THOSE WHO SING

[LongRider]

In our world music has power, in ASoIaF, it has power and magic. What happened at Summerhall? Magic and music gone wrong due to a treachery? More dragons hatched may have given the Targs more power, so it is easy to discern that some in Westeros would not be in favor of that.

[wolfmaid7]

I vaguely thought of this, but more poignantly I thought of Tom Bombadil.

"Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow,

Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow.

None has ever caught him yet, for Tom, he is the master:

His songs are stronger songs, and his feet are faster."

and

"Get out, you old wight! Vanish in the sunlight!

Shrivel like the cold mist, like the winds go wailing,

Out into the barren lands far beyond the mountains!

Come never here again! Leave your barrow empty!

Lost and forgotten be, darker than the darkness,

Where gates stand for ever shut, till the world is mended."

Dude you made my night with this that's a banishment if i ever heard one.

I was introduced to the music of "Wardruna" by way of the series "Vikings," and the music is just a beautiful. It is a reminder of the spoken word, as well as a peoples history, which may also be the most significant thing for tCotF.

The first song I don't have a translation for, but it has been interpreted as a war prayer at the battle of Ragnarok, (perhaps somone can here can translate it), and the second is a funeral song, which I did track down the translation.

Both are from the album "Yggdrasil."

Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=SNTSoizcvME

Wardruna – Helvegen Lyrics, ( the Road to Hel)

Norwegian—————————————————--English translation

Hvem skal synge meg—————————————Who shall sing me

i daudsvevna slynge meg———————————-into the death-sleep sling me

når eg på Helvegen går————————————When I walk on the Path of Death

og dei spora eg trår er kalda, så kalda—————--and the tracks I tread are cold, so cold

Eg songane søkte——————————————-I sought the songs

Eg songane sende——————————————I sent the songs

då den djupaste brunni————————————when the deepest well

gav meg dråper så ramme——————————--gave me the drops so touched

av Valfaders pant——————————————-of Death-fathers wager

Alt veit eg, Odin———————————————--I know it all, Odin

var du gjømde ditt auge————————————where you hid your eye

Hvem skal synge meg—————————————Who shall sing me

i daudsvevna slynge meg———————————-into the death-sleep sling me

når eg på Helvegen går————————————When I walk on the Path of Death

og dei spora eg trår er kalda, så kalda—————--and the tracks I tread are cold, so cold

Årle ell i dagars hell—————————————-early in the days end

enn veit ravnen om eg fell——————————--still the raven knows if I fall

Når du ved Helgrindi står ———————————When you stand by the Gate of Death

og når du laus deg må riva———————————-And you have to tear free

skal eg fylgje deg———————————————--I shall follow you

over Gjallarbrua med min song—————————--across the Resounding Bridge with my song

Du blir løyst frå banda som bind deg!———————--You will be free from the bonds that bind you!

Du er løyst frå banda som batt deg!————————--You are free from the bonds that bound that you!

*

Quote from Håvamål -- The High Ones Speech, Poetic Edda

Døyr fe, døyr frender——————————————-Cattle die, kinsmen die

Døyr sjølv det sama——————————————--You yourself will also die

men ordet om deg aldreg døyr——————————but the word about you will never die

vinn du et gjetord gjevt—————————————--if you win a good reputation

Døyr fe, døyr frender ——————————————--Cattle die, kinsmen die

Døyr sjølv det sama———————————————-You yourself will also die

Eg veit et som aldreg døyr————————————I know one that never dies

dom om daudan kvar——————————————-the reputation of those who died

And here is the actual song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=z0PvZGVPiJU

These were pretty awesome song Alia and i see a sweet connection to the World tree which connects all things.I think George was definitely drawing inspiration from these aspects of the Old Ways.

In our world music has power, in ASoIaF, it has power and magic. What happened at Summerhall? Magic and music gone wrong due to a treachery? More dragons hatched may have given the Targs more power, so it is easy to discern that some in Westeros would not be in favor of that.

I've been thinking about this and i think for sure the Dragons had song their songs and their riders were given inspiration to do the hatching ritual.

Did we learn nothing of Summerhall? No good has ever come of these dreams of dragons (ASOS,Davos,Chpt 25).

Somebody's treachery led to the disaster but i also think something happen to Rheagar.It was said Rheagar " was saddened by the memory of Summerhall" which is weird because he was born at Summerhall on the same day.Sooooo how could he have a memory of it. He was also happiest there at the ruins he had a strange fascination with. Maybe the ritual affected him and he was filled with all these songs somehow.

[Alia of the knife]

Dude you made my night with this that's a banishment if i ever heard one.

These were pretty awesome song Alia and i see a sweet connection to the World tree which connects all things.I think George was definitely drawing inspiration from these aspects of the Old Ways.

I've been thinking about this and i think for sure the Dragons had song their songs and their riders were given inspiration to do the hatching ritual.

Did we learn nothing of Summerhall? No good has ever come of these dreams of dragons (ASOS,Davos,Chpt 25).

Somebody's treachery led to the disaster but i also think something happen to Rheagar.It was said Rheagar " was saddened by the memory of Summerhall" which is weird because he was born at Summerhall on the same day.Sooooo how could he have a memory of it. He was also happiest there at the ruins he had a strange fascination with. Maybe the ritual affected him and he was filled with all these songs somehow.

Lol, needless to say I have very eclectic tastes, but I do believe that you never know about a people until you hear their music, :)

You'll also note in that first song, and the imagery, wolves, dragons, snakes, crows and a kraken, as well as the tree.

[wolfmaid7]

Lol, needless to say I have very eclectic tastes, but I do believe that you never know about a people until you hear their music, :)

You'll also note in that first song, and the imagery, wolves, dragons, snakes, crows and a kraken, as well as the tree.

Yep i noticed that and i don't think the animals are a coincidence all of which in some way have an affinity to some type of musical song etc.We should not the prevelence of Horns in this story that are said to control certain creatures themselves.To go back to Summerhall and what could have possibly cause the Fire for lack in better words "noise" as i thought about it,in the form of discord between the various Targ factions.It not suprising that eventualy the Targ Dragons began to grow sick.

Like wise i also think the Wall served as a blockage between the Starks and the sound of their counterparts and it was only when untited did the music begin. Not one to believe in coincidence i have to wonder the motive of why Dany got the eggs if anyone knew that something would happen and the same with the Starks.

[LongRider]

Like wise i also think the Wall served as a blockage between the Starks and the sound of their counterparts and it was only when untited did the music begin. Not one to believe in coincidence i have to wonder the motive of why Dany got the eggs if anyone knew that something would happen and the same with the Starks.

Although Illrio is conniving and cunning, I doubt it because Viserys was the one he and Varys had their hopes pinned on. When did the egg begin to 'sing' to Dany? Was that before or after MMR was tasked to help Khal Drogo? I ask because MMR brought sorcery, magic, chanting and singing into camp. Could any of that affected the dragon eggs?

[wolfmaid7]

Although Illrio is conniving and cunning, I doubt it because Viserys was the one he and Varys had their hopes pinned on. When did the egg begin to 'sing' to Dany? Was that before or after MMR was tasked to help Khal Drogo? I ask because MMR brought sorcery, magic, chanting and singing into camp. Could any of that affected the dragon eggs?

Drogon started singing to Dany way before MD,it was when she was contemplating suicide because of how Drogo's rough sex affected her.She was having a real hard time and that night she had the dream in the OP then more after that.

I don't think Illrio concieved that, i think he was just the middle man used to get her the eggs,i'm serously contemplating somebody probably in the Red Priesthood.

[LongRider]

Drogon started singing to Dany way before MD,it was when she was contemplating suicide because of how Drogo's rough sex affected her.She was having a real hard time and that night she had the dream in the OP then more after that.

I don't think Illrio concieved that, i think he was just the middle man used to get her the eggs,i'm serously contemplating somebody probably in the Red Priesthood.

Ah, thanks Wolfmaid!

:cheers:

[wolfmaid7]

Ah, thanks Wolfmaid!

:cheers:

What they say about music and healing seems very appropriate for this.Likewise the Direwolves were poised perfectly to be there for the Stark kids when crap hit the fan for them.

[LongRider]

What they say about music and healing seems very appropriate for this.Likewise the Direwolves were poised perfectly to be there for the Stark kids when crap hit the fan for them.

True, but they sometimes didn't listen; Robb @ the Twins and Jon before Bowen Marsh's attackers.

[wolfmaid7]

True, but they sometimes didn't listen; Robb @ the Twins and Jon before Bowen Marsh's attackers.

Agreed ,perfect example when you deny the link.

[Daughter of Ice and Fire]

I don't know if someone already posted this quote from Tyrion POV from GoT, but as I'm re-reading it while reading this thread simultaneously, I thought it will be convenient post it here just to add more proof for this theory.

"I would swear that wolf of his is keeping the boy alive. The creature is outside his window day and night, howling. Every time they chase it away, it returns. The maester said they closed the window once, to shut out the noise, and Bran seemed to weaken. When they opened it again, his heart beat stronger" GoT - chapter 10 - Tyrion (having breakfast w/ Cersei, Jaime and the kids)

By now I'm already highlighting all the quotes that have some relevance in supporting "Those who sing" theory, because basically the theory is awesome and totally plausible. The bond between Bran and Summer and how summer "sings" to Bran trying to cure him. Is kind of a Healing Song of the Earth. Even in real life there are treatments that actually involve music therapy and using vibrations/ultrasound as part of the treatment for many conditions, so this theory is total thruth .

Anyway, I'll keep searching for more quotes! :cheers:

[wolfmaid7]

I don't know if someone already posted this quote from Tyrion POV from GoT, but as I'm re-reading it while reading this thread simultaneously, I thought it will be convenient post it here just to add more proof for this theory.

By now I'm already highlighting all the quotes that have some relevance in supporting "Those who sing" theory, because basically the theory is awesome and totally plausible. The bond between Bran and Summer and how summer "sings" to Bran trying to cure him. Is kind of a Healing Song of the Earth. Even in real life there are treatments that actually involve music therapy and using vibrations/ultrasound as part of the treatment for many conditions, so this theory is total thruth .

Anyway, I'll keep searching for more quotes! :cheers:

DOIAF i think you found the quintessential quote that just makes this theory "sings"(pun intended) more. Tyrion is one of those characters in the story that exhibit amazing observation skills and i think in bringing this to light the emphasis on the "shared note" between the Stark and their Direwolves is more profound enough so that Tyrion notices the relation.It also shows as with Cat the lack of "ear" for the song because to Tyrion while he notices the change in Bran he like Cat describes it as "howling' where to the Stark kids in sound like "singing". This is an amazing quote and i am greatful that you found it.

I think these various songs are tied to the doom or salvation of the land and something big is fixing to happen.

[Mother Other]

Hi Wolfmaid, here is my post from the Heresy discussion. I hope it helps further this topic.

While researching southwestern folklore I came across the story of La Loba the bone collector. It is basically an Anima take on the Morrigan aspects of mother, maiden, crone. I'm wondering if George, living in New Mexico, has heard this one?

La Loba

There is an old woman who lives in a hidden place that everyone knows but few have ever seen. As in the fairy tales of Eastern Europe, she seems to wait for lost or wandering people and seekers to come to her place.

They say she lives among the rotten granite slopes in Tarahumara Indian territory. They say she is buried outside Phoenix near a well. She is said to have been seen traveling south to Monte Alban in a burnt-out car with the back window shot out. She is said to stand by the highway near El Paso, or ride shotgun with truckers to Morelia, Mexico, or that she has been sighted walking to market above Oaxaca with strangely formed boughs of firewood on her back. She is called by many names: La Huesera, Bone Woman; La Trapera, The Gatherer; and La Loba, Wolf Woman.

The sole work of La Loba is the collecting of bones. She is known to collect and preserve especially that which is in danger of being lost to the world. Her cave is filled with the bones of all manner of desert creatures: the deer, the rattlesnake, the crow. But her speciality is said to be wolves.

She creeps and crawls and sifts through the montanas, mountains, and arroyos, dry river beds, looking for wolf bones, and when she has assembled an entire skeleton, when the last bone is in place and the beautiful white sculpture of the creature is laid out before her, she sits by the fire and thinks about what song she will sing.

And when she is sure, she stands over the criatura, raises her arms over it, and sings out. That is when the rib bones and leg bones of the wolf begin to flesh out and the creature becomes furred. La Loba sings some more, and more of the creature comes into being; its tail curls upward, shaggy and strong.

And La Loba sings more and the wolf creature begins to breathe.

And still La Loba sings so deeply that the floor of the desert shakes, and as she sings, the wolf opens its eyes, leaps up, and runs away down the canyon.

Somewhere in its running, whether by the speed of its running, or by splashing its way into a river, or by way of a ray of sunlight or moonlight hitting it right in the side, the wolf is suddenly transformed into a laughing woman who runs free toward the horizon.

So it is said that if you wander the desert, and it is near sundown, and you are perhaps a little bit lost, and certainly tired, that you are lucky, for La Loba may take a liking to you and show you something - something of the Soul.

Another name for La Loba is La Que Sabe, meaning the one who knows, a different version of the tale states it is the lost or untold stories of the dead that she gets from the bones.

Sounds alot like the cave of the COTF doesn't it?

[wolfmaid7]

Thanks a bunch MO.

I asked Mother Other to post this here because like the story of the Talking tree it also hails from GRRM's neck of the woods and i get the feeling it is another story he is familiar with.First we have the parallel of La Loba as the Morrigan whose main familiars are wolves and Crows and as pointed out previously Crows and wolves in this story have had the propensity for singing "magical songs" In the story Mother Other notes this:

She creeps and crawls and sifts through the montanas, mountains, and arroyos, dry river beds, looking for wolf bones, and when she has assembled an entire skeleton, when the last bone is in place and the beautiful white sculpture of the creature is laid out before her, she sits by the fire and thinks about what song she will sing.

And when she is sure, she stands over the criatura, raises her arms over it, and sings out. That is when the rib bones and leg bones of the wolf begin to flesh out and the creature becomes furred. La Loba sings some more, and more of the creature comes into being; its tail curls upward, shaggy and strong.

And La Loba sings more and the wolf creature begins to breathe.

And still La Loba sings so deeply that the floor of the desert shakes, and as she sings, the wolf opens its eyes, leaps up, and runs away down the canyon.

Here we have the importance of song again,but also how simlar the cave setting is to the cave of the COTF who also sing.

[Eira Seren]

Sorry I haven't kept up with this thread as much lately, seems like my summer is busier than anticipated. Wolfmaid has requested I post this here, from my Heaney essay. It's unfinished; the next parts are under construction. Hopefully it will contribute to the discussion. :)

Part I and Part II, for reference.

Part III The Body in the Bog

As suggested in Seamus Heaney’s Bogland, the earth turns up any number of things. The National Museum of Ireland displays an array of items—weapons, utensils and yes, even butter. Like the eerily preserved bog bodies these objects speak to us, making the past visible in glimpses. In an interview with David W. McCullough, Heaney says, “It seemed to me that bogs had great symbolic possibilities residing in them and not forced upon them by poetic invention. They have a memory" (McCullough, 80). As does snow and ice, the bog preserves, and for Heaney it is both the symbolic and the physical object that commingle. When we delve, alongside the bodies and butter we find memory.

In Martin’s series, the past manifests itself in the usual ways, but like a body rising out of the bog memory is preserved and comes to the surface. As discussed in Part II, the bones in Jon’s dreams of the Winterfell crypt give rise to memories, which are able to speak to Jon in the form of the old Stark kings. A kind of fusion between symbolic and object take place. Martin takes it a step further at the deepest point Jon ventures in the tombs, when memory itself literally manifests in the ghostly appearance of Grey Wind. Where Jon has access to the bones and memory through warging, the Singers use a much richer combination of methods—a Heaney-style fusion—to access memory.

In ASOIAF the Singers’ use the weirnet to see various points in time (memories), but part of what fuels it is their songs. Their language is described as a musical reflection of the natural world and the Singers themselves, ”sounding like a song of stones in a brook, or the wind through leaves, or the rain upon the water,” (World of Ice & Fire, quoted in Black Crow, Heresy 115, post 192). Singing is how the Singers speak. The songs are also connected to memory. Like the Winterfell crypts, the Singer’s cave contains bones, which combined with the weirwoods, serve as the reservoir for their memories. On first entering the caves, Bran notices them:

"Bones," said Bran. "It's bones." The floor of the passage was littered with the bones . . . small, queerly formed. Children of the forest. The roots had grown in and around and through them, every one. A few had ravens perched atop them, watching them pass with bright black eyes. (ADWD, 13, Bran).

The bones line the cave so that the earth, like a bog, holds the memories. The Singers’ songs also “drift up from someplace far below,” rising up from deeper chambers and echoing through the chambers where the roots can absorb them (ADWD, 33, Bran). Thinking again about Heaney’s Bone Dreams and the manner in which the past speaks to the persona through language (accessed through the bone he finds in the field), it becomes evident how and why the Singers are able to play such a vital role in ASOIAF, albeit one that most men, including the living Starks, have forgotten. Singers are able to access both the past and their lifeforce through the bone-white weirwoods at the level of language (their songs). Much like the bones in Heaney’s poem, we find the memories of all the Singers, living and dead, past and present.

Leaf tells Bran that the dead Singers have "gone down into the earth. . . Into the stones, into the trees.” (ADWD, 33, Bran). Jojen similarly explains that

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. . . The man who never reads lives only one. The singers of the forest had no books. No ink, no parchment, no written language. Instead they had the trees, and the weirwoods above all. When they died, they went into the wood, into leaf and limb and root, and the trees remembered. All their songs and spells, their histories and prayers, everything they knew about this world. (ADWD, 33, Bran)

The bones in the cave and the weirwoods contain a potent concoction: history, spells, songs, memory and language. The cave is the intersection where the bones and songs commingle; the tree roots reach down into the earth, wicking it all up and preserving the memories.

The cave, bones and weirwoods are the Singer’s ban-hus. Like Heaney’s, it is not a dead body, but creative and capable of “generation” (Bone Dreams, line 45). The cauldron in the mead-hall of Bone Dreams is not empty. The poet has invoked philology and kennings and is opening the door to bring the memories and past back into the present, to be revitalized and transformed. In ASOIAF, the ban-hus and cauldron metaphors have similar potential. The combination of weirwoods, bones and spells, operate like a kenning, or a key to unlock the gate to memory. Add the songs of living Singers, and a collective consciousness is created, making the past accessible to the Singers and even greenseers. And like Heaney’s cauldron, we can also expect the weirwoods, memories and songs to do something more.

It’s no coincidence that the Singers are able to make memory manifest, akin to Jon’s dreamed experience where Grey Wind’s spirit appears in the Winterfell crypt. Everything that makes the Singers the Singers –the songs, history, magic and memories—are not only preserved but made fantastically present through language (singing the songs). When Bran discovers a Singer’s presence in the raven he skinchanges, Brynden explains that she is "Long dead, yet a part of her remains, just as a part of you would remain in Summer if your boy's flesh were to die upon the morrow. A shadow on the soul” (ADWD, 33, Bran). As I suggested before, warging for Jon is like a loophole, a place where man and wolf and Stark can meet. Warging and skinchanging are two sides of the same coin, and I suspect that it works for the Singers, too. Memory, weirwood and song—everything that makes up the Singer’s accessed memories—combine to create a place on the magical map where memory gives rise to preserved parts of the Singers themselves – their spirits.

This concept isn’t isolated to fantasy or Ireland or Irish poets, ecological or postcolonial theories. Robin Laing (known to some as the Whiskey Bard) has made study and song of Scotland’s finest beverage (another kind of spirit). One of the key ingredients for each blend is the water, which frequently contributes the peaty flavors of the surrounding land. In a little love song to uisge beaha, Laing writes:

Take clear water from the hill and barley from the lowlands,

take a master craftman’s skill and something harder to define,

like secrets in the shape of coppered stills, or the slow, silent magic work of time.

Bring home sherry casks from Spain, Sanlucar de Barrameda,

and fill them up again with the spirit of the land

then let the wood work to the spirit’s gain in a process no one fully understands.

For the spirit starts out clear, but see the transformation

after many patient years, when at last the tale unfolds

the colors of the season will appear, from palest yellow to the deepest gold.

When you hold it in your hand, it’s the pulse of one small nation-

so much more than just a dram. You can see it, if you will-

the people and the weather and the land. The past into the present is distilled.

Chorus: Whiskey, you’re the devil in disguise, at least to some that’s the way it seems,

but you’re more like an angel in my eyes

Catch the heady vapours as they rise,

and turn them into {final: peaceful, pleasant} dreams

Robin Laing, ‘More Than Just a Dram’ from The Angels’ Share, 1997

(A snippet of the song)

Sounds like a song for the Singers! Heaney might appreciate that uisge (the Scots-Gaelic spelling of uisce) has again become the place on the map “where the spirit might find a loophole” (Beowulf, xxiv-xxv). The essence of “the people and the weather and the land”—Scottishness—has gone into the dram of whiskey (Laing, line 12). What is also “distilled” for Laing is “the past,” preserved through a sort of magic and accessible when we partake of a glass (line 12). Past is brought forward into the present, allowing us to refashion “dreams” for the future (line 16). Laing calls it the past; Heaney calls it memory. Both resurface from the land, rising up from the peat just as Martin’s Singers call up memory, language and song to infuse the ravens, weirwoods, rocks and stones – their ban-hus—with their spirits.

****

Accessing their memories not only ensures the Singer’s survival, but is essential to their ability to interact fully with the world. It also seems that they will play a vital role in the survival of men and of the North. For a moment, let’s revisit the cave. Lined with the bones of the Singers, it also contains

other bones as well, big ones that must have come from giants and small ones that could have been from children. On either side of them, in niches carved from the stone, skulls looked down on them. Bran saw a bear skull and a wolf skull, half a dozen human skulls and near as many giants. (ADWD, 13, Bran)

What are we to make of these bones belonging to animals –bears and wolves, humans and giants? If the Singers use their own bones to preserve and access their memories and regenerate their spirits, then they must be doing so with other memories as well. In her thread, Those Who Sing, Wolfmaid7 states that

The language of the earth is a symphony of varied songs and those songs are magical in nature. Connected intimately are the Old races that consist of the COTF, Giants, Crows, Direwolves, Weirwood trees and possibly the White Walkers. Anything that has a magical song. . . . The Songs of certain characters are a language linking the Old Races to those sensitive enough in the realm of man to perceive the language. Which means there is a potential opportunity for communication from the Old Powers or infiltration by the Old powers to achieve a desired end. (post 1).

Wolfmaid7 points out that in Martin’s world, songs are magical, “varied” languages that connect the speaker to a larger, encompassing “symphony” belonging to the earth itself (Wolfmaid7, Those Who Sing, post 1). While we generally attribute this language to the Singers, who name themselves “those who sing the song of earth” and speak what they call “the True Tongue that no human man could speak,” Wolfmaid7 asserts that the songs of earth are spoken by other individuals as well (ADWD, 33, Bran). Bran discovers that “the ravens [can] speak it” and Wolfmaid7 lists the Giants and Direwolves as well, whose bones are found on the floor of the Singer’s cave (33, Bran). The Singers are preserving the memories of the Old races as well as animals, making them part of the ban-hus.

It appears the Singers are accessing the memories of each of the creatures through the bones, and uploading them to the weirnet using the songs. JNR, in Heresy 121 states that the weirwoods “are the immortal repositories of Westeros' memory,” which expands the Singer’s sphere beyond the caves and even the North (post 363). I suspect that once the Singers went North of the Wall it became increasingly important for them to preserve what they could of the Old Races’ memories before they all died out. It also seems possible that the Singers have been preserving these memories all along as part of the fuel for their earth magic, and certainly has some interesting implications for what might be happening on the Isle of Faces. Wolfmaid7 suggests that any individual who has a song may be of interest to the Singers. Taken together with JNR’s assessment, we see why: all of those that Wolfmaid7 identifies as song-singers are part of the North, and of Westeros. The land is the ban-hus, the body in the bog is the collective memory and preserved spirits of the earth.

While the series hints that the focus will be on the interplay of ice and fire, the Singers have access to the memories of other creatures, among them members of the Old races, giving them the corner market on the songs of earth. They may be dying, but something tells me they still have a vital role to play before the end, and it may have something to do with preserving the North, or even Westeros itself. Song and language are intimately tied to memories and to the ban-hus. For a fresh illustration, here’s a short poem by Seamus Heaney:

Broagh

Riverbank, the long rigs
ending in broad docken
and a canopied pad
down to the ford.

The garden mould
bruised easily, the shower
gathering in your heelmark
was the black O

in Broagh,
its low tattoo
among the windy boortrees
and rhubarb-blades

ended almost
suddenly, like that last
gh the strangers found
difficult to manage.

Situated at the ford (a potential place of loopholes, where the river can be more easily crossed), the name of the place reflects the natural world. From the “low tattoo” of the wind in the trees and foliage, to “the shower / gathering in your heelmark” that is “the black O // in Broagh,” physical place and language are intricately linked (Broagh, lines 10, 6-9, emphasis mine). And like the Singer’s unlearnable True Tongue, the “last gh the strangers found difficult to manage” resists newcomer’s efforts to conquer it and separate language from the land (lines 14-16). The Singers shelter the bones and memories of the Old races and other individuals in their ban-hus, making them a part of it and part of regeneration because they are essential not only to the Singers, but to sustaining the North and Westeros itself. The land is the ban-hus, the body in the bog is the collective memory and preserved spirits of the Singers and of the earth. Ireland’s bogs and bones are Heaney’s ban-hus; the earth, bones, ravens, rocks and weirwoods are Martin’s. Jojen Reed sums it up best: "Mountain or marsh, it makes no matter. The land is one" (ASOS, 33, Bran).

[Pod The Impaler]

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?

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?

Just an observation after reading this (and not the rest of the thread):

There may be something to this connecting it to Euron Greyjoy.

What makes Euron notable is his apparent connection to dark magic. Among his many "occult" aspects is the fact he sails a ship called the Silence, and controls a crew that are tongueless - or in the context of this theory, songless.

There may be more to his actions than simply trying to appear macabre to frighten people. Euron may have sacrificed their tongues in some ritual, in a sense, stealing their voices / songs to add to his own power.

Close comparisons:

Ilyn Payne had his tongue cut out by the Mad King, but we know Aerys had all sorts of cockamamie occult ideas. Possibly, this was more than just punishment?

We know Varys had his male parts cut off and consumed by fire as part of some dark magic ritual - one which apparently worked, because he heard some sort of dark unholy voice answer the sorcerer.

So, some speculate Euron is in league with the Others, but whatever magic that might be is still open to speculation.

[Eira Seren]

Yep i noticed that and i don't think the animals are a coincidence all of which in some way have an affinity to some type of musical song etc.We should not the prevelence of Horns in this story that are said to control certain creatures themselves.To go back to Summerhall and what could have possibly cause the Fire for lack in better words "noise" as i thought about it,in the form of discord between the various Targ factions.It not suprising that eventualy the Targ Dragons began to grow sick.

Like wise i also think the Wall served as a blockage between the Starks and the sound of their counterparts and it was only when untited did the music begin. Not one to believe in coincidence i have to wonder the motive of why Dany got the eggs if anyone knew that something would happen and the same with the Starks.

I hadn't made a connection before between the Wall blocking the songs and the eventual disuses of direwolves among the Starks. I wonder if the she-wolves of Winterfell had them, surely they were in need of some extra help! Though it seems they would've been too late?

Just an observation after reading this (and not the rest of the thread):

There may be something to this connecting it to Euron Greyjoy.

What makes Euron notable is his apparent connection to dark magic. Among his many "occult" aspects is the fact he sails a ship called the Silence, and controls a crew that are tongueless - or in the context of this theory, songless.

There may be more to his actions than simply trying to appear macabre to frighten people. Euron may have sacrificed their tongues in some ritual, in a sense, stealing their voices / songs to add to his own power.

Close comparisons:

Ilyn Payne had his tongue cut out by the Mad King, but we know Aerys had all sorts of cockamamie occult ideas. Possibly, this was more than just punishment?

We know Varys had his male parts cut off and consumed by fire as part of some dark magic ritual - one which apparently worked, because he heard some sort of dark unholy voice answer the sorcerer.

So, some speculate Euron is in league with the Others, but whatever magic that might be is still open to speculation.

That's an interesting assessment. It makes me think of the horn; Euron recruits someone else to contribute to making it sing (essentially, stealing their voice, knowing the penalty will be death for creating the song).

[wolfmaid7]

Sorry I haven't kept up with this thread as much lately, seems like my summer is busier than anticipated. Wolfmaid has requested I post this here, from my Heaney essay. It's unfinished; the next parts are under construction. Hopefully it will contribute to the discussion. :)

Part I and Part II, for reference.

Part III The Body in the Bog

As suggested in Seamus Heaney’s Bogland, the earth turns up any number of things. The National Museum of Ireland displays an array of items—weapons, utensils and yes, even butter. Like the eerily preserved bog bodies these objects speak to us, making the past visible in glimpses. In an interview with David W. McCullough, Heaney says, “It seemed to me that bogs had great symbolic possibilities residing in them and not forced upon them by poetic invention. They have a memory" (McCullough, 80). As does snow and ice, the bog preserves, and for Heaney it is both the symbolic and the physical object that commingle. When we delve, alongside the bodies and butter we find memory.

In Martin’s series, the past manifests itself in the usual ways, but like a body rising out of the bog memory is preserved and comes to the surface. As discussed in Part II, the bones in Jon’s dreams of the Winterfell crypt give rise to memories, which are able to speak to Jon in the form of the old Stark kings. A kind of fusion between symbolic and object take place. Martin takes it a step further at the deepest point Jon ventures in the tombs, when memory itself literally manifests in the ghostly appearance of Grey Wind. Where Jon has access to the bones and memory through warging, the Singers use a much richer combination of methods—a Heaney-style fusion—to access memory.

In ASOIAF the Singers’ use the weirnet to see various points in time (memories), but part of what fuels it is their songs. Their language is described as a musical reflection of the natural world and the Singers themselves, ”sounding like a song of stones in a brook, or the wind through leaves, or the rain upon the water,” (World of Ice & Fire, quoted in Black Crow, Heresy 115, post 192). Singing is how the Singers speak. The songs are also connected to memory. Like the Winterfell crypts, the Singer’s cave contains bones, which combined with the weirwoods, serve as the reservoir for their memories. On first entering the caves, Bran notices them:

"Bones," said Bran. "It's bones." The floor of the passage was littered with the bones . . . small, queerly formed. Children of the forest. The roots had grown in and around and through them, every one. A few had ravens perched atop them, watching them pass with bright black eyes. (ADWD, 13, Bran).

The bones line the cave so that the earth, like a bog, holds the memories. The Singers’ songs also “drift up from someplace far below,” rising up from deeper chambers and echoing through the chambers where the roots can absorb them (ADWD, 33, Bran). Thinking again about Heaney’s Bone Dreams and the manner in which the past speaks to the persona through language (accessed through the bone he finds in the field), it becomes evident how and why the Singers are able to play such a vital role in ASOIAF, albeit one that most men, including the living Starks, have forgotten. Singers are able to access both the past and their lifeforce through the bone-white weirwoods at the level of language (their songs). Much like the bones in Heaney’s poem, we find the memories of all the Singers, living and dead, past and present.

Leaf tells Bran that the dead Singers have "gone down into the earth. . . Into the stones, into the trees.” (ADWD, 33, Bran). Jojen similarly explains that

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. . . The man who never reads lives only one. The singers of the forest had no books. No ink, no parchment, no written language. Instead they had the trees, and the weirwoods above all. When they died, they went into the wood, into leaf and limb and root, and the trees remembered. All their songs and spells, their histories and prayers, everything they knew about this world. (ADWD, 33, Bran)

The bones in the cave and the weirwoods contain a potent concoction: history, spells, songs, memory and language. The cave is the intersection where the bones and songs commingle; the tree roots reach down into the earth, wicking it all up and preserving the memories.

The cave, bones and weirwoods are the Singer’s ban-hus. Like Heaney’s, it is not a dead body, but creative and capable of “generation” (Bone Dreams, line 45). The cauldron in the mead-hall of Bone Dreams is not empty. The poet has invoked philology and kennings and is opening the door to bring the memories and past back into the present, to be revitalized and transformed. In ASOIAF, the ban-hus and cauldron metaphors have similar potential. The combination of weirwoods, bones and spells, operate like a kenning, or a key to unlock the gate to memory. Add the songs of living Singers, and a collective consciousness is created, making the past accessible to the Singers and even greenseers. And like Heaney’s cauldron, we can also expect the weirwoods, memories and songs to do something more.

It’s no coincidence that the Singers are able to make memory manifest, akin to Jon’s dreamed experience where Grey Wind’s spirit appears in the Winterfell crypt. Everything that makes the Singers the Singers –the songs, history, magic and memories—are not only preserved but made fantastically present through language (singing the songs). When Bran discovers a Singer’s presence in the raven he skinchanges, Brynden explains that she is "Long dead, yet a part of her remains, just as a part of you would remain in Summer if your boy's flesh were to die upon the morrow. A shadow on the soul” (ADWD, 33, Bran). As I suggested before, warging for Jon is like a loophole, a place where man and wolf and Stark can meet. Warging and skinchanging are two sides of the same coin, and I suspect that it works for the Singers, too. Memory, weirwood and song—everything that makes up the Singer’s accessed memories—combine to create a place on the magical map where memory gives rise to preserved parts of the Singers themselves – their spirits.

This concept isn’t isolated to fantasy or Ireland or Irish poets, ecological or postcolonial theories. Robin Laing (known to some as the Whiskey Bard) has made study and song of Scotland’s finest beverage (another kind of spirit). One of the key ingredients for each blend is the water, which frequently contributes the peaty flavors of the surrounding land. In a little love song to uisge beaha, Laing writes:

Take clear water from the hill and barley from the lowlands,

take a master craftman’s skill and something harder to define,

like secrets in the shape of coppered stills, or the slow, silent magic work of time.

Bring home sherry casks from Spain, Sanlucar de Barrameda,

and fill them up again with the spirit of the land

then let the wood work to the spirit’s gain in a process no one fully understands.

For the spirit starts out clear, but see the transformation

after many patient years, when at last the tale unfolds

the colors of the season will appear, from palest yellow to the deepest gold.

When you hold it in your hand, it’s the pulse of one small nation-

so much more than just a dram. You can see it, if you will-

the people and the weather and the land. The past into the present is distilled.

Chorus: Whiskey, you’re the devil in disguise, at least to some that’s the way it seems,

but you’re more like an angel in my eyes

Catch the heady vapours as they rise,

and turn them into {final: peaceful, pleasant} dreams

Robin Laing, ‘More Than Just a Dram’ from The Angels’ Share, 1997

(A snippet of the song)

Sounds like a song for the Singers! Heaney might appreciate that uisge (the Scots-Gaelic spelling of uisce) has again become the place on the map “where the spirit might find a loophole” (Beowulf, xxiv-xxv). The essence of “the people and the weather and the land”—Scottishness—has gone into the dram of whiskey (Laing, line 12). What is also “distilled” for Laing is “the past,” preserved through a sort of magic and accessible when we partake of a glass (line 12). Past is brought forward into the present, allowing us to refashion “dreams” for the future (line 16). Laing calls it the past; Heaney calls it memory. Both resurface from the land, rising up from the peat just as Martin’s Singers call up memory, language and song to infuse the ravens, weirwoods, rocks and stones – their ban-hus—with their spirits.

****

Accessing their memories not only ensures the Singer’s survival, but is essential to their ability to interact fully with the world. It also seems that they will play a vital role in the survival of men and of the North. For a moment, let’s revisit the cave. Lined with the bones of the Singers, it also contains

other bones as well, big ones that must have come from giants and small ones that could have been from children. On either side of them, in niches carved from the stone, skulls looked down on them. Bran saw a bear skull and a wolf skull, half a dozen human skulls and near as many giants. (ADWD, 13, Bran)

What are we to make of these bones belonging to animals –bears and wolves, humans and giants? If the Singers use their own bones to preserve and access their memories and regenerate their spirits, then they must be doing so with other memories as well. In her thread, Those Who Sing, Wolfmaid7 states that

The language of the earth is a symphony of varied songs and those songs are magical in nature. Connected intimately are the Old races that consist of the COTF, Giants, Crows, Direwolves, Weirwood trees and possibly the White Walkers. Anything that has a magical song. . . . The Songs of certain characters are a language linking the Old Races to those sensitive enough in the realm of man to perceive the language. Which means there is a potential opportunity for communication from the Old Powers or infiltration by the Old powers to achieve a desired end. (post 1).

Wolfmaid7 points out that in Martin’s world, songs are magical, “varied” languages that connect the speaker to a larger, encompassing “symphony” belonging to the earth itself (Wolfmaid7, Those Who Sing, post 1). While we generally attribute this language to the Singers, who name themselves “those who sing the song of earth” and speak what they call “the True Tongue that no human man could speak,” Wolfmaid7 asserts that the songs of earth are spoken by other individuals as well (ADWD, 33, Bran). Bran discovers that “the ravens [can] speak it” and Wolfmaid7 lists the Giants and Direwolves as well, whose bones are found on the floor of the Singer’s cave (33, Bran). The Singers are preserving the memories of the Old races as well as animals, making them part of the ban-hus.

It appears the Singers are accessing the memories of each of the creatures through the bones, and uploading them to the weirnet using the songs. JNR, in Heresy 121 states that the weirwoods “are the immortal repositories of Westeros' memory,” which expands the Singer’s sphere beyond the caves and even the North (post 363). I suspect that once the Singers went North of the Wall it became increasingly important for them to preserve what they could of the Old Races’ memories before they all died out. It also seems possible that the Singers have been preserving these memories all along as part of the fuel for their earth magic, and certainly has some interesting implications for what might be happening on the Isle of Faces. Wolfmaid7 suggests that any individual who has a song may be of interest to the Singers. Taken together with JNR’s assessment, we see why: all of those that Wolfmaid7 identifies as song-singers are part of the North, and of Westeros. The land is the ban-hus, the body in the bog is the collective memory and preserved spirits of the earth.

While the series hints that the focus will be on the interplay of ice and fire, the Singers have access to the memories of other creatures, among them members of the Old races, giving them the corner market on the songs of earth. They may be dying, but something tells me they still have a vital role to play before the end, and it may have something to do with preserving the North, or even Westeros itself. Song and language are intimately tied to memories and to the ban-hus. For a fresh illustration, here’s a short poem by Seamus Heaney:

Broagh

Riverbank, the long rigs

ending in broad docken

and a canopied pad

down to the ford.

The garden mould

bruised easily, the shower

gathering in your heelmark

was the black O

in Broagh,

its low tattoo

among the windy boortrees

and rhubarb-blades

ended almost

suddenly, like that last

gh the strangers found

difficult to manage.

Situated at the ford (a potential place of loopholes, where the river can be more easily crossed), the name of the place reflects the natural world. From the “low tattoo” of the wind in the trees and foliage, to “the shower / gathering in your heelmark” that is “the black O // in Broagh,” physical place and language are intricately linked (Broagh, lines 10, 6-9, emphasis mine). And like the Singer’s unlearnable True Tongue, the “last gh the strangers found difficult to manage” resists newcomer’s efforts to conquer it and separate language from the land (lines 14-16). The Singers shelter the bones and memories of the Old races and other individuals in their ban-hus, making them a part of it and part of regeneration because they are essential not only to the Singers, but to sustaining the North and Westeros itself. The land is the ban-hus, the body in the bog is the collective memory and preserved spirits of the Singers and of the earth. Ireland’s bogs and bones are Heaney’s ban-hus; the earth, bones, ravens, rocks and weirwoods are Martin’s. Jojen Reed sums it up best: "Mountain or marsh, it makes no matter. The land is one" (ASOS, 33, Bran).

Thanks Eira again i have to express my admiration for your handwork in putting this together,and i hope others really take a look at it because you pointed out some extraordinary things which to be have far reaching implications.One of which is the COTF in the position of "Collectors" of Songs and i compare them also to La Loba in the tale Mother Other provided.The implication for one is the COTF may not be about helping "anyone" in particular except "the songs" they may place greater value on those, seeing as the songs immortalize eveything and if the songs remain then in a sense they live on.

Secondly,and this may seem very diabolical for the tree huggers but lets look at what Jojen said about a "reader living a thousand lives" what if in this new world where men have built that forced reclusiveness have forced them to live through creatures that have a song. They could experiance everything and anything without leaving their caves,all they have to do is take andantage of the various songs.All these bones and the office of the GS is an endless book for them to read and learn from. Lastly,how far would they go to preserve and keep the collection of songs continuos?

Just an observation after reading this (and not the rest of the thread):

There may be something to this connecting it to Euron Greyjoy.

What makes Euron notable is his apparent connection to dark magic. Among his many "occult" aspects is the fact he sails a ship called the Silence, and controls a crew that are tongueless - or in the context of this theory, songless.

There may be more to his actions than simply trying to appear macabre to frighten people. Euron may have sacrificed their tongues in some ritual, in a sense, stealing their voices / songs to add to his own power.

Close comparisons:

Ilyn Payne had his tongue cut out by the Mad King, but we know Aerys had all sorts of cockamamie occult ideas. Possibly, this was more than just punishment?

We know Varys had his male parts cut off and consumed by fire as part of some dark magic ritual - one which apparently worked, because he heard some sort of dark unholy voice answer the sorcerer.

So, some speculate Euron is in league with the Others, but whatever magic that might be is still open to speculation.

This is a pretty cool observation and it may not be about Keeping the crew of the Silence from talking but as you say using their 'tounges" in a ritual pertaing to sounding the horn.

I hadn't made a connection before between the Wall blocking the songs and the eventual disuses of direwolves among the Starks. I wonder if the she-wolves of Winterfell had them, surely they were in need of some extra help! Though it seems they would've been too late?

That's an interesting assessment. It makes me think of the horn; Euron recruits someone else to contribute to making it sing (essentially, stealing their voice, knowing the penalty will be death for creating the song).

Yep i was thinking of the Horn,those tounges are probably roasting over and open fire..lol

[Alia of the knife]

Hi Wolfmaid, here is my post from the Heresy discussion. I hope it helps further this topic.

While researching southwestern folklore I came across the story of La Loba the bone collector. It is basically an Anima take on the Morrigan aspects of mother, maiden, crone. I'm wondering if George, living in New Mexico, has heard this one?

La Loba

There is an old woman who lives in a hidden place that everyone knows but few have ever seen. As in the fairy tales of Eastern Europe, she seems to wait for lost or wandering people and seekers to come to her place.

They say she lives among the rotten granite slopes in Tarahumara Indian territory. They say she is buried outside Phoenix near a well. She is said to have been seen traveling south to Monte Alban in a burnt-out car with the back window shot out. She is said to stand by the highway near El Paso, or ride shotgun with truckers to Morelia, Mexico, or that she has been sighted walking to market above Oaxaca with strangely formed boughs of firewood on her back. She is called by many names: La Huesera, Bone Woman; La Trapera, The Gatherer; and La Loba, Wolf Woman.

The sole work of La Loba is the collecting of bones. She is known to collect and preserve especially that which is in danger of being lost to the world. Her cave is filled with the bones of all manner of desert creatures: the deer, the rattlesnake, the crow. But her speciality is said to be wolves.

She creeps and crawls and sifts through the montanas, mountains, and arroyos, dry river beds, looking for wolf bones, and when she has assembled an entire skeleton, when the last bone is in place and the beautiful white sculpture of the creature is laid out before her, she sits by the fire and thinks about what song she will sing.

And when she is sure, she stands over the criatura, raises her arms over it, and sings out. That is when the rib bones and leg bones of the wolf begin to flesh out and the creature becomes furred. La Loba sings some more, and more of the creature comes into being; its tail curls upward, shaggy and strong.

And La Loba sings more and the wolf creature begins to breathe.

And still La Loba sings so deeply that the floor of the desert shakes, and as she sings, the wolf opens its eyes, leaps up, and runs away down the canyon.

Somewhere in its running, whether by the speed of its running, or by splashing its way into a river, or by way of a ray of sunlight or moonlight hitting it right in the side, the wolf is suddenly transformed into a laughing woman who runs free toward the horizon.

So it is said that if you wander the desert, and it is near sundown, and you are perhaps a little bit lost, and certainly tired, that you are lucky, for La Loba may take a liking to you and show you something - something of the Soul.

Another name for La Loba is La Que Sabe, meaning the one who knows, a different version of the tale states it is the lost or untold stories of the dead that she gets from the bones.

Sounds alot like the cave of the COTF doesn't it?

Thanks for posting. I've heard something similar, and it makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, but awesome story.

Just an observation after reading this (and not the rest of the thread):

There may be something to this connecting it to Euron Greyjoy.

What makes Euron notable is his apparent connection to dark magic. Among his many "occult" aspects is the fact he sails a ship called the Silence, and controls a crew that are tongueless - or in the context of this theory, songless.

There may be more to his actions than simply trying to appear macabre to frighten people. Euron may have sacrificed their tongues in some ritual, in a sense, stealing their voices / songs to add to his own power.

Close comparisons:

Ilyn Payne had his tongue cut out by the Mad King, but we know Aerys had all sorts of cockamamie occult ideas. Possibly, this was more than just punishment?

We know Varys had his male parts cut off and consumed by fire as part of some dark magic ritual - one which apparently worked, because he heard some sort of dark unholy voice answer the sorcerer.

So, some speculate Euron is in league with the Others, but whatever magic that might be is still open to speculation.

Great call out, love this!

Sorry I haven't kept up with this thread as much lately, seems like my summer is busier than anticipated. Wolfmaid has requested I post this here, from my Heaney essay. It's unfinished; the next parts are under construction. Hopefully it will contribute to the discussion. :)

Part I and Part II, for reference.

Part III The Body in the Bog

As suggested in Seamus Heaney’s Bogland, the earth turns up any number of things. The National Museum of Ireland displays an array of items—weapons, utensils and yes, even butter. Like the eerily preserved bog bodies these objects speak to us, making the past visible in glimpses. In an interview with David W. McCullough, Heaney says, “It seemed to me that bogs had great symbolic possibilities residing in them and not forced upon them by poetic invention. They have a memory" (McCullough, 80). As does snow and ice, the bog preserves, and for Heaney it is both the symbolic and the physical object that commingle. When we delve, alongside the bodies and butter we find memory.

In Martin’s series, the past manifests itself in the usual ways, but like a body rising out of the bog memory is preserved and comes to the surface. As discussed in Part II, the bones in Jon’s dreams of the Winterfell crypt give rise to memories, which are able to speak to Jon in the form of the old Stark kings. A kind of fusion between symbolic and object take place. Martin takes it a step further at the deepest point Jon ventures in the tombs, when memory itself literally manifests in the ghostly appearance of Grey Wind. Where Jon has access to the bones and memory through warging, the Singers use a much richer combination of methods—a Heaney-style fusion—to access memory.

In ASOIAF the Singers’ use the weirnet to see various points in time (memories), but part of what fuels it is their songs. Their language is described as a musical reflection of the natural world and the Singers themselves, ”sounding like a song of stones in a brook, or the wind through leaves, or the rain upon the water,” (World of Ice & Fire, quoted in Black Crow, Heresy 115, post 192). Singing is how the Singers speak. The songs are also connected to memory. Like the Winterfell crypts, the Singer’s cave contains bones, which combined with the weirwoods, serve as the reservoir for their memories. On first entering the caves, Bran notices them:

"Bones," said Bran. "It's bones." The floor of the passage was littered with the bones . . . small, queerly formed. Children of the forest. The roots had grown in and around and through them, every one. A few had ravens perched atop them, watching them pass with bright black eyes. (ADWD, 13, Bran).

The bones line the cave so that the earth, like a bog, holds the memories. The Singers’ songs also “drift up from someplace far below,” rising up from deeper chambers and echoing through the chambers where the roots can absorb them (ADWD, 33, Bran). Thinking again about Heaney’s Bone Dreams and the manner in which the past speaks to the persona through language (accessed through the bone he finds in the field), it becomes evident how and why the Singers are able to play such a vital role in ASOIAF, albeit one that most men, including the living Starks, have forgotten. Singers are able to access both the past and their lifeforce through the bone-white weirwoods at the level of language (their songs). Much like the bones in Heaney’s poem, we find the memories of all the Singers, living and dead, past and present.

Leaf tells Bran that the dead Singers have "gone down into the earth. . . Into the stones, into the trees.” (ADWD, 33, Bran). Jojen similarly explains that

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. . . The man who never reads lives only one. The singers of the forest had no books. No ink, no parchment, no written language. Instead they had the trees, and the weirwoods above all. When they died, they went into the wood, into leaf and limb and root, and the trees remembered. All their songs and spells, their histories and prayers, everything they knew about this world. (ADWD, 33, Bran)

The bones in the cave and the weirwoods contain a potent concoction: history, spells, songs, memory and language. The cave is the intersection where the bones and songs commingle; the tree roots reach down into the earth, wicking it all up and preserving the memories.

The cave, bones and weirwoods are the Singer’s ban-hus. Like Heaney’s, it is not a dead body, but creative and capable of “generation” (Bone Dreams, line 45). The cauldron in the mead-hall of Bone Dreams is not empty. The poet has invoked philology and kennings and is opening the door to bring the memories and past back into the present, to be revitalized and transformed. In ASOIAF, the ban-hus and cauldron metaphors have similar potential. The combination of weirwoods, bones and spells, operate like a kenning, or a key to unlock the gate to memory. Add the songs of living Singers, and a collective consciousness is created, making the past accessible to the Singers and even greenseers. And like Heaney’s cauldron, we can also expect the weirwoods, memories and songs to do something more.

It’s no coincidence that the Singers are able to make memory manifest, akin to Jon’s dreamed experience where Grey Wind’s spirit appears in the Winterfell crypt. Everything that makes the Singers the Singers –the songs, history, magic and memories—are not only preserved but made fantastically present through language (singing the songs). When Bran discovers a Singer’s presence in the raven he skinchanges, Brynden explains that she is "Long dead, yet a part of her remains, just as a part of you would remain in Summer if your boy's flesh were to die upon the morrow. A shadow on the soul” (ADWD, 33, Bran). As I suggested before, warging for Jon is like a loophole, a place where man and wolf and Stark can meet. Warging and skinchanging are two sides of the same coin, and I suspect that it works for the Singers, too. Memory, weirwood and song—everything that makes up the Singer’s accessed memories—combine to create a place on the magical map where memory gives rise to preserved parts of the Singers themselves – their spirits.

This concept isn’t isolated to fantasy or Ireland or Irish poets, ecological or postcolonial theories. Robin Laing (known to some as the Whiskey Bard) has made study and song of Scotland’s finest beverage (another kind of spirit). One of the key ingredients for each blend is the water, which frequently contributes the peaty flavors of the surrounding land. In a little love song to uisge beaha, Laing writes:

Take clear water from the hill and barley from the lowlands,

take a master craftman’s skill and something harder to define,

like secrets in the shape of coppered stills, or the slow, silent magic work of time.

Bring home sherry casks from Spain, Sanlucar de Barrameda,

and fill them up again with the spirit of the land

then let the wood work to the spirit’s gain in a process no one fully understands.

For the spirit starts out clear, but see the transformation

after many patient years, when at last the tale unfolds

the colors of the season will appear, from palest yellow to the deepest gold.

When you hold it in your hand, it’s the pulse of one small nation-

so much more than just a dram. You can see it, if you will-

the people and the weather and the land. The past into the present is distilled.

Chorus: Whiskey, you’re the devil in disguise, at least to some that’s the way it seems,

but you’re more like an angel in my eyes

Catch the heady vapours as they rise,

and turn them into {final: peaceful, pleasant} dreams

Robin Laing, ‘More Than Just a Dram’ from The Angels’ Share, 1997

(A snippet of the song)

Sounds like a song for the Singers! Heaney might appreciate that uisge (the Scots-Gaelic spelling of uisce) has again become the place on the map “where the spirit might find a loophole” (Beowulf, xxiv-xxv). The essence of “the people and the weather and the land”—Scottishness—has gone into the dram of whiskey (Laing, line 12). What is also “distilled” for Laing is “the past,” preserved through a sort of magic and accessible when we partake of a glass (line 12). Past is brought forward into the present, allowing us to refashion “dreams” for the future (line 16). Laing calls it the past; Heaney calls it memory. Both resurface from the land, rising up from the peat just as Martin’s Singers call up memory, language and song to infuse the ravens, weirwoods, rocks and stones – their ban-hus—with their spirits.

****

Accessing their memories not only ensures the Singer’s survival, but is essential to their ability to interact fully with the world. It also seems that they will play a vital role in the survival of men and of the North. For a moment, let’s revisit the cave. Lined with the bones of the Singers, it also contains

other bones as well, big ones that must have come from giants and small ones that could have been from children. On either side of them, in niches carved from the stone, skulls looked down on them. Bran saw a bear skull and a wolf skull, half a dozen human skulls and near as many giants. (ADWD, 13, Bran)

What are we to make of these bones belonging to animals –bears and wolves, humans and giants? If the Singers use their own bones to preserve and access their memories and regenerate their spirits, then they must be doing so with other memories as well. In her thread, Those Who Sing, Wolfmaid7 states that

The language of the earth is a symphony of varied songs and those songs are magical in nature. Connected intimately are the Old races that consist of the COTF, Giants, Crows, Direwolves, Weirwood trees and possibly the White Walkers. Anything that has a magical song. . . . The Songs of certain characters are a language linking the Old Races to those sensitive enough in the realm of man to perceive the language. Which means there is a potential opportunity for communication from the Old Powers or infiltration by the Old powers to achieve a desired end. (post 1).

Wolfmaid7 points out that in Martin’s world, songs are magical, “varied” languages that connect the speaker to a larger, encompassing “symphony” belonging to the earth itself (Wolfmaid7, Those Who Sing, post 1). While we generally attribute this language to the Singers, who name themselves “those who sing the song of earth” and speak what they call “the True Tongue that no human man could speak,” Wolfmaid7 asserts that the songs of earth are spoken by other individuals as well (ADWD, 33, Bran). Bran discovers that “the ravens [can] speak it” and Wolfmaid7 lists the Giants and Direwolves as well, whose bones are found on the floor of the Singer’s cave (33, Bran). The Singers are preserving the memories of the Old races as well as animals, making them part of the ban-hus.

It appears the Singers are accessing the memories of each of the creatures through the bones, and uploading them to the weirnet using the songs. JNR, in Heresy 121 states that the weirwoods “are the immortal repositories of Westeros' memory,” which expands the Singer’s sphere beyond the caves and even the North (post 363). I suspect that once the Singers went North of the Wall it became increasingly important for them to preserve what they could of the Old Races’ memories before they all died out. It also seems possible that the Singers have been preserving these memories all along as part of the fuel for their earth magic, and certainly has some interesting implications for what might be happening on the Isle of Faces. Wolfmaid7 suggests that any individual who has a song may be of interest to the Singers. Taken together with JNR’s assessment, we see why: all of those that Wolfmaid7 identifies as song-singers are part of the North, and of Westeros. The land is the ban-hus, the body in the bog is the collective memory and preserved spirits of the earth.

While the series hints that the focus will be on the interplay of ice and fire, the Singers have access to the memories of other creatures, among them members of the Old races, giving them the corner market on the songs of earth. They may be dying, but something tells me they still have a vital role to play before the end, and it may have something to do with preserving the North, or even Westeros itself. Song and language are intimately tied to memories and to the ban-hus. For a fresh illustration, here’s a short poem by Seamus Heaney:

Broagh

Riverbank, the long rigs

ending in broad docken

and a canopied pad

down to the ford.

The garden mould

bruised easily, the shower

gathering in your heelmark

was the black O

in Broagh,

its low tattoo

among the windy boortrees

and rhubarb-blades

ended almost

suddenly, like that last

gh the strangers found

difficult to manage.

Situated at the ford (a potential place of loopholes, where the river can be more easily crossed), the name of the place reflects the natural world. From the “low tattoo” of the wind in the trees and foliage, to “the shower / gathering in your heelmark” that is “the black O // in Broagh,” physical place and language are intricately linked (Broagh, lines 10, 6-9, emphasis mine). And like the Singer’s unlearnable True Tongue, the “last gh the strangers found difficult to manage” resists newcomer’s efforts to conquer it and separate language from the land (lines 14-16). The Singers shelter the bones and memories of the Old races and other individuals in their ban-hus, making them a part of it and part of regeneration because they are essential not only to the Singers, but to sustaining the North and Westeros itself. The land is the ban-hus, the body in the bog is the collective memory and preserved spirits of the Singers and of the earth. Ireland’s bogs and bones are Heaney’s ban-hus; the earth, bones, ravens, rocks and weirwoods are Martin’s. Jojen Reed sums it up best: "Mountain or marsh, it makes no matter. The land is one" (ASOS, 33, Bran).

:bowdown: Awesome piece of work. Great job!

[northernwarg]

In response to all of the above can I just say, what brilliant posts! There is the meta description too that I think GRRM employs. The earliest known or extant Old English poetry is a simple lyric, 'Spring has sprung' (anon) IIRC from my first year OE module.( many years ago now :( ) Literature was either verse or drama before the modern English era, and Martin wants to plunge us into a world where oral history and song are one and the same thing. It seems the clues as to what the Starks have forgotten are there should they care to listen.