Tiresias in the Land of the Dead, Odysseus digs a trench, which he then fills with the blood from the goat’s slit throat. All the dead come charging for the fresh blood, and Odysseus must hold them back so that Tiresias can drink first.

Only after tasting blood can the dead hold speech with the living.

Some Martin scholars may use the presence of the goat in an argument promoting the theory of Jojen Paste. The bloody stew is an ominous entrée with its “mystery meat” – Squirrel? Rat? The suggestion of squirrel meat “whispers” cannibalism, especially since the children of the forest and even Bran and his sister Arya, are compared frequently to squirrels.

“Rat” is a reminder of the “Rat Cook” and the severe penalties for violating the guest-host relationship. Theon is so hungry he eats a rat

Since the CotF are enmeshed in the godhood that punishes violators of these holy, sacred, yet unwritten laws, it is unlikely that they would serve Bran his friend Jojen, even if Jojen offered himself as a gift fit for a greenseer stewed to the tenderness Bran’s palate enjoys.

Bran grows in stronger the nearer he gets to the Cave of Skulls, whereas Jojen weakens. Of course, Bran’s connection to Summer is acute and somehow sustaining. Summer empowers Bran and gives him strength. Bran is growing sturdier as opposed to feeble and atrophied. I hope that Bran is not depleting Jojen’s energy or essence. If Bran is, he is unaware.

Jojen is near death when they arrive at the Cave of Skulls, and although his health has seemingly improved while resting in the cavern, he is sullen, withdrawn, and melancholy. His poor mental spirit only dooms a full recovery.

If Bran is as powerful as “all that”, he can very likely deplete Jojen’s life force without ingesting him on a spoon.

In the great epics of Homer, Iliad and Odyssey, the author observes conventions that are necessary to meet “great epic” status. One recurring theme is the sacred laws of hospitality and guest rite.

One thing Martin has not addressed in his prose is the responsibility of visiting guests while under the roof of the host. Guests are held to a standard of respectable behavior as well. A violation of hospitality causes the Trojan War because a visiting Prince of Troy seduces King Menelaus’ wife Helen of Sparta, the most beautiful woman in the western world, and he “abducts her”. [There is more to the myth I am omitting for the sake of time!]

Prince Paris abuses guest right when he seduces the Queen of his host in his own home and then steals her. King Menelaus launches 1000 ships to reclaim her.

Guests have responsibilities to their host as well.

The most fascinating part of the host’s duties is to give the guest a foot bath, fresh attire, and a feast. It is only after all amenities associated with welcoming are met before the host is allowed to ask the visitor who he is.

I CAN CONTINUE, BUT I AM ENDING AT THESE OBSERVATIONS.

RESOURCES

AN: Here are resources that are mostly reliable for those who wish to look over paraphrases and direct quotations from Martin’s texts in ASoIaF that pertain specifically to the SINGERS and other notables associated with them.

History and Lore: The Children of the Forest / The First Men and the Andals. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tuf0-ZHsOs8

Narrated by Bran – from HBO’s blue-ray Season One. Lots of illustrations.

Woodswitch and Oldstones – discussion with links and images.

http://nobodysuspectsthebutterfly.tumblr.com/tagged/the%20children%20of%20the%20forest

The Concordance at the Citadel has the “facts’ as quoted in the texts with novel and chapter references.

http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/Concordance/Section/1.2./

[wolfmaid7]

Author’s Notes: Here is a piece I wrote months ago dealing with the Children of the Forest. Maybe it will find a home here. I have spent over a year researching the VOICE and its adjuncts.

THE CHILDREN OF THE FOREST

George R. R. Martin grudgingly sprinkles his prose with information about the “children of the forest”, and readers must rely upon Old Nan’s titillating tales, Maester Luwin’s drab discourse, and a handful of others in-the-know like Osha, Jojen, and Meera, in order to piece together a fabric that advances an articulation of these enigmatic singers.

The main challenge with the CotF is that Martin writes of them cryptically, devising ambiguities that arouse reader curiosity and build suspense and tension. So much is open for interpretation.

Because of Martin’s conscientious editing, he orchestrates the release of new material in a timely manner that his fans eagerly await, especially when readers who are also writers know how difficult it is to create, populate, and “juggle” an entire world that exists only in the author’s head.

Each novel Martin publishes in his series ASoIaF, he strategically divulges literary clues about “mysterious” entities, families, and plot developments to sustain and incite reader interest. Martin exercises self-control, and by doing so, Martin demonstrates his respect for his readers and fans.

A delightful, engaging, and enthusiastic speaker, Martin guards his secrets like the ravens. Doing this is not easy, especially when he is coaxed by fans. However, Martin wants his readers to make their own decisions, but mostly he does not want to “spoil” his surprises by revealing too much information too soon.

For example, readers and writers had time to study four novels before ADwD, and in these first four, here and there is a mention of the children of the forest. But it is in ADwD that Martin delivers them.

Up until Bran meets “those who sing the song of earth” for the first time, he relied on others’ exaggerated, even misinformed tales; now he can study real specimens at his leisure and make his own decisions about them and the last greenseer who only has one eye, not three.

I salute the brilliant strategist in Martin who invites his readers to join Bran when he first meets these wise children whose existence had been doubted by many naysayers.

OBSERVATION 1: “DEAD MEN SING NO SONGS”

From the very first page of the Prologue in AGoT, Martin places “death” and “song” together and in a prominent location. Both words are in dialogue written for three men of the Night’s Watch tracking wildlings beyond the Wall.

During a heated discussion about whether dead wildlings are truly dead, Will and Royce reveal a myth from their youths:

"My mother told me that dead men sing no songs," he [Will] put in.

"My wet nurse said the same thing, Will," Royce replied. "Never believe anything you hear at a woman's tit. There are things to be learned even from the dead." His voice echoed, too loud in the twilit forest.

I point this out before visiting the “children” since these singers are associated with “song”, yet the first mention of song in the series is linked to the dead.

Of course, Will’s remark is innocent enough, and he may be invoking humor to ease the stress among the rangers. However, the fact that it is placed on the first page of the first novel of the Series is more than a happy coincidence.

LC Mormont said that the CotF could speak with the dead, so perhaps the wights are the upshot of using magic to communicate with the no-longer-living.

The wights are the dead walking, not talking. If they cannot talk, how could they sing? In order to sing, they need to breathe. So from what readers learn later, the wights have no voice singly or collectively. Perhaps it is a voice they seek.

If the dead no longer “breathe”, they have no voice.

ColdHands does not breathe, yet he speaks. Is he an exception? More later, now the children.

Observation 2: “THE SINGERS of the SONG of EARTH”

Martin titles his series “A Song of Ice and Fire”, and he arranges songs, verses, ballads, instrumentals, and sounds to set a rhythm or beat that compel the story forward while complementing action in the moment of the series.

A group most-associated with voices gifted in song are the “children of the forest”.

Leaf affirms, “The First Men named us children,” the little woman said. “The giants called us woh dak nag gran, the squirrel people, because we were small and quick and fond of trees, but we are no squirrels, no children. Our name in the True Tongue means those who sing the song of earth. Before your Old Tongue was ever spoken, we had sung our songs ten thousand years.”

• Martin achieves a tone of superciliousness in Leaf’s clipped comments to Bran and Meera. She rejects the name that men have given to her and her like, which Leaf implies is an insult that mocks the children’s diminutive size.

• Bran dislikes when he is called crippled, so perhaps he relates to their umbrage.

Or not. Meera and Bran take it upon themselves to make up names for the singers which helps them in their daily dealings with the singers.

“Bran and Meera made names for those who sing the song of the earth: Ash and Leaf and Scales, Blackknife and Snowylocks and Coals”.

The “names” are based on their appearances.

Even though Bran and Meera mean no disrespect when they impress the ways of men upon the children, assigning them a label like Leaf and Snowylocks even after they had been told of the singers’ aversion to epithets.

Bran wonders what the singers think of their new names, but only Leaf knows the language that Bran speaks, and Leaf probably finds her name Leaf a shallow name given to her because of her distinctive leafy attire.

“Those who sing the song of earth”

• The singers are obviously a proud group who take their identity very seriously.

• In the True Tongue, their names are long with lovely sound.

But “those” is a plural pronoun, and indefinite for it refers to no one individually with an honorific.

“Those” also is a vague reference, because it has no antecedent for clarity.

It seems the singers are “nameless” as individuals, but collectively, they share one name.

• The subtext is in Leaf’s delivery and reader inference: ‘giants [dimwits] and men [dimwits] called us stupid names because we liked trees and were small. Ha Ha! We sang the song of earth 10,000 years in a really hard language called The True Tongue way before men even uttered their first words of the Old Tongue!”

At one point, Bran is told that even the ravens were smart enough to speak the really hard language that the humans forgot, but the ravens still “remember” – their bright black eyes “hold secrets”.

Leaf and her people have grounds for resentment. But Meera makes an observation:

“You speak the Common Tongue now.”

Leaf quips:

“For him. The Bran boy.”

• Speaking Bran’s language is a tolerable duty for Leaf and she does so only because of Bran’s inability to speak or comprehend the language of those who sing. She has no great love for the words men speak.

• Then Leaf establishes her credentials, revealing her long years studying.

Leaf calls Bran “boy”: she does not use his proper name. Since Leaf and her singers prefer being addressed collectively, it makes sense that she would not use his proper name.

But – boy is general and impersonal. Leaf is certainly not “warm and fuzzy”. She is “testing the waters”, keeping an emotional distance from the boy so she and he can have a prosperous working relationship.

“ I was born in the time of the dragon, and for two hundred years I walked the world of men, to watch and listen and learn. I might be walking still, but my legs were sore and my heart was weary, so I turned my feet for home.”

“Two hundred years?” said Meera.

The child smiled. “Men, they are the children.”

• Leaf is boastful – she knows more of men than they know of themselves after 200 years of watching, listening, and learning.

• Unlike men in general, Leaf took the time and applied her energies to the pursuit of knowledge.

Leaf is a wee bit smug when Meera asks in disbelief “200 years?” Depending on how the line is delivered, Leaf’s smile might convey just how silly men are who choose to label others in degrees of shallowness.

Leaf has a bit of attitude when she points out that men, not them, are the children – not full grown, not mature, not wise.

“Do you have a name?” asked Bran.

“When I am needing one.”

• An early chapter in AGoT describes the old gods of the north as “nameless” and “faceless”, so those who are the choristers avoid emulating “men” and claiming an identity.

• Leaf’s snappy response is “so Arya!”

They are not vain; mark their armor, sticks, leaves, and woven vines. They carry unassuming weapons, and their issues with the First Men are entrenched in their right to worship their gods in safety and in peace, and their totems or idols are cherished in the core of their beliefs. The “squirrel”/”Child” demand respect from invaders who steal their lands, destroy their homes, and blaspheme their gods.

And in whose blood flows the very same blood that nourished the bodies of these “First” Men. Stark!

Why “First”? Some of those who sing may very well resent the presumptive appropriation of this moniker– yes?

Could be these smart singers with their elaborate network have things all sewn up.

Bran reveals his deep respect for the CotF:

“Though the men of the Seven Kingdoms might call them the children of the forest, Leaf and her people were far from childlike. Little wise men of the forest would have been closer”.

• Leaf’s tale of hiking 200 miles brought to mind “The Wandering Jew”, which I am sure has been mentioned by other scholars.

• Sweet natured Bran admires these little wise folk of the forest. Leaf is not without an acute perceptivity, and Bran’s youth makes him an easy victim to manipulate.

Worse yet, Bran’s first association with Leaf is his own sister Arya whom Bran fears may be dead. Leaf sings sad songs. The Knight in the “old” Bran may aspire to chivalry.

OBSERVATION 3: SONG

In ADwD, Bran’s POV, he finally sees and hears a child, or singer:

“That was not Arya’s voice, nor any child’s. It was a woman’s voice, high and sweet, with a strange music in it like none that he had ever heard and a sadness that he thought might break his heart”.

• Martin endows Bran with a sensitivity to feel what he hears: Bran has a physical reaction to the “high and sweet” voices that intone “sadness” that “might break his heart”.

• Bran addresses the child’s “voice”. He associates the child with Arya, but she does not have Arya’s or ANY child’s VOICE.

“Sometimes the sound of song would drift up from some place far below. The children of the forest, Old Nan would have called the singers, but those who sing the song of earth was their own name for themselves in the True Tongue that no human man can speak. The ravens could speak it, though. Their small black eyes were full of secrets, and they would caw at him and peck at his skin when they hear the songs” (448).

• Bran is not alone in being moved by the song of earth.

• The song of earth have an effect on the ravens when they hear the singers. They “caw” as if trying to join their voices with the singers. They also peck at Bran’s skin, which suggests their nervous excitement.

• The ravens may want Bran to join in the song as well.

“Where are the rest of you?” Bran asked Leaf, once.

“Gone down into the earth . . . Into the stones, into the trees. Before the First Men came all this land that you call Westeros was home to us, yet even in those days we were few . . . That was in the dawn of days, when our sun was rising. Now it sinks, and this is our long dwindling The giants are almost gone as well, they who were our bane and our brothers. The great lions of the western hills have been slain, the unicorns are all but gone, the mammoths down to a few hundred. The direwolves will outlast us all, but their time will come as well. In the world that men have made, there is no room for them, or us.”

• These singers are so very wise, and Leaf is the singer who speaks for all the singers. When she says Westeros was once their HOME, Leaf surely realizes that Winterfell was once the home of Bran and the Stark family.

• If being displaced was not bad enough, the other singers are in the earth, in stones, and in trees. It is like they were driven underground with the dead.

Leaf’s stories are strategically designed to win Bran’s sympathy. She focuses on their shared losses.

Leaf understands human nature, and Bran’s tender sensibilities allow him to relate to the plight of the singers.

The singers going underground is also similar to Bran and his companions hiding underground in the Winterfell crypts to escape death.

Leaf’s lesson on the singers’ dwindling, along with the giants, mammoths, unicorns, lions, and direwolves, definitely tugs at the heart strings. Leaf even mentions that the direwolves will die out, which is not the best thing to say to a crippled boy in a creepy cave with a corpse-like tutor whose greatest companion is a direwolf.

“She seemed sad when she said it, and that made Bran sad as well.”

• Score! Leaf achieves her goal. She manipulates Bran’s emotions, causing him to feel sad for the way mankind treated them.

“ It was only later that he thought, Men would not be sad. Men would be wroth. Men would hate and swear a bloody vengeance. The singers sing sad songs, where men would fight and kill.”

• These lines narrated by Bran’s character disclose his frustrations. Sad songs will not lead the singers to victory over their enemies. They need to be more like men – get angry, spread hate, and vow vengeance

• It seems that Bran will be highly motivated to absorb knowledge at record speed – he has a purpose. His thoughts strongly insinuate that Bran will prove vengeance is the righteous path, and some bad men are deserving of a bloody death.

****Think voice/song, then go on:

AUTHOR’S QUESTION: What music have we experienced that made us sad and heart-broken?

AUTHOR’S RESPONSE:

I often “feel” music deeply, I confess. But if I had to select one piece of music that evoked a response like the one that Bran describes, I choose the haunting voice that opens James Cameron’s movie Titanic, composed by James Horner and entitled “Back to Titanic” – which you may hear at this site [it lasts maybe a minute]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOJB6wTo2wM

This piece was omitted from the original soundtracks. A haunting woman’s voice evocates emotions, and even without the visual aspect, the melody makes my heart hurt. It captures the tragedy and the sorrow that awaits the unsuspecting voyagers.

So, Martin hints at the “power” of music and song, suggesting that pleasing sounds will move most men not iron-hearted.

OBSERVATION 4: THE VOICE

Bran finds HIS VOICE in the Cave of Skulls, but readers learn of Bran’s escalating magic prowess in POV’s narrated by Theon’s various incarnations. Set at Winterfell’s godswood before the heart tree, Theon hears through the rustling of red leaves, which is Bran “flexing” his magic-muscles by manipulating the “wind”.

Bran speaks again to Theon when there is no wind to rustle the leaves. He says Theon’s name – he can enunciate, not like when he is in Summer or the ravens [at first]. Moreover, Bran achieves his goal of “touching” someone through his weirwood – here, a hand-shaped leaf brushes against Theon’s forehead. This is a symbolic gesture of forgiveness.

Bran, as a young weirwood sapling, leans over to touch “the warg” that is his bastard brother Jon Snow, who is having a wolf dream in his direwolf Ghost. It is as a result of this connection –the mute Ghost howls. Even Ghost will find his voice to sing with his pack.

Because of Theon’s physical and mental decline, most readers attribute Theon’s mystical communications with Bran via the weirnet as hallucinations, flights of fancy.

Whatever powers the singers have in their arsenal of magic tricks, their VOICES appear to have an effect on others.

The theme of finding a voice is a theory I have, and it includes all things associated with the oral cavity, tongue, vocal chords, neck, face, ears, teeth, and throat.

Bran and company enter the Cave of Skulls, a virtual charnel house with a pathway of bones that crunch beneath their feet. The entrance is called “mouth” several times.

Outside the cave, the wights are gathering. Why? Are they preventing Bran’s entrance? Are they trying to prevent Bran leaving? What are they attracted to? The VOICES? Are they gathering because of the song?

Are the wights in search of a Voice?

More MOUTH Allusions:

Leaf leads Bran and his companions through a cavern with stone teeth “hanging from its ceiling and more poking up through the floor. The child in the leafy cloak wove a path through them” (174).

“The ward upon the cave mouth still held” (452).

“Jojen had taken to climbing up to the cave’s mouth when the day was bright” (455).

The reference to teeth suggests a mouth. This description also correlates to Arya passing through the dragon’s mouth and over the stone teeth.

“She could feel its empty eyes watching her through the gloom, and there was something in that dim, cavernous room that did not love her. She edged away from the skull and backed into a second, larger than the first. For an instant she could feel its teeth digging into her shoulder, as if it wanted a bite of her flesh. Arya whirled, felt leather catch and tear as a huge fang nipped at her jerkin, and then she was running. Another skull loomed ahead, the biggest monster of all, but Arya did not even slow. She leapt over a ridge of black teeth as tall as swords, dashed through hungry jaws, and threw herself against the door” (AGoT).

Lord Brynden loses his voice when he does not exercise it regularly:

“The pale lord’s voice was dry. His lips moved slowly, as if they had forgotten to form words” (178).

After Bran’s first vision through the weirwood, which occurs after he eats the paste, his throat is dry: “his throat was very dry. He swallowed. “Winterfell . . . I saw my father” (458).

Martin uses the same word – dry – to describe Lord Brynden’s and Bran’s throats.

Visionaries sometimes have symptoms similar to BR and Bran’s after “seeing”. They often experience a depletion of energy, and even faint after seeing something profound.

Othor forces his hand down Jon Snow’s throat during the attack on Mormont in AGoT. Does he try to take Jon’s tongue? “Tongue” is referenced quite often by the singers in ADwD. Maybe the weirwoods need a tongue?

Lord Brynden tells Bran, “The children carved eyes in the heart trees to awaken them, and those are the first eyes a new greenseer learns to use . . . but in time, you will see well beyond the trees themselves” (ADwD 459).

• The “eyes” are utilitarian and part of the education of new greenseers. Bran will appear in the godswood heart tree in Winterfell to attend the nuptials of Ramsay Bolton and Jeyne Poole, where Theon will assume the role of “Ward” of Lord Eddard Stark.

When Bran finds his father in a second vision, one after Lord Brynden and Leaf firmly impress upon him that he has not the powers to “speak” to his father, but “all that he could do was WATCH and LISTEN. “I am inside the heart tree, looking out of its eyes, but the weirwood cannot talk, so I can’t” (ADwD 459).

• Then why do the children bother to carve mouths with opened lips in the trunk of the weirwoods?

• The Voice that may speak through the heart tree will be ___?

Bran does communicate with Theon.

OBSERVATION 5: The Others’ Voices

The Others have a profoundly distinctive voice:

“The Other said something in a language that Will did not know; his voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking. […] Far beneath him, he heard their voices and laughter sharp as icicles” (AGoT ).

[Anyone care to offer a vocalist who could do this? My best is Rod Stewart.]

In ASoS, Sam Tarley stabs an Other in the throat with obsidian, and “He heard a crack, like the sound ice makes when it breaks beneath a man’s foot, and then a screech so shrill and sharp that he went staggering backward with his hands over his muffled ears, and fell hard on his arse . . .” (ASoS).

• The Others’ strange language may be the tongue the singers have used for thousands of years. Or maybe the Others have developed their own language.

• When Sam stabs, he hears ice cracking when his obsidian blade made contact with the Other’s throat. A screech that may have a windy kick to it sends Sam backwards.

The sound is so unpleasant that Sam uses his hands to cover his ears instead of using them to break his fall.

Does the screech suggest that the Others feel pain?

Martin maintains his winter theme when choosing words to describe the Singers’ voices:

“And they [children of the forest] did sing. They sang in True Tongue, so Bran could not understand the words, but their voices were as pure as winter air”.

OBSERVATION 6: Greek Mythology and the Sirens / Singers

I cannot discuss the singers without mentioning their equivalent in Greek mythology, at least in my mind. The Sirens’ are creatures with seductive voices who lure sailors to their deaths. No man can resist the Siren’s song.

However, one sea captain cheats death and hears the voices no mortal had lived to speak of, and that hero is Odysseus, the man of twists and turns, resourceful Achaean beloved of Athena who inspires all his brilliant ideas.

• Homer writes: “So they [sirens] sent their ravishing voices out across the airand the heart inside me throbbed to listen longer”.

• Martin writes: “It was a woman’s voice, high and sweet, with a strange music in it like none that he had ever heard and a sadness that he thought might break his heart”.

And:

• “They sang in True Tongue, so Bran could not understand the words, but their voices were as pure as winter air” (ADwD).

In both Homer and Martin, the Sirens and the Singers have voices light as air and when they sing their seductive song “the heart” “throbbed” or “broke his heart”. ( Homer’s Odyssey, Fagles trans).

OBSERVATION 7: PETER PAN/ LEAF & SINGERS / REEDS

The children of the forest and even the Reeds reminded me of Peter Pan in appearance. The “cloak of leaves” is reminiscent to J.M. Barrie’s description of Pan in Peter Pan and Wendy: “He was a lovely boy, clad in skeleton leaves and the juices that ooze out of trees;” http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26654/26654-h/26654-h.htm#CHAPTER_I

Peter Pan flies with the help of pixie or fairy dust, which TinkerBell the fairy gives to him. He does not grow wings.

Bran Stark flies with greenseeing magic, and he does not grow wings. However, Bran can skinchange birds.

Pan has a band of mates called The Lost Boys, and they live at Neverland.

Bran has several companions and nears the Land of Always Winter.

OBSERVATION 8: ARYA

“Bran squinted, to see her better. It was a girl, but smaller than Arya, her skin dappled like a doe’s beneath a cloak of leaves. Her eyes were queer—large and liquid, gold and green, slitted like a cat’s eyes.

No one has eyes like that. *****

Her hair was a tangle of brown and red and gold, autumn colors, with vines and twigs and withered flowers woven through it” (ADwD 174-5).

****This may be an ON PURPOSE by Martin, a pun of words that speaks to Arya in Braavos who goes by many names and faces, including the appellation “no one” and the visage of a pussycat, the latter of whose eyes she borrows while she is blind.

OBSERVATION 9: ALICE and ARYA: DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

I cannot resist a nod to Lewis Carrol:

Bran knew. “She’s a child. A child of the forest.” He shivered, as much from wonderment as cold. They had fallen into one of Old Nan’s tales”.

OBSERVATION 10: SOUNDS

Martin marks the journey of Bran and company to the Cave of Skulls with long periods of silence shattered by harsh, discordant noises, such as the ravens screaming, their leathern wings flapping, even Hodor screaming “Hodor”: “Hodor hodor hodor hodor. Hodor hodor hodor hodor. Hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor.”

• Martin’s decision to employ figurative language and poetic devices is evident in his repetition of words and sounds, in his forgoing commas when using items in a series, in his pattern of grouping words in some series of numbers. In the example above, the pattern of lines is four words, four words, then five words, all of which share a balance and a center.

· The words may be delivered musically, such as a chant or a lilt. Martin has fun with his omission of commas in similar examples, which contrast sharply with those instances the items in a series are mechanically and grammatically sound.

Once Bran and his group enter the Cave of Skulls, Martin’s language becomes more poetic and lyrical, an homage to those who sing the song of earth. The singers and their heart-breaking voices are one redeeming feature of the time spent in the Cave of Skulls.

As a matter of fact, Martin creates a rhythm by repeating key words and phrases intermittently over the course of Bran’s Cave of Skulls POV’s.

For instance, the phasing moon announces nightfall, but Martin’s language is repeated word for word. Actually, this is a great epic tradition: repetition of words and sounds which some scholars believe assisted the bards in memorizing long works for oral performances.

• “The moon was fat and full” (ADwD 448, 452).

• “The moon was a black hole in the sky” (ADwD 449, 455).

“The moon was a crescent, thin and sharp as the blade of a knife” (ADwD 454).

Repetition of key words and phrases establish transitions and tell the passage of time. Martin enriches his narratives through styling language with a myriad of poetic devices. He evokes a mental picture with the moon as a black hole in the sky, and he uses simile, the crescent moon is “thin and sharp as the blade of a knife”. These are but a few examples of how Martin makes music with words.

To demonstrate Martin’s poetic style, I will write in verse a passage from Bran’s last POV in ADwD:

The Cave of Skulls

Timeless, vast, silent

Were the caves

They were Home

To three score singers

The bones of thousands

Dead

Far below

The hollow hill

Martin elevates his prose to poetry, and in this he truly embraces the totality of the genre “great epic”. Only POEMS about the deeds of heroes are “great epics”.

Martin’s fondness for lyrical language sets a mystical, magical tone that permeates and thickens as Bran’s points-of-view may be less frequent and more cryptic.

In ADwD, Bran’s final POV is at the midpoint of my text, roughly. [but Bran demonstrates his prowess and control of his greenseeing magic by making several appearances to the heart tree in Winterfell in later narratives.[

OBSERVATION 11: HOSPITALITY AND GUEST RITE

The singers host Bran and his companions, providing protection, shelter, bedding, and meals. Bran sums up their meagre fare:

“They had cheese and milk from the goats that shared the caves with the singers, even some oats and barleycorn and dried fruit laid by during the long summer. And almost every day they ate blood stew, thickened with barley and onions and chunks of meat. Jojen thought it might be squirrel meat, and Meera said that it was rat. Bran did not care. It was meat and it was good. The stewing made it tender”.

The goats are kept warm and safe because they give cheese and milk, a life-saving commodity in a deadly long winter. However, goats are mentioned frequently in Greek tragedy and Homeric epic and myth. The goat is most likely offered to the gods as a sacrifice.

In one example of a sacrificial goat occurs in Homer’s Odyssey. In order to speak with the blind prophet Tiresias in the Land of the Dead, Odysseus digs a trench, which he then fills with the blood from the goat’s slit throat. All the dead come charging for the fresh blood, and Odysseus must hold them back so that Tiresias can drink first.

Only after tasting blood can the dead hold speech with the living.

Some Martin scholars may use the presence of the goat in an argument promoting the theory of Jojen Paste. The bloody stew is an ominous entrée with its “mystery meat” – Squirrel? Rat? The suggestion of squirrel meat “whispers” cannibalism, especially since the children of the forest and even Bran and his sister Arya, are compared frequently to squirrels.

“Rat” is a reminder of the “Rat Cook” and the severe penalties for violating the guest-host relationship. Theon is so hungry he eats a rat

Since the CotF are enmeshed in the godhood that punishes violators of these holy, sacred, yet unwritten laws, it is unlikely that they would serve Bran his friend Jojen, even if Jojen offered himself as a gift fit for a greenseer stewed to the tenderness Bran’s palate enjoys.

Bran grows in stronger the nearer he gets to the Cave of Skulls, whereas Jojen weakens. Of course, Bran’s connection to Summer is acute and somehow sustaining. Summer empowers Bran and gives him strength. Bran is growing sturdier as opposed to feeble and atrophied. I hope that Bran is not depleting Jojen’s energy or essence. If Bran is, he is unaware.

Jojen is near death when they arrive at the Cave of Skulls, and although his health has seemingly improved while resting in the cavern, he is sullen, withdrawn, and melancholy. His poor mental spirit only dooms a full recovery.

If Bran is as powerful as “all that”, he can very likely deplete Jojen’s life force without ingesting him on a spoon.

In the great epics of Homer, Iliad and Odyssey, the author observes conventions that are necessary to meet “great epic” status. One recurring theme is the sacred laws of hospitality and guest rite.

One thing Martin has not addressed in his prose is the responsibility of visiting guests while under the roof of the host. Guests are held to a standard of respectable behavior as well. A violation of hospitality causes the Trojan War because a visiting Prince of Troy seduces King Menelaus’ wife Helen of Sparta, the most beautiful woman in the western world, and he “abducts her”. [There is more to the myth I am omitting for the sake of time!]

Prince Paris abuses guest right when he seduces the Queen of his host in his own home and then steals her. King Menelaus launches 1000 ships to reclaim her.

Guests have responsibilities to their host as well.

The most fascinating part of the host’s duties is to give the guest a foot bath, fresh attire, and a feast. It is only after all amenities associated with welcoming are met before the host is allowed to ask the visitor who he is.

I CAN CONTINUE, BUT I AM ENDING AT THESE OBSERVATIONS.

RESOURCES

AN: Here are resources that are mostly reliable for those who wish to look over paraphrases and direct quotations from Martin’s texts in ASoIaF that pertain specifically to the SINGERS and other notables associated with them.

History and Lore: The Children of the Forest / The First Men and the Andals. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tuf0-ZHsOs8

Narrated by Bran – from HBO’s blue-ray Season One. Lots of illustrations.

Woodswitch and Oldstones – discussion with links and images.

http://nobodysuspectsthebutterfly.tumblr.com/tagged/the%20children%20of%20the%20forest

The Concordance at the Citadel has the “facts’ as quoted in the texts with novel and chapter references.

http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/Concordance/Section/1.2./

Thank you very much for this Evita.Great work as usuall and very insightful.

• But “those” is a plural pronoun, and indefinite for it refers to no one individually with an honorific.

• “Those” also is a vague reference, because it has no antecedent for clarity.

It seems the singers are “nameless” as individuals, but collectively, they share one name.

I love this because, i was trying to drive home and i think Leaf and BR was attempting to do the same thing to ,that the term "singers" is limiting and does not really show the maginitude that "Those who sing" include not only the COTF,but also the Direwolves,Crows,Trees etc.

[Bael's Bastard]

I don't think the quote about Old Nan is saying she ever called them Singers, but that she called them COTF.

[wolfmaid7]

I don't think the quote about Old Nan is saying she ever called them Singers, but that she called them COTF.

You mean this one right?

"The Children of the Forest Old Nan would have called the Singers,but those who sing the songs of earth was their own name for themselves,in the true tounge no human man could speak.The Ravens could speak it,though.Their small black eyes ,were full of secrets and they would caw at him when they heard the songs(ADWD,Bran,pg.397 electronic version)."

I think the point Evita was trying to say and that i agree with is ,the names men assigned them wheter individually or collectivley is inadequate.

The above is an example from Bran's point of view of what Old Nan "would have" called them.

"Those who sing the songs of earth",the name they call themselves seems incorperative of more than just the little dappled green men in the cave.