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Arya may have planted a weirwood


Daendrew

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This indeed interesting for the number of times acorns come up in various POV's.  Here's a few:

A Storm of Swords - Arya IV

"Riverrun." Gendry put the hammer down and looked at her. "You look different now. Like a proper little girl."
"I look like an oak tree, with all these stupid acorns."
"Nice, though. A nice oak tree." He stepped closer, and sniffed at her. "You even smell nice for a change."
 

A Storm of Swords - Arya VIII

"She will leave on the morrow, with us," Lord Beric assured the little woman. "We're taking her to Riverrun, to her mother."
"Nay," said the dwarf. "You're not. The black fish holds the rivers now. If it's the mother you want, seek her at the Twins. For there's to be a wedding." She cackled again. "Look in your fires, pink priest, and you will see. Not now, though, not here, you'll see nothing here. This place belongs to the old gods still . . . they linger here as I do, shrunken and feeble but not yet dead. Nor do they love the flames. For the oak recalls the acorn, the acorn dreams the oak, the stump lives in them both. And they remember when the First Men came with fire in their fists." She drank the last of the wine in four long swallows, flung the skin aside, and pointed her stick at Lord Beric. "I'll have my payment now. I'll have the song you promised me."
And so Lem woke Tom Sevenstrings beneath his furs, and brought him yawning to the fireside with his woodharp in hand. "The same song as before?" he asked.
 
It's interesting that the Ghost of High Heart is canting something that Bloodraven tells Bran about the acorn and the oak.  There are quotes with Arya eating acorn paste; being housed at Acorn Hall;  wearing a dress embroidered with acorns and Bran's first impression of Leaf at the cave of the Greenseer looking like his sister Arya.
 

Arya isn't the only one who dines on acorn paste:

A Clash of Kings - Arya V

From up here, she could see a small wooded island off to the northeast. Thirty yards from shore, three black swans were gliding over the water, so serene . . . no one had told them that war had come, and they cared nothing for burning towns and butchered men. She stared at them with yearning. Part of her wanted to be a swan. The other part wanted to eat one. She had broken her fast on some acorn paste and a handful of bugs. Bugs weren't so bad when you got used to them. Worms were worse, but still not as bad as the pain in your belly after days without food. Finding bugs was easy, all you had to do was kick over a rock. Arya had eaten a bug once when she was little, just to make Sansa screech, so she hadn't been afraid to eat another. Weasel wasn't either, but Hot Pie retched up the beetle he tried to swallow, and Lommy and Gendry wouldn't even try. Yesterday Gendry had caught a frog and shared it with Lommy, and, a few days before, Hot Pie had found blackberries and stripped the bush bare, but mostly they had been living on water and acorns. Kurz had told them how to use rocks and make a kind of acorn paste. It tasted awful.

A Feast for Crows - Brienne I

They broke their fast on roast squirrel, acorn paste, and pickles, whilst Ser Creighton regaled her with his exploits on the Blackwater, where he had slain a dozen fearsome knights that she had never heard of. "Oh, it was a rare fight, m'lady," he said, "a rare and bloody fray." He allowed that Ser Illifer had fought nobly in the battle as well. Illifer himself said little.

A Dance with Dragons - Bran I

Supper was a fistful of acorns, crushed and pounded into paste, so bitter that Bran gagged as he tried to keep it down. Jojen Reed did not even make the attempt. Younger and frailer than his sister, he was growing weaker by the day.

Acorns and references to eating acorns comes up with Jon, Sam, Theon and Tyrion as well.  The three trees oak, ash and chestnut seem to represent Jon, Tyrion and Bloodraven by their description with Jon as the oak tree and Tyrion as the ash tree.  The GoHH associates the First Men with oak trees.  While Theon is associated with death and the Acorns Waters. 

I feel there is something more here.  Arya both likens herself to an oak tree and Bran associates Leaf with Arya.   Bran associates the bitter taste of acorn paste with weirwood paste.   While Jojen, the GoHH and Bloodraven all make a connection between the oak tree, the acorn and the stump of the tree as a means for greenseeing. 

A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

"A man must know how to look before he can hope to see," said Lord Brynden. "Those were shadows of days past that you saw, Bran. You were looking through the eyes of the heart tree in your godswood. Time is different for a tree than for a man. Sun and soil and water, these are the things a weirwood understands, not days and years and centuries. For men, time is a river. We are trapped in its flow, hurtling from past to present, always in the same direction. The lives of trees are different. They root and grow and die in one place, and that river does not move them. The oak is the acorn, the acorn is the oak. And the weirwood … a thousand human years are a moment to a weirwood, and through such gates you and I may gaze into the past."

The oak (Bran, Jon, Arya) are one with the weirwood?

 

 

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52 minutes ago, LynnS said:

This indeed interesting for the number of times acorns come up in various POV's.  Here's a few:

A Storm of Swords - Arya IV

"Riverrun." Gendry put the hammer down and looked at her. "You look different now. Like a proper little girl."
"I look like an oak tree, with all these stupid acorns."
"Nice, though. A nice oak tree." He stepped closer, and sniffed at her. "You even smell nice for a change."
 

A Storm of Swords - Arya VIII

"She will leave on the morrow, with us," Lord Beric assured the little woman. "We're taking her to Riverrun, to her mother."
"Nay," said the dwarf. "You're not. The black fish holds the rivers now. If it's the mother you want, seek her at the Twins. For there's to be a wedding." She cackled again. "Look in your fires, pink priest, and you will see. Not now, though, not here, you'll see nothing here. This place belongs to the old gods still . . . they linger here as I do, shrunken and feeble but not yet dead. Nor do they love the flames. For the oak recalls the acorn, the acorn dreams the oak, the stump lives in them both. And they remember when the First Men came with fire in their fists." She drank the last of the wine in four long swallows, flung the skin aside, and pointed her stick at Lord Beric. "I'll have my payment now. I'll have the song you promised me."
And so Lem woke Tom Sevenstrings beneath his furs, and brought him yawning to the fireside with his woodharp in hand. "The same song as before?" he asked.
 
It's interesting that the Ghost of High Heart is canting something that Bloodraven tells Bran about the acorn and the oak.  There are quotes with Arya eating acorn paste; being housed at Acorn Hall;  wearing a dress embroidered with acorns and Bran's first impression of Leaf at the cave of the Greenseer looking like his sister Arya.
 

Arya isn't the only one who dines on acorn paste:

A Clash of Kings - Arya V

From up here, she could see a small wooded island off to the northeast. Thirty yards from shore, three black swans were gliding over the water, so serene . . . no one had told them that war had come, and they cared nothing for burning towns and butchered men. She stared at them with yearning. Part of her wanted to be a swan. The other part wanted to eat one. She had broken her fast on some acorn paste and a handful of bugs. Bugs weren't so bad when you got used to them. Worms were worse, but still not as bad as the pain in your belly after days without food. Finding bugs was easy, all you had to do was kick over a rock. Arya had eaten a bug once when she was little, just to make Sansa screech, so she hadn't been afraid to eat another. Weasel wasn't either, but Hot Pie retched up the beetle he tried to swallow, and Lommy and Gendry wouldn't even try. Yesterday Gendry had caught a frog and shared it with Lommy, and, a few days before, Hot Pie had found blackberries and stripped the bush bare, but mostly they had been living on water and acorns. Kurz had told them how to use rocks and make a kind of acorn paste. It tasted awful.

A Feast for Crows - Brienne I

They broke their fast on roast squirrel, acorn paste, and pickles, whilst Ser Creighton regaled her with his exploits on the Blackwater, where he had slain a dozen fearsome knights that she had never heard of. "Oh, it was a rare fight, m'lady," he said, "a rare and bloody fray." He allowed that Ser Illifer had fought nobly in the battle as well. Illifer himself said little.

A Dance with Dragons - Bran I

Supper was a fistful of acorns, crushed and pounded into paste, so bitter that Bran gagged as he tried to keep it down. Jojen Reed did not even make the attempt. Younger and frailer than his sister, he was growing weaker by the day.

Acorns and references to eating acorns comes up with Jon, Sam, Theon and Tyrion as well.  The three trees oak, ash and chestnut seem to represent Jon, Tyrion and Bloodraven by their description with Jon as the oak tree and Tyrion as the ash tree.  The GoHH associates the First Men with oak trees.  While Theon is associated with death and the Acorns Waters. 

I feel there is something more here.  Arya both likens herself to an oak tree and Bran associates Leaf with Arya.   Bran associates the bitter taste of acorn paste with weirwood paste.   While Jojen, the GoHH and Bloodraven all make a connection between the oak tree, the acorn and the stump of the tree as a means for greenseeing. 

A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

"A man must know how to look before he can hope to see," said Lord Brynden. "Those were shadows of days past that you saw, Bran. You were looking through the eyes of the heart tree in your godswood. Time is different for a tree than for a man. Sun and soil and water, these are the things a weirwood understands, not days and years and centuries. For men, time is a river. We are trapped in its flow, hurtling from past to present, always in the same direction. The lives of trees are different. They root and grow and die in one place, and that river does not move them. The oak is the acorn, the acorn is the oak. And the weirwood … a thousand human years are a moment to a weirwood, and through such gates you and I may gaze into the past."

The oak (Bran, Jon, Arya) are one with the weirwood?

 

 

Good catch:

"For the oak recalls the acorn, the acorn dreams the oak."

This implies the oak is dreaming. The only descriptions of trees dreaming are of weirwoods.

In any case, this is one of those little finds which I don't think GRRM will ever spell out completely that would be fun to think about.

 

 

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28 minutes ago, Daendrew said:

Good catch:

"For the oak recalls the acorn, the acorn dreams the oak."

This implies the oak is dreaming. The only descriptions of trees dreaming are of weirwoods.

In any case, this is one of those little finds which I don't think GRRM will ever spell out completely that would be fun to think about.

 

 

I think we are just scratching the surface.  We need @ravenous reader to unpack it and add the connections. :D  I have wondered about these three trees for a long time along with their similarities to the three towers at Moat Cailin.  I'm no expert on mythology; but of course I had to check google to see if there is anything interesting.

In Roman mythology, chestnuts are referred to Zeus' acorns (or apples); something imported from the east. Oak trees being the preferred tree of Zeus with the faithful gathering around the oak tree.  The word acorn can be broken down to ack and corn.  We have Mormont's raven sitting on a branch of the old chestnut tree and it flies over to Jon when he appears.  Oh my...  corn, corn, corn and Jon Snow corn king, to quote the raven.

The oak tree is associated with kings and generals:

Ancient kings presented themselves as the personifications of these gods, taking on the responsibility not only for success in battle but also the fertility of the land, which relied on rainfall. They wore crowns of oak leaves, as a symbol of the god they represented as kings on Earth. Similarly, successful Roman commanders were presented with crowns of oak leaves during their victory parades, and oak leaves have continued as decorative icons of military prowess to the present day. Oak leaves' connection with rainfall also survived in more recent folklore in a variety of similar rhymes about which tree's leaves appeared first, such as the Irish saying:

If the oak before the ash,
Then we'll only have a splash.
If the ash before the oak,
Then we'll surely have a soak!

http://treesforlife.org.uk/forest/mythology-folklore/oak/

Jon's party seeing the ash before  the oak isn't a good sign depending on the direction you're travelling.  Then we have the drunken ash tree surely representing Tyrion with the mythology of ash used as weapons; bows, spears.    The right and left hand of Bloodraven if you will and the prediction of a deluge.  Something that also occured at Moat Cailin to some extent at one time.

There is a lot more to dig into concerning ash trees within the viking and celtic mythos.

Yggdrasil, the World Tree in Viking mythology, grew on an island surrounded by the ocean, in the depths of which the World Serpent lay. This ash tree's trunk reached up to the heavens, and its boughs spread out over all the countries of the Earth. Its roots reached down into the Underworld. A squirrel ran up and down the tree carrying messages from the serpent gnawing at the roots to the eagle in the canopy, and back. A deer fed on the ash leaves and from its antlers flowed the great rivers of the world. A magical goat grazed by the tree, and its udders dispensed not milk but mead for the warriors in Odin's Great Hall. The gods held their councils under the canopy of their guardian tree.

Ash arrow drawing

Odin, the foremost god of the Vikings, hung himself on Yggdrasil as a sacrificial ordeal, during which he lost an eye to ravens. Ultimately though, he was rewarded with insights and wisdom, notably knowledge of the system of the Runes. Both he and Thor, the god of thunder, were said to possess magical spears made of ash wood. Mortals' spear shafts were also typically made of ash (as were bows, in the absence of yew, and arrow shafts). The words for ash and spear seem to be related in that a poetic Anglo-Saxon word for spear was aesc and the Norse word for ash was ask (influencing Highland place names such as Port Askaig). The Vikings were also referred to as the Aescling meaning 'Men of Ash'.

Like the Vikings, the Gaels also thought of the ash tree (which they called uinsinn, pronounced ooshin) as protective. Of the five legendary guardian trees of Ireland, three were ash. Ash is also the second most popular tree growing beside Irish holy wells, and on the Isle of Man ash trees were said to protect the purity of springs. In England the ash is the commonest tree as a place name element after the thorn.

http://treesforlife.org.uk/forest/mythology-folklore/ash/

Then there is plenty of symbolism for Green Men wearing leafy faces.  I'll leave that for someone else more familiar with the subject.

 

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1 hour ago, LynnS said:

In Roman mythology, chestnuts are referred to Zeus' acorns (or apples); something imported from the east. Oak trees being the preferred tree of Zeus with the faithful gathering around the oak tree.

 A Sansa is a type of apple too. How far did the Sansa apple fall from the tree? https://www.orangepippin.com/apples/sansa

Sansa also has some oak figures in her arc. Here, and many mirror some of the experiences that Arya and Bran have such as a dress, a bole/bowl of an oak and eating an oak and not wanting to wretch. 

Rickon????:dunno:

Jon often describes the Wall as guarded by oak and ash sentinels.

Quote

 

  The word acorn can be broken down to ack and corn.  We have Mormont's raven sitting on a branch of the old chestnut tree and it flies over to Jon when he appears.  Oh my...  corn, corn, corn and Jon Snow corn king, to quote the raven.

The oak tree is associated with kings and generals:

Ancient kings presented themselves as the personifications of these gods, taking on the responsibility not only for success in battle but also the fertility of the land, which relied on rainfall. They wore crowns of oak leaves, as a symbol of the god they represented as kings on Earth. Similarly, successful Roman commanders were presented with crowns of oak leaves during their victory parades, and oak leaves have continued as decorative icons of military prowess to the present day. Oak leaves' connection with rainfall also survived in more recent folklore in a variety of similar rhymes about which tree's leaves appeared first, such as the Irish saying:

If the oak before the ash,
Then we'll only have a splash.
If the ash before the oak,
Then we'll surely have a soak!

http://treesforlife.org.uk/forest/mythology-folklore/oak/

Jon's party seeing the ash before  the oak isn't a good sign depending on the direction you're travelling.  Then we have the drunken ash tree surely representing Tyrion with the mythology of ash used as weapons; bows, spears.    The right and left hand of Bloodraven if you will and the prediction of a deluge.  Something that also occured at Moat Cailin to some extent at one time.

 

Quote

There is a lot more to dig into concerning ash trees within the viking and celtic mythos.

I couldn't agree more.

Quote

Yggdrasil, the World Tree in Viking mythology, grew on an island surrounded by the ocean, in the depths of which the World Serpent lay. This ash tree's trunk reached up to the heavens, and its boughs spread out over all the countries of the Earth. Its roots reached down into the Underworld. A squirrel ran up and down the tree carrying messages from the serpent gnawing at the roots to the eagle in the canopy, and back. A deer fed on the ash leaves and from its antlers flowed the great rivers of the world. A magical goat grazed by the tree, and its udders dispensed not milk but mead for the warriors in Odin's Great Hall. The gods held their councils under the canopy of their guardian tree.

Ash arrow drawing

Odin, the foremost god of the Vikings, hung himself on Yggdrasil as a sacrificial ordeal, during which he lost an eye to ravens. Ultimately though, he was rewarded with insights and wisdom, notably knowledge of the system of the Runes. Both he and Thor, the god of thunder, were said to possess magical spears made of ash wood. Mortals' spear shafts were also typically made of ash (as were bows, in the absence of yew, and arrow shafts). The words for ash and spear seem to be related in that a poetic Anglo-Saxon word for spear was aesc and the Norse word for ash was ask (influencing Highland place names such as Port Askaig). The Vikings were also referred to as the Aescling meaning 'Men of Ash'.

Like the Vikings, the Gaels also thought of the ash tree (which they called uinsinn, pronounced ooshin) as protective. Of the five legendary guardian trees of Ireland, three were ash. Ash is also the second most popular tree growing beside Irish holy wells, and on the Isle of Man ash trees were said to protect the purity of springs. In England the ash is the commonest tree as a place name element after the thorn.

http://treesforlife.org.uk/forest/mythology-folklore/ash/

Then there is plenty of symbolism for Green Men wearing leafy faces.  I'll leave that for someone else more familiar with the subject.

 

Yggdrasil, the World Tree in Viking mythology, grew on an island surrounded by the ocean, in the depths of which the World Serpent lay.

  • possibly Jon in his current state, surrounded by the Free Folk- who are represented as ships in a sea for several reasons I won't get into here and now.

This ash tree's trunk reached up to the heavens, and its boughs spread out over all the countries of the Earth. Its roots reached down into the Underworld.

  • Yup. We have been to the Underworld with Jon in his crypt dreams and when Ygritte tempted him to stay with her in the Underworld with Gendel's children in the hot springs.
  • This could also be Jon in his current state and his warg consciousness taking over (like Varamyer prologue) and he could have his interaction with Bran courtesy of the Weirwood... if he is taken to the ring of nine Weirwoods for any sort of ritual/burial/etc. The number 9 is important because in Odin stories, he hung himself for nine days, and there is that ring of nine weirwoods where Jon took his oaths and found the first batch of wildlings and brought them to the wall.
  • "Up to the heavens"... could this be a connection to Sansa high up in the Eyrie, or to her religious aspect???

A squirrel ran up and down the tree carrying messages from the serpent gnawing at the roots to the eagle in the canopy, and back.

  • Ned calls Bran a squirrel in the first book. I think this particular squirrel is Bran because of the carrying messages.
  • The eagle is Sansa and her flight? I don't know, but I know there is a connection to Odin and his Blood Eagle and Jon.

A deer fed on the ash leaves and from its antlers flowed the great rivers of the world.

  • This I think is Arya. She has strong Riverland connections to Wenda the White Fawn, and her wolf Nymeria name is associated with historic Nymeria by their connection to river and water.

A magical goat grazed by the tree, and its udders dispensed not milk but mead for the warriors in Odin's Great Hall.

  • There is only one "magical goat" I can think of that is currently connected to Jon in the story that has a huge amount of Norse symbolism as well. Hmmm....

The gods held their councils under the canopy of their guardian tree.

  • Jon is the guardian tree? There is a huge amount of symbolism to Shieldhall at Castle Black being connected to this mythology as well.
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3 hours ago, Daendrew said:

Good catch:

"For the oak recalls the acorn, the acorn dreams the oak."

This implies the oak is dreaming. The only descriptions of trees dreaming are of weirwoods.

In any case, this is one of those little finds which I don't think GRRM will ever spell out completely that would be fun to think about.

 

 

I think Bloodraven may be referring to Bran as the oak tree.  The oak trees seem be the way that the cotf refer to the First Men.  A sort of reverse anthropomorphism.  BR is now more tree than man and a sentient tree might view men as another species of 'tree' who put down their own roots when they came with fire in their fists.  Bran hasn't yet made the transition to become the  wierwood tree; so he is still the oak tree that dreams.    The weirwood remembers the oak from beginning to end, from acorn (conception) to stump (death).   The First Men are close to the old gods; still pray to them... so the weirwood remembers the oak in that regard as well.

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Did anyone count how many different types of trees had faces on them that could be a clue especially if there were 9 species? 

I always assumed that the Oaks with faces were allusions to Zeus as personified by the Baratheons as stag, fertility deities/storm deities and links them with the green men and thus the Old Gods.   

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Awesome catches in this thread, specially from the @The Fattest Leech and @LynnS. I had never noticed these before.

.Acorns, both in GRRM's world and real life are very much associated with squirrels, and the COTF are called "squirrel people". With Bran and Arya's strong connections to COTF (as @DutchArya has illustrated) the oak and acorn symbolism around them makes a lot of sense.

It's definitely possible, IMO, that the oak trees serve as a vehicle for the Old Gods as well. There was a guy called John the Oak, son of Garth Greenhand and a giantess:

Quote

John the Oak is a legendary son of Garth Greenhand and a giantess. He was a huge man, eight feet tall in some tales, or even ten or twelve in others. Even though chivalry was brought by the Andals millennia later, he's credited with bringing chivalry to Westeros. His descendants became House Oakheart.

Garth Greenhand is described very much like a Green Man from the IoF. If he indeed was a Green Man, and if the tales that he actually predated the arrival of the FM are true, either he or John the Oak could possibly have been a deity in the COTF society. Alternatively, even if no one called John the Oak existed, it could be a hint that the COTF worshipped oak trees back then as well.

The heart tree in KL is an oak:

Quote

The heart tree there was a great oak, its ancient limbs overgrown with smokeberry vines; they knelt before it to offer their thanksgiving, as if it had been a weirwood. Sansa drifted to sleep as the moon rose, Arya several hours later, curling up in the grass under Ned's cloak. All through the dark hours he kept his vigil alone. When dawn broke over the city, the dark red blooms of dragon's breath surrounded the girls where they lay. "I dreamed of Bran," Sansa had whispered to him. "I saw him smiling."

Interestingly, Osha's spear is made of oak:

Quote

"Pretty," said a woman's voice. She scarcely looked like a woman; tall and lean, with the same hard face as the others, her hair hidden beneath a bowl-shaped halfhelm. The spear she held was eight feet of black oak, tipped in rusted steel.

Bran in Summer:

Quote

Yet when the darkness closed over him, he found himself in the godswood, moving silently beneath green-grey sentinels and gnarled oaks as old as time. 

Jaime gives Brienne an oaken shield:

Quote

 She meant to keep the heavy oaken shield Jaime had given her, the one he'd borne himself from Harrenhal to King's Landing. A pine shield had its advantages. It was lighter, and therefore easier to bear, and the soft wood was more like to trap a foeman's axe or sword. But oak gave more protection, if you were strong enough to bear its weight.

Varamyr can apparently skinchange an oak:

Quote

The white world turned and fell away. For a moment it was as if he were inside the weirwood, gazing out through carved red eyes as a dying man twitched feebly on the ground and a madwoman danced blind and bloody underneath the moon, weeping red tears and ripping at her clothes. Then both were gone and he was rising, melting, his spirit borne on some cold wind.He was in the snow and in the clouds, he was a sparrow, a squirrel, an oak.

 

The Hedge Knight:

Quote

The elm's alive," Pate pointed out. "See how green the leaves are? Summer leaves, for certain. And I've seen shields blazoned with skulls and wolves and ravens, even hanged men and bloody heads. They served well enough, and so will this. You know the old shield rhyme? Oak and iron, guard me well . . ."

"Or else I'm dead, and doomed to hell," Dunk finished. He had not thought of that rhyme in years. The old man had taught it to him, a long time ago. "How much do you want for the new rim and all?" he asked Pate.

 

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Wow, @Little Scribe of Naath!  John the Oak, skinchangiing the oak tree, Sansa the dreamer?  How did we miss this stuff?  This crystallizes a few things for me about the three trees.

The ash, chestnut and oak tree on first blush seem to be about the Wildlings making blood sacrifice.  And indeed that's what it is.  They are dispossessed and know that winter is coming and what comes with it.  But they are separated from their gods and don't have a means for communicating with them and asking for protection.  So they create a means for connecting with the old gods.  Because it seems that with the oak tree at least some connection can be made.  So they select among them, individuals to intercede for them.  People who represent certain aspects of those they are appealing to.  The drunken ash tree; looking so much like Tyrion; an appeal to the Drunken God we know so little about.  The old chestnut tree  sporting Mormont's raven can only be Bloodraven, the greenseer of the children of the forest and the angry oak tree must represent Jon Snow; someone with the strength to protect and shield them.   Someone who is the 'sword and the shield'; the oak and the steel. That Mormont's raven is waiting for John on the chestnut tree and then goes to Jon confirms it in my mind.  Passing from the old lord commander to the new.   That the GoHH makes a connection to the First Men who came with fire in their fists  and oak trees is also curious given that Jon literally vanquishes Othor with fire in his fist when he throws the burning curtain.

John the Oak?  That's very interesting.  The association with Garth Greenhands, Coldhands who might have been a green man, Tyrion representing the drunken god and the Baratheons with their green armor and antlered helms;  takes this way back to the time of Garth and perhaps the original drunken god. 

 

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19 hours ago, Little Scribe of Naath said:

Garth Greenhand is described very much like a Green Man from the IoF. If he indeed was a Green Man, and if the tales that he actually predated the arrival of the FM are true, either he or John the Oak could possibly have been a deity in the COTF society. Alternatively, even if no one called John the Oak existed, it could be a hint that the COTF worshipped oak trees back then as well.

The heart tree in KL is an oak:

The early Gardener Kings ancestral throne was the Oakenseat, according to legend it was a 'living' throne that was carved into an oak tree planted by Garth the Greenhand himself.  :)

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On 11/13/2016 at 5:15 PM, Dorian Martell's son said:

I think the magic is weirwood specific. If it wasn't then the first men would not have just cut down the weirwood groves and the Children would have carved faces on any tree after the pact, not just the weirwoods 

That makes sense.  However, it's not strictly true that the First Men only succeeded in targeting weirwoods.  They used fire to indiscriminately burn vast swathes of forest, and fire doesn't respect boundaries.  

In the GOHH prophecy (provided below), the oaks still remember the fire and seem to hold a grudge, by which it's suggested that weirwoods are not the only trees engaged in collective mobilization.

When it comes to trees, GRRM's language choices like fire fail to respect strict boundaries, serving to introduce some ambiguity regarding the precise location of the 'magical front,' which is probably less 'cut and dried' than you suggest.  In fact, many trees are personified and invested with consciousness to varying degrees throughout the text, including weirwoods, oaks, ashes, chestnuts, ironwoods, sentinels, soldier pines, elms, willows, beeches, firs, broad leafs, and ebonies -- although I'll agree of these the weirwoods are the most powerful. 

Think of it as a hierarchical arrangement, one might say an army of trees, with the greenseers at the helm.  Throughout the text there are ample references to the martial aspect of many different species of trees, of which this is just one example:

Quote

A Clash of Kings - Jon IV

The trees stood beneath him, warriors armored in bark and leaf, deployed in their silent ranks awaiting the command to storm the hill. Black, they seemed . . . it was only when his torchlight brushed against them that Jon glimpsed a flash of green. Faintly, he heard the sound of water flowing over rocks. Ghost vanished in the underbrush. Jon struggled after him, listening to the call of the brook, to the leaves sighing in the wind. Branches clutched at his cloak, while overhead thick limbs twined together and shut out the stars.

Consider the quote provided by @LynnS :

On 11/14/2016 at 9:08 AM, LynnS said:

A Storm of Swords - Arya VIII

She cackled again. "Look in your fires, pink priest, and you will see. Not now, though, not here, you'll see nothing here. This place belongs to the old gods still . . . they linger here as I do, shrunken and feeble but not yet dead. Nor do they love the flames. For the oak recalls the acorn, the acorn dreams the oak, the stump lives in them both. And they remember when the First Men came with fire in their fists." She drank the last of the wine in four long swallows, flung the skin aside, and pointed her stick at Lord Beric. "I'll have my payment now. I'll have the song you promised me."
And so Lem woke Tom Sevenstrings beneath his furs, and brought him yawning to the fireside with his woodharp in hand. "The same song as before?" he asked.
 
It's interesting that the Ghost of High Heart is canting something that Bloodraven tells Bran about the acorn and the oak.  There are quotes with Arya eating acorn paste; being housed at Acorn Hall;  wearing a dress embroidered with acorns and Bran's first impression of Leaf at the cave of the Greenseer looking like his sister Arya.

Good catch regarding the independent triple testimony of the GOHH, Bloodraven, and Jojen,bolstering the theory that other trees besides weirwoods, particularly the oaks, may also be significant players.

In the passage you quoted, the old gods are directly linked to the oak, implying that they not only 'linger' in the weirwood but are present in some form in other trees as well.  Specifically, the oak 'recalls,' 'dreams', 'lives,' and 'remembers' -- all verbs implying consciousness presumably of the collective 'godhead'.  

On 11/14/2016 at 9:08 AM, LynnS said:

Jojen, the GoHH and Bloodraven all make a connection between the oak tree, the acorn and the stump of the tree as a means for greenseeing. 

A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

"A man must know how to look before he can hope to see," said Lord Brynden. "Those were shadows of days past that you saw, Bran. You were looking through the eyes of the heart tree in your godswood. Time is different for a tree than for a man. Sun and soil and water, these are the things a weirwood understands, not days and years and centuries. For men, time is a river. We are trapped in its flow, hurtling from past to present, always in the same direction. The lives of trees are different. They root and grow and die in one place, and that river does not move them. The oak is the acorn, the acorn is the oak. And the weirwood … a thousand human years are a moment to a weirwood, and through such gates you and I may gaze into the past."

When he says 'the lives of trees are different' and 'time is different for a tree' that is probably meant to include all species of tree, not just the weirwood, although the weirwood occupies a special place due to its extremely long lifespan relative to the other trees:

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A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

"Once you have mastered your gifts, you may look where you will and see what the trees have seen, be it yesterday or last year or a thousand ages past. Men live their lives trapped in an eternal present, between the mists of memory and the sea of shadow that is all we know of the days to come. Certain moths live their whole lives in a day, yet to them that little span of time must seem as long as years and decades do to us. An oak may live three hundred years, a redwood tree three thousand. A weirwood will live forever if left undisturbed. To them seasons pass in the flutter of a moth's wing, and past, present, and future are one. Nor will your sight be limited to your godswood. The singers carved eyes into their 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."

 

On 11/14/2016 at 10:04 AM, Daendrew said:

Good catch:

"For the oak recalls the acorn, the acorn dreams the oak."

This implies the oak is dreaming. The only descriptions of trees dreaming are of weirwoods.

Yes, and oaks like weirwoods are repositories of collective memory.

GRRM's repetition of 'recalls' with respect to the oak and 'remembers' with respect to the old gods -- 'remember' and 'recall' are synonyms -- underscores the relationship of the old gods to the oak.

Other trees are also associated with memory; for example willows, elms and oaks are mentioned below in conjunction with the green magic of the crannogs:

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A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

"What will I know?" Bran asked the Reeds afterward, when they came with torches burning brightly in their hand, to carry him back to a small chamber off the big cavern where the singers had made beds for them to sleep. "What do the trees remember?"

"The secrets of the old gods," said Jojen Reed. Food and fire and rest had helped restore him after the ordeals of their journey, but he seemed sadder now, sullen, with a weary, haunted look about the eyes. "Truths the First Men knew, forgotten now in Winterfell … but not in the wet wild. We live closer to the green in our bogs and crannogs, and we remember. Earth and water, soil and stone, oaks and elms and willows, they were here before us all and will still remain when we are gone."

"So will you," said Meera. That made Bran sad. What if I don't want to remain when you are gone? he almost asked, but he swallowed the words unspoken. He was almost a man grown, and he did not want Meera to think he was some weepy babe. "Maybe you could be greenseers too," he said instead.

GRRM's language frequently dissolves the boundaries between trees, thereby conflating them.  Notably, they are often presented by him as one body -- a green sea of trees which is a pun on green see, indicating the dispersion of the powers of the greenseers across the entire forest.

In the following passage for example, the whole forest, not just one species of tree, is 'painted in a thousand shades of green' and 'a thousand leaves fluttered'-- a thousand being Bloodraven's and by extension the greenseers' special number (1000 proxy eyes + his own 1=1001) with '1000 shades of green' alluding to the ghostly greenseer denizens of the trees (i.e. a 'shade' being an 'undead' spirit in addition to the physical shadow cast by a tree) and the '1000 leaves fluttering' evoking their collective voice.

In support of the idea that White Walkers might potentially be an extension of the 'tree army' I've posited, they too are often described as shadows garbed in the shifting colors of wood and water.

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A Clash of Kings - Jon IV

Closer at hand, it was the trees that ruled. To south and east the wood went on as far as Jon could see, a vast tangle of root and limb painted in a thousand shades of green, with here and there a patch of red where a weirwood shouldered through the pines and sentinels, or a blush of yellow where some broadleafs had begun to turn. When the wind blew, he could hear the creak and groan of branches older than he was. A thousand leaves fluttered, and for a moment the forest seemed a deep green sea, storm-tossed and heaving, eternal and unknowable.

Ghost was not like to be alone down there, he thought. Anything could be moving under that sea, creeping toward the ringfort through the dark of the wood, concealed beneath those trees. Anything. How would they ever know? He stood there for a long time, until the sun vanished behind the saw-toothed mountains and darkness began to creep through the forest.

Note 'under that sea' refers to the 'deep green sea' of the greenseers...With that interpretation in mind, re-evaluate Patchface's prophecies prefaced with 'under the sea...' !

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A Dance with Dragons - The Wayward Bride

I cannot go home, she thought, but I dare not stay here much longer. The quiet of the woods unnerved her. Asha had spent her life on islands and on ships. The sea was never silent. The sound of the waves washing against a rocky shore was in her blood, but there were no waves at Deepwood Motte … only the trees, the endless trees, soldier pines and sentinels, beech and ash and ancient oaks, chestnut trees and ironwoods and firs. The sound they made was softer than the sea, and she heard it only when the wind was blowing; then the sighing seemed to come from all around her, as if the trees were whispering to one another in some language that she could not understand.

Tonight the whispering seemed louder than before. A rush of dead brown leaves, Asha told herself, bare branches creaking in the wind. She turned away from the window, away from the woods. I need a deck beneath my feet again. Or failing that, some food in my belly. She'd had too much wine tonight, but too little bread and none of that great bloody roast.

...

A Dance with Dragons - The Wayward Bride

Tall soldier pines and gnarled old oaks closed in around them. Deepwood was aptly named. The trees were huge and dark, somehow threatening. Their limbs wove through one another and creaked with every breath of wind, and their higher branches scratched at the face of the moon. The sooner we are shut of here, the better I will like it, Asha thought. The trees hate us all, deep in their wooden hearts.

They pressed on south and southwest, until the wooden towers of Deepwood Motte were lost to sight and the sounds of trumpets had been swallowed by the woods. The wolves have their castle back, she thought, perhaps they will be content to let us go.

Although Asha at first declares that the sea and the wood are opposed to each other, as one reads further her assertion deconstructs itself so that the wood increasingly resembles the sea.  At first she claims the woods are too quiet vs. the sea waves which are reassuringly loud.  However, then she contradicts herself by observing that the wood is so creepy precisely because it is never silent -- in fact she hears the trees whispering incessantly to one another as if plotting against her in some foreign language which unnerves her.  

'Whispering' is a code word for greenseers; the foreign language they speak is the 'True Tongue' or the 'song of the earth'.  Note how all the trees are implicated in the northern conspiracy, including soldier pines, sentinels, beech, ash, oaks, chestnuts and firs, so it's not just the weirwoods.  Interestingly, it's suggested that the 'heart trees' are not the only trees with hearts and thoughts, judging from her intuition 'the trees [including the aforementioned 'soldier pines' and 'gnarled oaks'] hate us all, deep in their wooden hearts'!  

 By the end of the passage, being 'swallowed' by the woods of 'Deepwood Motte' is like being drowned in a deep green sea.  By the way, it's also not true that there are 'no waves at Deepwood Motte':

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A Dance with Dragons - The Wayward Bride

"To the walls," Asha Greyjoy told her men. She turned her own steps for the watchtower, with Tris Botley right behind her.

The wooden watchtower was the tallest thing this side of the mountains, rising twenty feet above the biggest sentinels and soldier pines in the surrounding woods. "There, Captain," said Cromm, when she made the platform. Asha saw only trees and shadows, the moonlit hills and the snowy peaks beyond. Then she realized that trees were creeping closer. "Oho," she laughed, "these mountain goats have cloaked themselves in pine boughs." The woods were on the move, creeping toward the castle like a slow green tide. She thought back to a tale she had heard as a child, about the children of the forest and their battles with the First Men, when the greenseers turned the trees to warriors.

"We cannot fight so many," Tris Botley said.

The forest surrounding the watchtower is turned into a sea ('Deepwood' is literally deep!), in turn transforming the watchtower into an island or lighthouse.

'A green tide is rising...when the greenseers turned the trees to warriors.'  Similarly, the white walkers, who may be an arm of the greenseer army, represent a tide on the uprise:

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A Feast for Crows - Samwell I

"No. I could read the books, but . . . a m-maester must be a healer and b-b-blood makes me faint." He held out a shaky hand for Jon to see. "I'm Sam the Scared, not Sam the Slayer."

"Scared? Of what? The chidings of old men? Sam, you saw the wights come swarming up the Fist, a tide of living dead men with black hands and bright blue eyes. You slew an Other."

"It was the d-d-d-dragonglass, not me."

While all trees may be implicated, the greenseers direct operations from the central command hub of the weirwood network.  The 'green tide' or 'green sea' conjured by the 'green seers' thus proceeds from the weirwoods, the leaves of which are frequently described as hands 'waving'...evoking both the instrumentality of the greenseers (including their hands literally waving, e.g. when the leaf drifts down brushing against Theon's forehead as an extension of Bran's hand, and the connotation of 'Hands' of kings issuing commands) and the water magic (sea waves) involved.  Remember the Hammer of the Waters...greenseer magic is green sea magic!

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A Storm of Swords - Samwell III

He turned back to the weirwood and studied the carved face a moment. It is not the face we saw, he admitted to himself. The tree's not half as big as the one at Whitetree. The red eyes wept blood, and he didn't remember that either. Clumsily, Sam sank to his knees. "Old gods, hear my prayer. The Seven were my father's gods but I said my words to you when I joined the Watch. Help us now. I fear we might be lost. We're hungry too, and so cold. I don't know what gods I believe in now, but . . . please, if you're there, help us. Gilly has a little son." That was all that he could think to say. The dusk was deepening, the leaves of the weirwood rustling softly, waving like a thousand blood-red hands. Whether Jon's gods had heard him or not he could not say.

A Dance with Dragons - A Ghost in Winterfell

The old gods, he thought. They know me. They know my name. I was Theon of House Greyjoy. I was a ward of Eddard Stark, a friend and brother to his children. "Please." He fell to his knees. "A sword, that's all I ask. Let me die as Theon, not as Reek." Tears trickled down his cheeks, impossibly warm. "I was ironborn. A son … a son of Pyke, of the islands."

A leaf drifted down from above, brushed his brow, and landed in the pool. It floated on the water, red, five-fingered, like a bloody hand. "… Bran," the tree murmured.

They know. The gods know. They saw what I did. And for one strange moment it seemed as if it were Bran's face carved into the pale trunk of the weirwood, staring down at him with eyes red and wise and sad. Bran's ghost, he thought, but that was madness. Why should Bran want to haunt him?

 

On 11/14/2016 at 11:54 AM, The Fattest Leech said:

A Sansa is a type of apple too. How far did the Sansa apple fall from the tree?

That's a good point, considering Sansa is torn in her identity and allegiance between two fathers -- Ned Stark and Peter Baelish:

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A Feast for Crows - Alayne I

"Bronze Yohn knows me," she reminded him. "He was a guest at Winterfell when his son rode north to take the black." She had fallen wildly in love with Ser Waymar, she remembered dimly, but that was a lifetime ago, when she was a stupid little girl. "And that was not the only time. Lord Royce saw . . . he saw Sansa Stark again at King's Landing, during the Hand's tourney."

Petyr put a finger under her chin. "That Royce glimpsed this pretty face I do not doubt, but it was one face in a thousand. A man fighting in a tourney has more to concern him than some child in the crowd. And at Winterfell, Sansa was a little girl with auburn hair. My daughter is a maiden tall and fair, and her hair is chestnut. Men see what they expect to see, Alayne." He kissed her nose. "Have Maddy lay a fire in the solar. I shall receive our Lords Declarant there."

"Not the High Hall?"

 

On 11/14/2016 at 11:54 AM, The Fattest Leech said:

 A Sansa is a type of apple too. How far did the Sansa apple fall from the tree? https://www.orangepippin.com/apples/sansa

Sansa also has some oak figures in her arc. Here, and many mirror some of the experiences that Arya and Bran have such as a dress, a bole/bowl of an oak and eating an oak and not wanting to wretch. 

Rickon????:dunno:

Jon often describes the Wall as guarded by oak and ash sentinels.

And there's the tale of the 79 sentinel deserters who are said to be encased in the Wall:

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A Storm of Swords - Bran IV

That was two centuries past, though. Now Deep Lake stood as empty as the castle it had replaced, and the Nightfort . . .

"There are ghosts here," Bran said. Hodor had heard all the stories before, but Jojen might not have. "Old ghosts, from before the Old King, even before Aegon the Dragon, seventy-nine deserters who went south to be outlaws. One was Lord Ryswell's youngest son, so when they reached the barrowlands they sought shelter at his castle, but Lord Ryswell took them captive and returned them to the Nightfort. The Lord Commander had holes hewn in the top of the Wall and he put the deserters in them and sealed them up alive in the ice. They have spears and horns and they all face north. The seventy-nine sentinels, they're called. They left their posts in life, so in death their watch goes on forever. Years later, when Lord Ryswell was old and dying, he had himself carried to the Nightfort so he could take the black and stand beside his son. He'd sent him back to the Wall for honor's sake, but he loved him still, so he came to share his watch."

 

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Yggdrasil, the World Tree in Viking mythology, grew on an island surrounded by the ocean, in the depths of which the World Serpent lay.

  • possibly Jon in his current state, surrounded by the Free Folk- who are represented as ships in a sea for several reasons I won't get into here and now.

The comparison of free folk to ships is intriguing -- please do get into the reasons, or at least provide me the quote (I've tried but can't find it)!  In addition to Jon, Bran is a possible candidate for 'the world tree...an island surrounded by ocean' harking back to the description of the Winterfell godswood as 'an island in the sea of chaos.'  The 'World Serpent' coiled at the base of the tree could either be Bran or Bloodraven (he's a dragon chained to a tree, after all), or even Jon as Targaryen bastard.

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Game of Thrones - Bran VI

The godswood was an island of peace in the sea of chaos that Winterfell had become. Hodor made his way through the dense stands of oak and ironwood and sentinels, to the still pool beside the heart tree. He stopped under the gnarled limbs of the weirwood, humming. Bran reached up over his head and pulled himself out of his seat, drawing the dead weight of his legs up through the holes in the wicker basket. He hung for a moment, dangling, the dark red leaves brushing against his face, until Hodor lifted him and lowered him to the smooth stone beside the water. "I want to be by myself for a while," he said. "You go soak. Go to the pools."

 

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This ash tree's trunk reached up to the heavens, and its boughs spread out over all the countries of the Earth. Its roots reached down into the Underworld.

  • Yup. We have been to the Underworld with Jon in his crypt dreams and when Ygritte tempted him to stay with her in the Underworld with Gendel's children in the hot springs.
  • This could also be Jon in his current state and his warg consciousness taking over (like Varamyer prologue) and he could have his interaction with Bran courtesy of the Weirwood... if he is taken to the ring of nine Weirwoods for any sort of ritual/burial/etc. The number 9 is important because in Odin stories, he hung himself for nine days, and there is that ring of nine weirwoods where Jon took his oaths and found the first batch of wildlings and brought them to the wall.
  • "Up to the heavens"... could this be a connection to Sansa high up in the Eyrie, or to her religious aspect???

 

The tree's widespread influence is reminiscent of the weirwood network and greenseers, so again more likely to be representative of Bloodraven and Bran than Jon, although each of the main characters undergoes a similar 'Azor Ahai' heroic journey of which 'reaching up to the heavens' to steal the fire of the gods or 'fly' etc. is emblematic:

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A Game of Thrones - Bran II

As angry as he was, his father could not help but laugh. "You're not my son," he told Bran when they fetched him down, "you're a squirrel. So be it. If you must climb, then climb, but try not to let your mother see you."

Bran did his best, although he did not think he ever really fooled her. Since his father would not forbid it, she turned to others. Old Nan told him a story about a bad little boy who climbed too high and was struck down by lightning, and how afterward the crows came to peck out his eyes. Bran was not impressed. There were crows' nests atop the broken tower, where no one ever went but him, and sometimes he filled his pockets with corn before he climbed up there and the crows ate it right out of his hand. None of them had ever shown the slightest bit of interest in pecking out his eyes.

The number 9 of the weirwood circle echoes the 9 black iron swords/spikes (ravenry) on a bronze circlet (astronomy) of the misplaced crown of the King of Winter.

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A squirrel ran up and down the tree carrying messages from the serpent gnawing at the roots to the eagle in the canopy, and back.

  • Ned calls Bran a squirrel in the first book. I think this particular squirrel is Bran because of the carrying messages.
  • The eagle is Sansa and her flight? I don't know, but I know there is a connection to Odin and his Blood Eagle and Jon.

Again, the burning eagle is the 'Azor Ahai' motif which is applicable to any number of characters, but especially Jon and Bran:

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A Storm of Swords - Jon X

Then the skinchanger threw back his head and screamed.

The sound was shocking, ear-piercing, thick with agony. Varamyr fell, writhing, and the 'cat was screaming too . . . and high, high in the eastern sky, against the wall of cloud, Jon saw the eagle burning. For a heartbeat it flamed brighter than a star, wreathed in red and gold and orange, its wings beating wildly at the air as if it could fly from the pain. Higher it flew, and higher, and higher still.

 

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A deer fed on the ash leaves and from its antlers flowed the great rivers of the world.

  • This I think is Arya. She has strong Riverland connections to Wenda the White Fawn, and her wolf Nymeria name is associated with historic Nymeria by their connection to river and water.

A magical goat grazed by the tree, and its udders dispensed not milk but mead for the warriors in Odin's Great Hall.

  • There is only one "magical goat" I can think of that is currently connected to Jon in the story that has a huge amount of Norse symbolism as well. Hmmm....

Who is the magical goat?

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The gods held their councils under the canopy of their guardian tree.

  • Jon is the guardian tree? There is a huge amount of symbolism to Shieldhall at Castle Black being connected to this mythology as well.

Again, both Jon and Bran would qualify as protective tree spirits or 'scarecrow' figures.

 

On 11/14/2016 at 10:56 AM, LynnS said:

I think we are just scratching the surface.  We need @ravenous reader to unpack it and add the connections. :D  I have wondered about these three trees for a long time along with their similarities to the three towers at Moat Cailin.  I'm no expert on mythology; but of course I had to check google to see if there is anything interesting.

Hi Lynn!  I wish I could help, but I fear in this I still cannot see the forest for the trees...:)

I agree those three trees --  the 'triple trouble' as articulated by Edd of the ash, the chestnut and the oak -- have some greater symbolic significance beyond the immediate observation of their personification, especially since they occur in a trio which is GRRM's signature way to impress upon us that we ought to take a closer look!  The only thing I'm reasonably sure of is that the first, as we've previously discussed at length, symbolizes Tyrion.  I've reproduced that discussion below for the convenience of those who are unfamiliar with our ideas in that respect:

On 10/19/2016 at 5:21 PM, ravenous reader said:

 There's also this interesting personified tree, which as you've previously highlighted is remarkably suggestive of Tyrion:

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A Dance with Dragons - Jon V

The Lord Steward led the way. Jon rode a few yards back, Dolorous Edd Tollett at his side. Half a mile south of Castle Black, Edd urged his garron close to Jon's and said, "M'lord? Look up there. The big drunkard on the hill."

The drunkard was an ash tree, twisted sideways by centuries of wind. And now it had a face. A solemn mouth, a broken branch for a nose, two eyes carved deep into the trunk, gazing north up the kingsroad, toward the castle and the Wall.

The wildlings brought their gods with them after all.  Jon was not surprised. Men do not give up their gods so easily. The whole pageant that Lady Melisandre had orchestrated beyond the Wall suddenly seemed as empty as a mummer’s farce.

“Looks a bit like you, Edd,” he said, trying to make light of it.

 “Aye, m’lord. I don’t have leaves growing out my nose, but elsewise … Lady Melisandre won’t be happy.”

 “She’s not like to see it. See that no one tells her.”

 “She sees things in those fires, though.”

 “Smoke and cinders.”

  “And people burning. Me, most like. With leaves up my nose. I always feared I’d burn, but I was hoping to die first.”

Here again, it's evident GRRM can't get enough of rolling with that tree animation -- and tree animation means 'weirwood net' and 'greenseers,' perhaps even the Others, by extension.  Edd is compared to the tree, so the tree has a 'dolorous' expression, ha ha!  Edd and Jon then engage in a bit of 'northern conspiracy' with one another in order to ensure that the tree stays hidden from Melisandre.  What does Tyrion have to do with 'northern conspiracy' and 'weirwood net'?

Given the 'broken branch for a nose,' posture 'twisted sideways,' and of course the drunkenness, it's difficult not to think about Tyrion, who is thereby affiliated with the old gods very mysteriously.  I like how it's referred to initially as a 'big drunkard' so as one reads one immediately assumes it's a person, before the reveal in the next paragraph that it's actually an ash tree (like the mythological world tree 'Ygddrasil' the obvious inspiration behind GRRM's weirwood mythos). The description of a  'big drunkard on a hill' perhaps refers both to his preferred alias 'Hugor Hill' as well as Tyrion's tendency, despite his compromised physical stature, to nevertheless 'cast a giant/long shadow' and tower over others in all corners of the kingdoms.  What do you make of this northern old gods association with Tyrion?  The tree gazes fixedly in one direction 'north up the kingsroad, toward the castle and the Wall.'  Does Tyrion's ultimate destiny lie in the north?  On his first trip to the Wall with Jon, he seemed almost 'unnaturally' compelled to make the trip there, as if something or someone were urging him forth (and north...sorry, groanworthy 'punning'!).  And, what are we to make of 'up the kingsroad'...Tyrion as king himself, or paving the way for another, to whom he would offer a supportive role perhaps ending up as Hand?  

On a side note, I wonder why GRRM is making such a song and dance about the 'leaves growing out of the nose,' 'burning leaves up the nose'...  Via the repetition of the phrase, he seems to want to impress this on us, hinting at some kind of symbolism.  Given the association of 'rustling' enabling the voice of the old gods/Bran/Bloodraven, together with Tyrion's potential third-eye initiation starting with losing his nose on the Blackwater and culminating with the shipwreck and Valyrian expedition, I was thinking GRRM was perhaps hinting at Tyrion 'speaking out of his nose.'  Considering he's the drunk tree, and would therefore be slurring his words, a nasal tone would make sense (of course Tyrion also has to do things a little bit differently to the other trees who are content to rustle decorously and speak via their mouths...)!  Another more somber thought is whether this is foreshadowing of Tyrion losing his tongue (it does tend to get him into trouble), and therefore being forced symbolically to 'speak through his nose'?

After researching the potential meanings of the idiom 'to speak out of ones nose,' I actually found this article.

Herewith an intriguing excerpt:

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In standard Yiddish, without the Brooklyn accent, a “fumfah” is a fonfer, *a noun formed from the verb *fonfen. *The verb’s basic meaning is to speak nasally, so that a *fonfer *is someone who talks through his nose or as if his nose were stuffed. The word seems to have no Germanic, Slavic or Hebrew antecedents and is almost certainly onomatopoetic in origin, like the similar English verb “to humph.” Indeed, *fonfen *is one of those relatively rare words that can be uttered intelligibly without opening one’s mouth. Mrs. Jacobson’s husband’s understanding of *fonfer is close to this.

But *fonfen *and *fonfer *also have a gamut of secondary meanings. As listed by Leo Rosten in his always delightful and usually reliable “The Joys of Yiddish,” these are “a double-talker”; “a man who is lazy, slow, ‘goofs off’”; “one who does not deliver what he promises”; “a shady, petty deceiver”; “one who cheats”; “one who goes through the motions of a thing without intending to perform to his capacity or your proper expectations”; “a boaster, full of bravado”; “a specialist in hot air, baloney — a trumpeter of hollow promises.”

All these meanings are closely related, as is the Yiddish-derived British slang term of “a fonfen” in the sense of a con man’s spiel — but what does any of them have to do with speaking through the nose? I was pondering this question when, looking at the definition of fonfen *(“to snuffle, speak through the nose”) in the 1928 edition of Alexander Harkavy’s Yiddish-Hebrew-English Dictionary, I noticed next to it a most curious item: “Fonfe*: A lighted paper cone for blowing smoke into a person’s nose. (A trick.)”

A lighted paper cone for blowing smoke into a person’s nose as a trick? What on earth was Harkavy talking about?

And then it struck me all at once: Harkavy was confused. The paper cone was for blowing smoke not into the nose (it was fonfen’s meaning of “to nasalize” that led him astray), but into the ear

If you're interested in hearing about this particular 'trick,' see the rest of the article.  Anyway, the description of a 'fonfen' or 'fonfer' certainly sounds a lot like Tyrion, the smooth-talking double-talking trickster.  Do you think GRRM would be aware of this Yiddish expression?  Given that GRRM grew up in New Jersey, he might have heard it, with his keen ear for language, music and culture.

On 10/19/2016 at 8:30 PM, LynnS said:

What a fascinating post Ravenous Reader!  I haven't heard that expression.  What comes to mind immediately is Lann the Clever and Jaime's wierwood stump dream with Cersei, Tywin, Joffrey and the shades of all their ancestors going back to Lann the Clever.  Blowing smoke in someone's ear might be a necessary survival skill for someone who was decanted from a liquor barrel, has a price on his head and no friends to speak of . 

I'm reminded that the drunken ash tree doesn't appear in isolation but in association with the 'Old Chestnut' tree like an old man with Mormont's raven perched on it's shoulder.  (Which then transfers it's perch to Jon's shoulder.) Lastly the Oak Tree with a man's raging face.

This threesome is echoed in the towers at Moat Cailin:  the drunken tower, the children's tower with it's broken crennelated crown and the gatehouse tower with it's tree hung with ghost moss (the Black Gate?). 

The drunken god motif is picked up again with Penny and Tyrion at the Fountain of the Drunken God next to the statue of Trios where we hear the story of the dwarf carved into three pieces and fed into the three mouths of Trios.  Except for the head, which is missing.

Because I tend to think the first tree represents Tyrion, I'm leaning away from the idea of the three trees signifying Jon's trajectory alone.  Assuming the first symbolizes Tyrion, then the implication is that the remaining two trees represent two different people.  The chestnut may be Sansa, as some have suggested, especially since with her transformation into 'Alayne Stone' she has 'chestnut' instead of 'auburn' hair (see my reply to Leech above).  However, I'm more inclined to think of the chestnut with a raven in its branches overseeing the bridge as Bran or Bloodraven.  Bran is consistently associated with bridges and bridging divides-- bridging different times, places, persons, 'languages' is greenseeing in a nutshell. When Ned and Cat first discuss plans for Bran in AGOT, Ned says of Bran that he 'can bridge that distance.'   Then there's that recurring image of Bran perched like a bird on the bridge connecting the rookery and belltower at Winterfell, which still remains to be unpacked; and there's the bridge over the abyss in Bloodraven's cavern which Bran crosses when he's skinchanging Hodor.  I think the avenging uprooted oak is Jon or Arya, probably Jon considering the fresh wounds carved into the tree ('oak' is also a pun on 'oke' or 'bloke,' slang for male person, 'bloke' in turn being etymologically derived from tree trunk/log/block, as in 'a chip off the old block' which essentially means the same as 'the apple doesn't fall far from the tree'!)

An animated tree who has been uprooted and transformed into a rampaging warrior -- very Tolkienesque -- is also a visual representation of being resurrected from the dead. That's another thing these three trees and people have in common:  each in his way is an 'Azor Ahai' type figure.  First, Tyrion -- the drunken ash on the hill --survived a near-drowning in the magical river in Valyria and can be said to have arisen from the ashes (the river Ash is also a magical river in Asshai).  This metaphor is even richer if one accepts that he is a dragon who has been awoken (yes, even I will admit that A+J=T has its compelling aspects!)  His 'Azor Ahai' alter-egos Hugor Hill and Lann the Clever respectively pulled down the stars and stole the gold from the sun.  What will Tyrion steal -- a dragon..?!  Second, Bran -- the ravenous chestnut bridgekeeper -- miraculously survived his fall configured as a lightning strike and emerged 'harder and stronger' from his coma (which I've previously argued is a type of drowning, drowning being a metaphor for greenseer transformation and greenseeing in general).  If he watches over the bridge which spans the icy stream, and we've been told 'time is a river,' then Bran can span time.  This bridging, straddling or spanning capacity of Bran's is visually represented by the idea of 'flying'; hence, the raven bridges the distance by flying over to Jon.  Third, we have Jon -- the avenging kingly oak  -- whom we expect to be magically resurrected following his assassination.  In the context of 'secret Targs,' it's interesting that this particular tree is angry, considering that 'waking the dragon' has among its many connotations being aroused to anger!  These three characters would represent the champions of the north, of which I find Tyrion the most intriguing.  Perhaps that's why he's depicted 'snarling' 'wolfishly' amidst the dragons..? 

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A Game of Thrones - Tyrion I

His brother's smile curdled like sour milk. "Tyrion, my sweet brother," he said darkly, "there are times when you give me cause to wonder whose side you are on."

Tyrion's mouth was full of bread and fish. He took a swallow of strong black beer to wash it all down, and grinned up wolfishly at Jaime. "Why, Jaime, my sweet brother," he said, "you wound me. You know how much I love my family."

If the second tree is Bloodraven,  then it also means that all three champions of the north would be part-Targaryen/part-'first men' bastards, however counter-intuitive that seems.  

If the three trees correlate with the three towers at Moat Cailin, with the ash, chestnut and oak corresponding to the drunken, gatehouse and children's towers respectively, then Tyrion (the drunk, where the 'south meets the west'), Bran (the bridge, gate, tree growing out, 'ghostskin', the 'north side') and Jon (the broken crown) might represent the triumvirate who will be instrumental in providing resistance in the war to come (Moat Cailin traditionally being the place to make a last stand due to its strategic location at the Neck, 'the key to the kingdom').  Alternatively, one might make an argument for the 'Children's Tower' representing Bran rather than Jon (child greenseer, the slender tower like the slender sapling, Bran's avatar) and the 'Gatehouse Tower' representing Jon rather than Bran (the 'ghost skin', 'boasted a few feet of standing wall', the black gate of the night fort ).

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The World of Ice and Fire - Ancient History: The Coming of First Men

The hunters among the children—their wood dancers—became their warriors as well, but for all their secret arts of tree and leaf, they could only slow the First Men in their advance. The greenseers employed their arts, and tales say that they could call the beasts of marsh, forest, and air to fight on their behalf: direwolves and monstrous snowbears, cave lions and eagles, mammoths and serpents, and more. But the First Men proved too powerful, and the children are said to have been driven to a desperate act.

Legend says that the great floods that broke the land bridge that is now the Broken Arm and made the Neck a swamp were the work of the greenseers, who gathered at Moat Cailin to work dark magic. Some contest this, however: the First Men were already in Westeros when this occurred, and stemming the tide from the east would do little more than slow their progress. Moreover, such power is beyond even what the greenseers are traditionally said to have been capable of...and even those accounts appear exaggerated. It is likelier that the inundation of the Neck and the breaking of the Arm were natural events, possibly caused by a natural sinking of the land. What became of Valyria is well-known, and in the Iron Islands, the castle of Pyke sits on stacks of stone that were once part of the greater island before segments of it crumbled into the sea.

 

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A Game of Thrones - Catelyn VIII

Just beyond, through the mists, she glimpsed the walls and towers of Moat Cailin … or what remained of them. Immense blocks of black basalt, each as large as a crofter's cottage, lay scattered and tumbled like a child's wooden blocks, half-sunk in the soft boggy soil. Nothing else remained of a curtain wall that had once stood as high as Winterfell's. The wooden keep was gone entirely, rotted away a thousand years past, with not so much as a timber to mark where it had stood. All that was left of the great stronghold of the First Men were three towers … three where there had once been twenty, if the taletellers could be believed.

The Gatehouse Tower looked sound enough, and even boasted a few feet of standing wall to either side of it. The Drunkard's Tower, off in the bog where the south and west walls had once met, leaned like a man about to spew a bellyful of wine into the gutter. And the tall, slender Children's Tower, where legend said the children of the forest had once called upon their nameless gods to send the hammer of the waters, had lost half its crown. It looked as if some great beast had taken a bite out of the crenellations along the tower top, and spit the rubble across the bog. All three towers were green with moss. A tree was growing out between the stones on the north side of the Gatehouse Tower, its gnarled limbs festooned with ropy white blankets of ghostskin.

"Gods have mercy," Ser Brynden exclaimed when he saw what lay before them. "This is Moat Cailin? It's no more than a—"

"—death trap," Catelyn finished. "I know how it looks, Uncle. I thought the same the first time I saw it, but Ned assured me that this ruin is more formidable than it seems. The three surviving towers command the causeway from all sides, and any enemy must pass between them. The bogs here are impenetrable, full of quicksands and suckholes and teeming with snakes. To assault any of the towers, an army would need to wade through waist-deep black muck, cross a moat full of lizard-lions, and scale walls slimy with moss, all the while exposing themselves to fire from archers in the other towers." She gave her uncle a grim smile. "And when night falls, there are said to be ghosts, cold vengeful spirits of the north who hunger for southron blood."

 

A Game of Thrones - Catelyn VIII

"If he comes so far, but no one thinks he will," Robb said. "I've sent word to Howland Reed, Father's old friend at Greywater Watch. If the Lannisters come up the Neck, the crannogmen will bleed them every step of the way, but Galbart Glover says Lord Tywin is too smart for that, and Roose Bolton agrees. He'll stay close to the Trident, they believe, taking the castles of the river lords one by one, until Riverrun stands alone. We need to march south to meet him."

The very idea of it chilled Catelyn to the bone. What chance would a fifteen-year-old boy have against seasoned battle commanders like Jaime and Tywin Lannister? "Is that wise? You are strongly placed here. It's said that the old Kings in the North could stand at Moat Cailin and throw back hosts ten times the size of their own."

"Yes, but our food and supplies are running low, and this is not land we can live off easily. We've been waiting for Lord Manderly, but now that his sons have joined us, we need to march."

 

The 'Gatehouse Tower' combines elements of both Bloodraven and Bran:

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A Dance with Dragons - Bran II

Before them a pale lord in ebon finery sat dreaming in a tangled nest of roots, a woven weirwood throne that embraced his withered limbs as a mother does a child.

His body was so skeletal and his clothes so rotted that at first Bran took him for another corpse, a dead man propped up so long that the roots had grown over him, under him, and through him. What skin the corpse lord showed was white, save for a bloody blotch that crept up his neck onto his cheek. His white hair was fine and thin as root hair and long enough to brush against the earthen floor. Roots coiled around his legs like wooden serpents. One burrowed through his breeches into the desiccated flesh of his thigh, to emerge again from his shoulder. A spray of dark red leaves sprouted from his skull, and grey mushrooms spotted his brow. A little skin remained, stretched across his face, tight and hard as white leather, but even that was fraying, and here and there the brown and yellow bone beneath was poking through.

'gnarled limbs' and 'ghostskin'

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A Clash of Kings - Jon VII

A weirwood.

It seemed to sprout from solid rock, its pale roots twisting up from a myriad of fissures and hairline cracks. The tree was slender compared to other weirwoods he had seen, no more than a sapling, yet it was growing as he watched, its limbs thickening as they reached for the sky. Wary, he circled the smooth white trunk until he came to the face. Red eyes looked at him. Fierce eyes they were, yet glad to see him. The weirwood had his brother's face. Had his brother always had three eyes?

Not always, came the silent shout. Not before the crow.

the tree erupting from the rocks...it's highly possible that the blue flower growing from the crevice in the Wall also symbolises Bran not Jon as most people think.

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A Dance with Dragons - Jon XII

Burning shafts hissed upward, trailing tongues of fire. Scarecrow brothers tumbled down, black cloaks ablaze. "Snow," an eagle cried, as foemen scuttled up the ice like spiders. Jon was armored in black ice, but his blade burned red in his fist. As the dead men reached the top of the Wall he sent them down to die again. He slew a greybeard and a beardless boy, a giant, a gaunt man with filed teeth, a girl with thick red hair. Too late he recognized Ygritte. She was gone as quick as she'd appeared.

The world dissolved into a red mist. Jon stabbed and slashed and cut. He hacked down Donal Noye and gutted Deaf Dick Follard. Qhorin Halfhand stumbled to his knees, trying in vain to staunch the flow of blood from his neck. "I am the Lord of Winterfell," Jon screamed. It was Robb before him now, his hair wet with melting snow. Longclaw took his head off. Then a gnarled hand seized Jon roughly by the shoulder. He whirled …

… and woke with a raven pecking at his chest. "Snow," the bird cried. Jon swatted at it. The raven shrieked its displeasure and flapped up to a bedpost to glare down balefully at him through the predawn gloom.

 

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A Game of Thrones - Bran II

The rooftops of Winterfell were Bran's second home. His mother often said that Bran could climb before he could walk. Bran could not remember when he first learned to walk, but he could not remember when he started to climb either, so he supposed it must be true.

To a boy, Winterfell was a grey stone labyrinth of walls and towers and courtyards and tunnels spreading out in all directions. In the older parts of the castle, the halls slanted up and down so that you couldn't even be sure what floor you were on. The place had grown over the centuries like some monstrous stone tree, Maester Luwin told him once, and its branches were gnarled and thick and twisted, its roots sunk deep into the earth.

When he got out from under it and scrambled up near the sky, Bran could see all of Winterfell in a glance. He liked the way it looked, spread out beneath him, only birds wheeling over his head while all the life of the castle went on below. Bran could perch for hours among the shapeless, rain-worn gargoyles that brooded over the First Keep, watching it all: the men drilling with wood and steel in the yard, the cooks tending their vegetables in the glass garden, restless dogs running back and forth in the kennels, the silence of the godswood, the girls gossiping beside the washing well. It made him feel like he was lord of the castle, in a way even Robb would never know.

 

 

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In Roman mythology, chestnuts are referred to Zeus' acorns (or apples); something imported from the east. Oak trees being the preferred tree of Zeus with the faithful gathering around the oak tree.  The word acorn can be broken down to ack and corn.  We have Mormont's raven sitting on a branch of the old chestnut tree and it flies over to Jon when he appears.  Oh my...  corn, corn, corn and Jon Snow corn king, to quote the raven.

The oak tree is associated with kings and generals:

Ancient kings presented themselves as the personifications of these gods, taking on the responsibility not only for success in battle but also the fertility of the land, which relied on rainfall. They wore crowns of oak leaves, as a symbol of the god they represented as kings on Earth. Similarly, successful Roman commanders were presented with crowns of oak leaves during their victory parades, and oak leaves have continued as decorative icons of military prowess to the present day. Oak leaves' connection with rainfall also survived in more recent folklore in a variety of similar rhymes about which tree's leaves appeared first, such as the Irish saying:

If the oak before the ash,
Then we'll only have a splash.
If the ash before the oak,
Then we'll surely have a soak!

http://treesforlife.org.uk/forest/mythology-folklore/oak/

Jon's party seeing the ash before  the oak isn't a good sign depending on the direction you're travelling.  Then we have the drunken ash tree surely representing Tyrion with the mythology of ash used as weapons; bows, spears.    The right and left hand of Bloodraven if you will and the prediction of a deluge.  Something that also occured at Moat Cailin to some extent at one time.

That's a great catch!  So 'seeing the ash before the oak' predicts 'a soak'!  Supports my 'green see/sea' idea, whereby tree magic and water magic are connected at the source.  We can see this relationship for example in the etymology of 'weir' which is a dam, implying the magic associated with the weirwood roots may be vital in regulating sea levels and the balance of the seasons.  In the endgame, the greenseers might harness water magic again as they might have done previously in summoning the Hammer of the Waters, unleashing a flood of epic proportions.  This time the flood is coming from the north and the Wall damming the pent-up 'waters' behind is likely to give way.

On 11/14/2016 at 2:07 PM, LynnS said:

I think Bloodraven may be referring to Bran as the oak tree.  The oak trees seem be the way that the cotf refer to the First Men.  A sort of reverse anthropomorphism.  BR is now more tree than man and a sentient tree might view men as another species of 'tree' who put down their own roots when they came with fire in their fists.  Bran hasn't yet made the transition to become the  wierwood tree; so he is still the oak tree that dreams.    The weirwood remembers the oak from beginning to end, from acorn (conception) to stump (death).   The First Men are close to the old gods; still pray to them... so the weirwood remembers the oak in that regard as well.

While that's an interesting idea generally, I think it's an unlikely explanation in this particular instance, considering the way the sentence is written implies the oaks remember the violence committed against them by the First Men who came with fire in their fists and indiscriminately laid waste to them by burning them down.  If the oaks were equivalent to the First Men, that wouldn't make sense.  

Let's parse that passage you quoted:

This place belongs to the old gods still . . . they linger here as I do, shrunken and feeble but not yet dead. Nor do they love the flames. For the oak recalls the acorn, the acorn dreams the oak, the stump lives in them both. And they remember when the First Men came with fire in their fists.   She drank the last of the wine in four long swallows, flung the skin aside, and pointed her stick at Lord Beric. "I'll have my payment now. I'll have the song you promised me."

The ambiguity comes in with the 'they' I've highlighted in red.  The previous 'they' as in 'nor do they love the flames...they linger' seems to refer to the old gods.  Then the oak, the acorn and the stump are mentioned, who together also constitute a 'they' immediately preceding the sentence in question.  The 'they remember' could therefore refer to this triumvirate (oak, acorn, stump), especially since it's specified that the oak 'recalls' which is essentially a synonym for 'remember'.

That said, I still think your idea has merit, since the oaks have been transformed by fire. The oak is considered the sacred tree of Zeus and Thor  (thunder and lightning gods), not least because it is the tree most likely to be struck by lightning, which is considered to be a sacred event, not merely a destructive one ('lightbringer' as tree struck by lightning).  Perhaps the oaks transformed by fire could be interpreted as the Children-First Men union or alternatively First Men-Targaryen mating (e.g. Blackwood+Targaryen=Bloodraven; Stark+Targaryen=Jon; Lannister+Targaryen=Tyrion and even Stark+Tully=Bran...see below:)

Targaryen blood via Lothston/Whent line

The clue the Tullys like Mad Danelle Lothston have dragon blood is given by their flaming red hair: yes, indeed, Bran is 'kissed by fire'!

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A Game of Thrones - Daenerys III

Silvery-wet hair tumbled across her eyes as Dany turned her head, curious. "The moon?"

"He told me the moon was an egg, Khaleesi," the Lysene girl said. "Once there were two moons in the sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked from the heat. A thousand thousand dragons poured forth, and drank the fire of the sun. That is why dragons breathe flame. One day the other moon will kiss the sun too, and then it will crack and the dragons will return."

 

A Game of Thrones - Arya I

"A shade more exhausting than needlework," Jon observed.

"A shade more fun than needlework," Arya gave back at him. Jon grinned, reached over, and messed up her hair. Arya flushed. They had always been close. Jon had their father's face, as she did. They were the only ones. Robb and Sansa and Bran and even little Rickon all took after the Tullys, with easy smiles and fire in their hair. When Arya had been little, she had been afraid that meant that she was a bastard too. It had been Jon she had gone to in her fear, and Jon who had reassured her.

 

A Dance with Dragons - Bran I

No, the boy whispered, we have another pack. Lady's dead and maybe Grey Wind too, but somewhere there's still Shaggydog and Nymeria and Ghost. Remember Ghost?

Falling snow and feasting wolves began to dim. Warmth beat against his face, comforting as a mother's kisses. Fire, he thought, smoke. His nose twitched to the smell of roasting meat. And then the forest fell away, and he was back in the longhall again, back in his broken body, staring at a fire. Meera Reed was turning a chunk of raw red flesh above the flames, letting it char and spit. "Just in time," she said. Bran rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand and wriggled backwards against the wall to sit. "You almost slept through supper. The ranger found a sow."

 

A Clash of Kings - Theon V

Yet even then, he could not sleep.

Come dawn, he dressed and went outside, to walk along the outer walls. A brisk autumn wind was swirling through the battlements. It reddened his cheeks and stung his eyes. He watched the forest go from grey to green below him as light filtered through the silent trees. On his left he could see tower tops above the inner wall, their roofs gilded by the rising sun. The red leaves of the weirwood were a blaze of flame among the green. Ned Stark's tree, he thought, and Stark's wood, Stark's castle, Stark's sword, Stark's gods. This is their place, not mine. I am a Greyjoy of Pyke, born to paint a kraken on my shield and sail the great salt sea. I should have gone with Asha.

This is a fun site to browse for tree lore from which I've taken the following:

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Oak - Duir - 
Quercus

Choose the Oak of the Sun
-old Scottish rhyme

Of all the trees in Britain and Ireland the oak is considered king. Famed for its endurance and longevity, even today it is synonymous with strength and steadfastness in the popular mind. John Evelyn in his Sylva, Or a Discourse of Forest-Trees, calls it the ‘pride and glory of the forest’, and in The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, Evans-Wenze proclaims that ‘the oak is pre-eminently the holy tree of Europe’. In the Classical world it was regarded as the Tree of Life as its deep roots penetrate as deep into the Underworld as its branches soar to the sky, and it was held sacred to Zeus and Jupiter. In Scandinavia the oak was the tree of the Thunder-God, Thor, as it was to his Finnish counterpart, Jumala.

Its name derives from the Anglo-Saxon word, ac, but in Irish the word is 'daur', and in Welsh 'dar' or 'derw', probably cognate with the Greek, 'drus'. Some scholars consider this the origin of the term 'Druid’, since Druids have always been associated with sacred groves, and particularly oak forests. Dense forests of oak once covered most of Northern Europe in those days, so it is not surprising to find this tree help most sacred by people who ‘live in oak forests, used oak timber for building, oak sticks for fuel, and oak acorns for food and fodder.’ (1) Combined with the Indo-European root ‘wid’: to know, ‘Druid’ may have referred to those with ‘knowledge of the oak’, the ‘Wise Ones of the Oakwood’. The Sanskrit word, ‘Duir’, gave rise both to the word for oak and the English word ‘door’, which suggests that this tree stands as an opening into greater wisdom, perhaps an entryway into the otherworld itself.

We first learn about the oak as sacred to the Druids in the well-known passage from the writings of Pliny, who lived in Gaul during the 1st century CE. He writes that the Druids performed all their religious rites in oak-groves, where they gathered mistletoe from the trees with a golden sickle. Strabo also describes three Galatian tribes (Celts living in Asia Minor) as holding their councils at a place called, ‘Drunemeton’, the ‘oak grove sanctuary’. The 2nd century Maximus of Tyre, describes the Celts as worshipping Zeus-- probably referring to the Romano-Celtic god of thunder, Taranis- as a tall oak tree. Elsewhere we learn that the Druids of Gaul ate acorns as a way of divining the future. Another Roman writer referred to them as ‘Dryads’ whom he defined as ‘those who delight in the oaks’. (2)

We can never know for sure whether the Druids of the British Isles and Ireland practiced their religion in oak-groves like their continental cousins, but it seems likely. We know that the insular Celts worshipped in groves, or ‘nematon’, and the evidence from Ireland in particular makes it likely that these were oaks. Ireland was covered with oak trees, whose presence still echoes down the centuries in place names such as Derry, Derrylanan, Derrybawn (whiteoak), Derrykeighan and, of course, Londonderry, once Derry Calgagh, the oakwood of a fierce warrior of that name.

Many early Christian churches were situated in oak-groves, probably because they were once pagan places of worship. Kildare, where St. Brigid founded her abbey, derives from ‘Cill-dara’, the Church of the Oak. Legend says she loved and blessed a great oak and held it so sacred that no-one dare harm a leaf of it. Under its shade she built her cell (This ties in neatly with pre-Christian tradition, as the pagan goddess Brigid was daughter to the Sun-God Dagda to whom the oak was sacred).

St. Columcille, also known as Columba, whom many believe to have been a Druid before he embraced the new faith, likewise founded churches in an oak-grove at Derry (Doire), the monastery at Durrow (Dairmag, 'the Plain of the Oaks') and a monastery at Kells where he lived under an oak tree. According to the Irish ‘Life of St. Columcille’ a man took some of the bark of his tree to tan his shoes and contracted leprosy as a consequence.

When he was founding the church at Derry, St. Columcille burned down the town and the king's fort in order to eradicate the works or worldly men and sanctify the site for his church. But the fire blazed out of control and he had to pronounce an invocation to save the grove of trees. He loved these trees so much that he built his oratory facing north-south instead of by the usual Christian orientation of east-west so none would be disturbed. He ordered his successors not to touch any tree that might fall, but to let it lie for nine days (the sacred Celtic number) before cutting it up and distributing the wood among the poor. When later in life he lived at the abbey he founded on the Isle of Iona in Scotland, he declared that although he feared death and hell, the sound of an axe in Derry frightened him more.

There were also some places that show traces of pre-Christian groves, however faint. We hear of an oak-grove near Loch Siant in the Isle of Skye that was once held so sacred that no person would dare cut the smallest twig from the trees. Also in Scotland is the sacred oak on the island in Lock Maree. The local story goes that it was once ‘Eilean-a-Mhor-Righ’ (the island of the Great King) who was in fact a pagan god. And in England, the remains of ancient oaks were discovered near the Romano-British temple at Lydney, dedicated to the god Nodons.

Early literature gives more evidence of the importance of the oak to pagan Celts. A great oak was one of the five sacred trees brought to Ireland by the strange being called Trefuilngid Tre-ochair who appeared suddenly at Tara on the day Christ was crucified; an emissary from the otherworld, he bore a branch on which were acorns, apples, nuts and berries which he shook onto the ground. These wondrous fruits were planted into five different parts of Ireland, and from them grew five great trees that oversaw each province until they were blown down by the disapproving winds of the Church in the 7th century. Among these was the great Oak of Mugna which stood in southern Kildare. This 'bile' or sacred tree was celebrated in the Edinburgh Dinnsenchas as:

Mughna's oak-tree without blemish
Whereon were mast and fruit,
Its top was as broad precisely
As the great plain without… (3)

It was said to bear nine hundred bushels of acorns 3 times a year and red apples besides, making its Otherworldly origins clear. The moment the last acorn fell, the first blossom of the year appeared, reminding us of the perpetual cycle of death and rebirth.

Another godlike personage bearing the insignia of the oak us described in The Feast of Bricrui where three famous warriors including Cuchullain take turns in guarding the dun of Curoi while he is away. Two of then fail, then during Cuchullain's watch, a gigantic warrior attacks the settlement who hurls great branches of oak at Cuchullain. After a tremendous battle, Cuchullain defeats him. Later, it becomes apparent that the assailant was Curoi himself, whose other name is Mac Daire - Son of Oaktree. In the course of the story, he also challenges Cuchullain to behead him and to be beheaded himself in return. It is clear that this tale is a forerunner of the mediaeval poem, ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, and the symbolic beheading of the Oak King links these tales with the well-known ritual sacrifice of the old king in the oak-grove of the Nemi which forms the argument of Frazier's The Golden Bough.

The sacrifice at Nemi took place at Summer Solstice, which brings us to the battle between the Oak King personifying the waxing wear, and the Holly King, who ruled the waning year. At Midsummer, as the year began its turn towards the dark again, the Holly was victorious, but at Midwinter, the Oak King defeated the forces of darkness once again, revealing himself as a Vegetation God who must die each year so that Life can be renewed. It is not surprising, then, that images of the Green Man carved in wood and stone in mediaeval churches most frequently show oak leaves growing out of his ears and mouth.

The Oaks connection with sacrifice is again echoed in the Welsh story, Math, son of Mathonwy. The hero Lleu is betrayed and killed, but after his ‘death’ he turns into an eagle and perches atop a magical oak tree on a plain (the place where most sacred trees where situated), where he suffered ‘nine-score hardships’. Lleu's fate reminds us of the famous sacrifice by Odin of ‘himself to himself’ on the great ash-tree, Yggdrasil. With this new facet of the oak’s symbolism revealed, it is clear that the oak's reputation as a tree of strength, abundance and endurance depends on its yearly death and rebirth: unless we align ourselves with the great cycle of Life and Death, there can be no true renewal in springtime.

The oak held its place of honour in the British landscape long after its veneration by the early Celts. John Evelyn told how one great oak was held in such high esteem, that if a bastard was born within its ample shade, neither mother nor child would incur the usual heavy censure of the church or magistrate.

Country-people frequented the oak for its curative powers, which in some places was considered so great that healing could occur simply by walking around the tree and wishing the ailment to be carried off by the first bird alighting on its branches. In Cornwall, a nail driven into an oak cured toothache, while in Wales, rubbing the oak with the palm of your left hand on Midsummer's Day kept you healthy all year. It gave a special virtue to other plants that grew upon its trunk or branches, such as the mistletoe and polypody fern. The herbalist Gerard said, ‘that which growth on the bodies of olde Okes is preferred before the rest: in steede of this most do use that which is found under the Okes....’ (4).

As we noted in the above, the oak is especially the tree of thunder gods in other Northern cultures, and this tradition holds true in Britain also. In Anglo-Saxon times, Thor was known as Thunor and groves of oak-trees were dedicated to him in the south and east of England, the village of Thundersley in Essex originally being one. Like the ash, it is said to ‘court the lightning flash’; lightning is popularly supposed to strike the oak more than any other tree. Such trees often survived the blow and flourished remarkably well, henceforth being known as ‘lightning oaks’. People often took pieces of these trees to put on their houses for good luck. In shamanistic cultures, a person who survived being struck by lightning often became a shaman, for the lightning bolt is seen worldwide as the sudden spiritual illumination that rends the darkness with a terrifying and irrevocable transforming force.

Under Christianity, large oaks often became designated as ‘Holy Oaks’, giving rise to place-names such as Holy Oakes in Leicestershire and Cressage in Shropshire, originally Cristesache, or Christ's Oak. Many English towns today have areas called ‘Gospel Oak’, harking back to the time when an oak marked a parish boundary. Every spring at Rogation-tide, parishioners would circle the boundaries in the ceremony known as 'beating the bounds’ and assemble to hear the gospel read beneath the tree.

Oak-trees have always been regarded as great protectors and guardians of the virtuous. When King Charles II was fleeing from Roundheads after the battle at Worcester, he took refuge in the branches of a great oak, and after his Restoration on May 29th, 1660, this day -also his birthday - was henceforth celebrated as ‘Royal Oak Day’, when loyal subjects wore oak-apples, twigs and leaves in their buttonholes and caps, and decorated their horses with garlands of oak. The immense popularity of this day points very clearly to a pagan origin of this custom, probably connected with the rites of May Day that in many places had been prohibited in the Puritan years because of its sexual associations. As late as the beginning of the 20th century, a Herefordshire resident explained, ‘The 29th of May was our real May Day in Bromyard. You'd see maypoles all the way down Sheep Street decorated with oak boughs and flowers, and people dancing round them, all wearing oak leaves.’ (5)

An oak was often the guardian tree of a family, as in the case of the famous Oak of Errol in Scotland, which was bound up with the good fortune of the Hay family. A nineteenth century descendant of the family described how ‘It was believed that a sprig of the Mistletoe cut by a Hay on Allhallowmas eve, with a new dirk, and after surrounding the tree three times sunwise and pronouncing a certain spell, was a sure charm against the glamour or witchery, and an infallible guard in the day of battle. A spray, gathered in the same manner, was placed in the cradle of infants, and thought to defend them from being changed for elf-bairns by the Fairies.’ (6)

When the root of the oak decayed, then the Hay family would likewise perish, as the old prophecy attributed to Thomas the Rhymer states:

When the mistletoe bats on Errol's aik,
And that aik stands best,
The Hays shall flourish, and their good
grey hawk
Shall not flinch before the blast.
But when the root of the aik decays
And the mistletoe dwines on its withered breast
The grass shall grow on Errol's hearthstone,
And the corbie roup (croak) in the falcon's nest. (7)

Folklorist Ruth L. Tongue tells the Somerset folktale of an oak that helps a girl escape a cruel king, by sending a bough crashing onto his head. The king's men come to fell the tree, but meet with a sorry fate:

Oh they rode in the wood, where the oaken tree stood
To cut down the tree, the oaken tree
Then the tree gave a groan and summoned his own,
For the trees closed about and they never got out
Of the wood, the wonderful wood. (8)

In another tale from the same source, The Vixen and the Oakmen, the oak-tree spirits hide a pursued vixen from hunters and hounds, for ‘they guard all forest beasts’. When the pursuers are gone, the ‘Oakmen’ invite the vixen to ‘Wipe your sore paws in our oaktree rainpool’, which makes her pads heal and her torn fur grow again.

In death, too, the powerful presence of the oak as a living being could be felt. John Aubrey, writing in the 17th century reports:

When an oake is falling, before it falls it gives a kind of shriekes or groanes that may be heard a mile off, as it were the genus of the oake lamenting. E. Wyld, Esq. hath heard it severall times. (9)

A famous mistletoe-bearing oak in Derbyshire had the reputation of being semi-human as late as the 19th century. If its branches were severed, it screamed and bled, and spoke with the voice of prophetic doom. Aubrey also tells of an oak whose mistletoe was cut and sold to some London apothecaries, all of whom met with horrible misfortunes thereafter:

One fell Iamb shortly thereafter; soon after each of the others lost an eye, and he that felled the tree though warned of these misfortunes of the other men, would, notwithstanding, adventure to do it, and shortly afterwards broke his leg; as if the Hamadryads had resolved to take an ample revenge for the injury done to their venerable and sacred oak. (10)

The avenging power of the oak was famous, particularly in Somerset where until recently the oak was regarded with much respect as a tree of formidable power. It was well-known that oaks resented being cut down, so people studiously avoided going near a coppice which sprang from the stumps of the felled trees. Ruth Tongue writes that in 1945 her chauffeur refused to drive past a grove that had been felled in the Second World War. A local story also told of Carming family that came to grief because of disregarding the power of Oak: Carmer and his oldest son were greedy and cut down oaks in a nearby coppice, although they had plenty of wood of their own. The story continues:

‘Trees didn't say nothing - which was bad. If they do talk a bit you do get a warning, but if they'm dead still there's summat bad a-brewing. And zo t'was. Be danged if gurt oak didn 't drop a limb on can and timber and farmer and eldest son. Killed they two stark dead outright, but when the youngest came to rescue the dead the tree rustled fit to deafen he. ‘

The youngest son was spared because he was always respectful to trees, being sure to ask the 'great oak by the gate' if he might go past when he entered the forest, and after he inherited the farm, ‘trees never followed 'n nor closed about 'n, nor let drop branches.’ (11)

These days road protesters fight desperately to save these venerable Old Ones from the bulldozers and other weapons of the war against the Living Earth. I have a fantasy that, just as in C.S. Lewis's second Narnia Chronicle, ‘Prince Caspian’, one day the trees themselves will rise up and march like a summer storm to put an end to those who would replace their beauty and grandeur with concrete and tarmac. In which case, Oak will no doubt be the formidable general leading the onslaught.

 

On 11/14/2016 at 11:18 PM, Little Scribe of Naath said:

Awesome catches in this thread, specially from the @The Fattest Leech and @LynnS. I had never noticed these before.

.Acorns, both in GRRM's world and real life are very much associated with squirrels, and the COTF are called "squirrel people". With Bran and Arya's strong connections to COTF (as @DutchArya has illustrated) the oak and acorn symbolism around them makes a lot of sense.

It's definitely possible, IMO, that the oak trees serve as a vehicle for the Old Gods as well. There was a guy called John the Oak, son of Garth Greenhand and a giantess:

On 11/14/2016 at 11:18 PM, Little Scribe of Naath said:
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John the Oak is a legendary son of Garth Greenhand and a giantess. He was a huge man, eight feet tall in some tales, or even ten or twelve in others. Even though chivalry was brought by the Andals millennia later, he's credited with bringing chivalry to Westeros. His descendants became House Oakheart.

Garth Greenhand is described very much like a Green Man from the IoF. If he indeed was a Green Man, and if the tales that he actually predated the arrival of the FM are true, either he or John the Oak could possibly have been a deity in the COTF society. Alternatively, even if no one called John the Oak existed, it could be a hint that the COTF worshipped oak trees back then as well.

The heart tree in KL is an oak:

On 11/14/2016 at 11:18 PM, Little Scribe of Naath said:
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The heart tree there was a great oak, its ancient limbs overgrown with smokeberry vines; they knelt before it to offer their thanksgiving, as if it had been a weirwood. Sansa drifted to sleep as the moon rose, Arya several hours later, curling up in the grass under Ned's cloak. All through the dark hours he kept his vigil alone. When dawn broke over the city, the dark red blooms of dragon's breath surrounded the girls where they lay. "I dreamed of Bran," Sansa had whispered to him. "I saw him smiling."

Interestingly, Osha's spear is made of oak:

On 11/14/2016 at 11:18 PM, Little Scribe of Naath said:
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"Pretty," said a woman's voice. She scarcely looked like a woman; tall and lean, with the same hard face as the others, her hair hidden beneath a bowl-shaped halfhelm. The spear she held was eight feet of black oak, tipped in rusted steel.

Bran in Summer:

On 11/14/2016 at 11:18 PM, Little Scribe of Naath said:
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Yet when the darkness closed over him, he found himself in the godswood, moving silently beneath green-grey sentinels and gnarled oaks as old as time. 

Jaime gives Brienne an oaken shield:

On 11/14/2016 at 11:18 PM, Little Scribe of Naath said:
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 She meant to keep the heavy oaken shield Jaime had given her, the one he'd borne himself from Harrenhal to King's Landing. A pine shield had its advantages. It was lighter, and therefore easier to bear, and the soft wood was more like to trap a foeman's axe or sword. But oak gave more protection, if you were strong enough to bear its weight.

Varamyr can apparently skinchange an oak:

On 11/14/2016 at 11:18 PM, Little Scribe of Naath said:
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The white world turned and fell away. For a moment it was as if he were inside the weirwood, gazing out through carved red eyes as a dying man twitched feebly on the ground and a madwoman danced blind and bloody underneath the moon, weeping red tears and ripping at her clothes. Then both were gone and he was rising, melting, his spirit borne on some cold wind.He was in the snow and in the clouds, he was a sparrow, a squirrel, an oak.

The Hedge Knight:

On 11/14/2016 at 11:18 PM, Little Scribe of Naath said:
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The elm's alive," Pate pointed out. "See how green the leaves are? Summer leaves, for certain. And I've seen shields blazoned with skulls and wolves and ravens, even hanged men and bloody heads. They served well enough, and so will this. You know the old shield rhyme? Oak and iron, guard me well . . ."

"Or else I'm dead, and doomed to hell," Dunk finished. He had not thought of that rhyme in years. The old man had taught it to him, a long time ago. "How much do you want for the new rim and all?" he asked Pate.

 

Very nice!

Garth the Green may have been a greenseer.  It's notable that as @Wizz-The-Smith has highlighted his throne was a 'living throne' called the Oakenseat, which is very similar to Bloodraven's, Bran's and the other singers' living weirwood thrones in the cavern:

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A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

Bran ate with Summer and his pack, as a wolf. As a raven he flew with the murder, circling the hill at sunset, watching for foes, feeling the icy touch of the air. As Hodor he explored the caves. He found chambers full of bones, shafts that plunged deep into the earth, a place where the skeletons of gigantic bats hung upside down from the ceiling. He even crossed the slender stone bridge that arched over the abyss and discovered more passages and chambers on the far side. One was full of singers, enthroned like Brynden in nests of weirwood roots that wove under and through and around their bodies. Most of them looked dead to him, but as he crossed in front of them their eyes would open and follow the light of his torch, and one of them opened and closed a wrinkled mouth as if he were trying to speak. "Hodor," Bran said to him, and he felt the real Hodor stir down in his pit.

Seated on his throne of roots in the great cavern, half-corpse and half-tree, Lord Brynden seemed less a man than some ghastly statue made of twisted wood, old bone, and rotted wool. The only thing that looked alive in the pale ruin that was his face was his one red eye, burning like the last coal in a dead fire, surrounded by twisted roots and tatters of leathery white skin hanging off a yellowed skull.

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The World of Ice and Fire - The Reach: The Gardener Kings

Garth the Gardener's descendants sat upon a living throne (the Oakenseat) that grew from an oak that Garth Greenhand himself had planted, and wore crowns of vines and flowers when at peace, and crowns of bronze thorns (later iron) when they rode to war. Others might style themselves kings, but the Gardeners were the unquestioned High Kings, and lesser monarchs did them honor, if not obeisance.

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The World of Ice and Fire - The Reach: Garth Greenhand

Garth was the High King of the First Men, it is written; it was he who led them out of the east and across the land bridge to Westeros. Yet other tales would have us believe that he preceded the arrival of the First Men by thousands of years, making him not only the First Man in Westeros, but the only man, wandering the length and breadth of the land alone and treating with the giants and the children of the forest. Some even say he was a god.

There is disagreement even on his name. Garth Greenhand, we call him, but in the oldest tales he is named Garth Greenhair, or simply Garth the Green. Some stories say he had green hands, green hair, or green skin overall. (A few even give him antlers, like a stag.) Others tell us that he dressed in green from head to foot, and certainly this is how he is most commonly depicted in paintings, tapestries, and sculptures. More likely, his sobriquet derived from his gifts as a gardener and a tiller of the soil—the one trait on which all the tales agree. "Garth made the corn ripen, the trees fruit, and the flowers bloom," the singers tell us.

A few of the very oldest tales of Garth Greenhand present us with a considerably darker deity, one who demanded blood sacrifice from his worshippers to ensure a bountiful harvest. In some stories the green god dies every autumn when the trees lose their leaves, only to be reborn with the coming of spring. This version of Garth is largely forgotten.

Many of the more primitive peoples of the earth worship a fertility god or goddess, and Garth Greenhand has much and more in common with these deities. It was Garth who first taught men to farm, it is said. Before him, all men were hunters and gatherers, rootless wanderers forever in search of sustenance, until Garth gave them the gift of seed and showed them how to plant and sow, how to raise crops and reap the harvest. (In some tales, he tried to teach the elder races as well, but the giants roared at him and pelted him with boulders, whilst the children laughed and told him that the gods of the wood provided for all their needs). Where he walked, farms and villages and orchards sprouted up behind him. About his shoulders was slung a canvas bag, heavy with seed, which he scattered as he went along. As befits a god, his bag was inexhaustible; within were seeds for all the world's trees and grains and fruits and flowers.

It's also significant that GRRM -- the arch-wizard himself -- refers to himself as a 'gardener'!

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On 11/15/2016 at 6:49 PM, Wizz-The-Smith said:

The early Gardener Kings ancestral throne was the Oakenseat, according to legend it was a 'living' throne that was carved into an oak tree planted by Garth the Greenhand himself.  :)

This excellent observation cements the fact that oak trees were once revered by the COTF, just like weirwood.

On the subject of sacrifice, the Blackwoods bury their dead under their massive weirwood tree IIRC. @The Fattest Leech may be on to something here. Burying a dead person could be a form of sacrifice to keep the magic of a tree going, just probably not as potent as the sacrifice we see in Bran's last chapter.

Oak seems to symbolise strength, protection, reliability. In the context of the 'three trees' being discussed I'd say the oak tree being Jon makes a lot of sense, especially as he is indeed providing protection, acting as a "shield" for the wildlings.  Chestnut doesn't seem to have a specific symbolism, but the way in which the tree is described I agree it sounds like Bran in ADWD - he has chestnut like hair, it's a leafless and skeletal tree with a raven perched on it's branches.

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9 minutes ago, Little Scribe of Naath said:

This excellent observation cements the fact that oak trees were once revered by the COTF, just like weirwood.

On the subject of sacrifice, the Blackwoods bury their dead under their massive weirwood tree IIRC. @The Fattest Leech may be on to something here. Burying a dead person could be a form of sacrifice to keep the magic of a tree going, just probably not as potent as the sacrifice we see in Bran's last chapter.

Oak seems to symbolise strength, protection, reliability. In the context of the 'three trees' being discussed I'd say the oak tree being Jon makes a lot of sense, especially as he is indeed providing protection, acting as a "shield" for the wildlings.  Chestnut doesn't seem to have a specific symbolism, but the way in which the tree is described I agree it sounds like Bran in ADWD - he has chestnut like hair, it's a leafless and skeletal tree with a raven perched on it's branches.

I remembered Dunk had a horse named Chestnut (that died along the road to somewhere... I can't remember) and Bran's horse, Dancer, was a chestnut filly. Maybe a connection??? The physical description of that tree is very Bran-like. I agree.

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@ravenous reader 

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The woods were on the move, creeping toward the castle like a slow green tide. She thought back to a tale she had heard as a child, about the children of the forest and their battles with the First Men, when the greenseers turned the trees to warriors.

RE: green tide

The seahorse in House Velaryon's sigil is a potential lunar symbol.   Not only could the silver seahorse represent the/a moon, but one of their titles of all things hints at this: "Lord of the Tides."  Aurane Waters' sigil is/should be (being a bastard, he should reverse the colors) a grey/silver sky with a sea-green seahorse, which in my mind represents a green comet (or shooting star?) in a smoky sky.  

Driftmark is the seat of House Velaryon.  The ending "mark" on a place name denotes "boundary."  (Sometimes "march" is used.)  "Sea" has connections in the story with "greenseeing" (as you've noted) and the Underworld.  So, I gather that Driftmark sits on some sort of boundary to the Underworld like Winterfell sits on such a boundary (i.e. The Wall.)  

So perhaps a green tide (though not of direct consequence in this Asha chapter) can represent Waters in some way?  And if he's a "green comet/shooting star...  well, Dunk sees a green shooting star one night at Ashford Tourney, and later puts the same symbol on his sigil.

In truth, I see a lot of astrological connections regarding House Velaryon and Aurane Waters here, and I feel they're significant...  But I can't quite place the significance to it all.  I spoke (albeit briefly) with LML about some of these ideas.  He's under the impression that House Velaryon alludes to the Iron Isles and their own greenseeing capabilities and role in The Dawn.  I feel that there's something more. 

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Jon saw the eagle burning. For a heartbeat it flamed brighter than a star, wreathed in red and gold and orange, its wings beating wildly at the air as if it could fly from the pain. Higher it flew, and higher, and higher still.

You dismiss the connection to Sansa (though I don't disagree with your connection to Azor Ahai), but I see a possible connection to Viserion here.  Viserion's flames are described as having these colors as well.  Perhaps the eagle could only represent Viserion, though Sansa and Viserion are connected via the imagery of bats that they share. 

Side note: dust motes are described as being a certain color TWICE in the whole series.  The first time is in Game when Daenerys note "red, green, and gold" dust motes dancing around her dragon eggs.  The second is in a spoiler chapter. 

Spoiler

Sansa notes gold dust motes dancing in sunlight in LF's solar.

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Stark+Tully=Bran...see below:)

Targaryen blood via Lothston/Whent line

The clue the Tullys like Mad Danelle Lothston have dragon blood is given by their flaming red hair: yes, indeed, Bran is 'kissed by fire'!

Targaryen blood or not, I believe that the Curse of Harrenhal stems from Gargon Qoherys, not House Hoare and that Lothston and Whent are related to him.  The "bones remember" and yet Harren the Black and his family's bones were burnt, a process which seems render "bones" powerless.  (Think wights and (potentially) Targaryen and Tully burial customs.)  Gargon Qoherys was castrated IN THE GODSWOOD.  The act of bleeding into a heartree is thought to absorb one's consciousness.  After Gargon's death, Harrenhal was (for a short time) taken overtaken by Harren the Red, whose name is most likely a pun of "red herring."

I think similarity in etymology of names or their spelling is important with regard to echoes.  Here is such an echo: Garth Greenhand was said to have populated the Reach with his seed (more or less, to paraphrase AWoIaF).  What easier way to do so than by taking advantage of the First Night like Gargon Qoherys did?  Bran the Builder (who MANY parallel with Bran Stark) was said to have been related to Garth Greenhand - and i quote - "by way of Brandon of the Bloody Blade."  There is such a Brandon associated with bloody blades in  the main series: Brandon Stark, who "wasn't shy about what he wanted."  Notice how AWOIAF uses the wording "by way of."  At first glimpse, it appears that AWoIaF is simply telling us that Bran the Builder was a descendant of Brandon otBB and he was a descendant of Garth GH.  But "by way of" also denotes A MEANS by which something occurs.  That is, Bran the Builder is related to Garth Greenhand by means of First Night priveleges, and Bran Stark is related to Gargon Qoherys by means of First Night priveleges.

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Wow excellent observations and connections.  It occurs to me that green magic is another magic force beyond elemental magic such as fire and ice.  It represenst the 'life force' as embodied by Garth Greenhands. 

The World of Ice and Fire - The Reach: Garth Greenhand

Garth was the High King of the First Men, it is written; it was he who led them out of the east and across the land bridge to Westeros. Yet other tales would have us believe that he preceded the arrival of the First Men by thousands of years, making him not only the First Man in Westeros, but the only man, wandering the length and breadth of the land alone and treating with the giants and the children of the forest. Some even say he was a god.
 
There is disagreement even on his name. Garth Greenhand, we call him, but in the oldest tales he is named Garth Greenhair, or simply Garth the Green. Some stories say he had green hands, green hair, or green skin overall. (A few even give him antlers, like a stag.) Others tell us that he dressed in green from head to foot, and certainly this is how he is most commonly depicted in paintings, tapestries, and sculptures. More likely, his sobriquet derived from his gifts as a gardener and a tiller of the soil—the one trait on which all the tales agree. "Garth made the corn ripen, the trees fruit, and the flowers bloom," the singers tell us.
 
A few of the very oldest tales of Garth Greenhand present us with a considerably darker deity, one who demanded blood sacrifice from his worshippers to ensure a bountiful harvest. In some stories the green god dies every autumn when the trees lose their leaves, only to be reborn with the coming of spring. This version of Garth is largely forgotten.
 
********
 
Garth seems to have shared the same magic knowledge or relationship with the oak that the CotF have with the wierwood.  It is the same green magic applied to different trees but in particular the oak. Jojen refers to this magic as drinking from the green fountain:

A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

"It is given to a few to drink of that green fountain whilst still in mortal flesh, to hear the whisperings of the leaves and see as the trees see, as the gods see," said Jojen. "Most are not so blessed. The gods gave me only greendreams. My task was to get you here. My part in this is done."
 
*******
Garth seems to represent a fertility god as well as a Bacchus/Dionysus figure as well as the horned lord and the wild hunt with the sacrifice of the corn king.  He's also the ancestor of the Starks, Lannisters and most of the great houses.
 

The World of Ice and Fire - The Reach: Garth Greenhand

A few of the very oldest tales of Garth Greenhand present us with a considerably darker deity, one who demanded blood sacrifice from his worshippers to ensure a bountiful harvest. In some stories the green god dies every autumn when the trees lose their leaves, only to be reborn with the coming of spring. This version of Garth is largely forgotten.
 
Many of the more primitive peoples of the earth worship a fertility god or goddess, and Garth Greenhand has much and more in common with these deities. It was Garth who first taught men to farm, it is said. Before him, all men were hunters and gatherers, rootless wanderers forever in search of sustenance, until Garth gave them the gift of seed and showed them how to plant and sow, how to raise crops and reap the harvest. (In some tales, he tried to teach the elder races as well, but the giants roared at him and pelted him with boulders, whilst the children laughed and told him that the gods of the wood provided for all their needs). Where he walked, farms and villages and orchards sprouted up behind him. About his shoulders was slung a canvas bag, heavy with seed, which he scattered as he went along. As befits a god, his bag was inexhaustible; within were seeds for all the world's trees and grains and fruits and flowers.
 
John the Oak, the First Knight, who brought chivalry to Westeros (a huge man, all agree, eight feet tall in some tales, ten or twelve feet tall in others, sired by Garth Greenhand on a giantess). His own descendants became the Oakhearts of Old Oak.

The World of Ice and Fire - The Reach: Garth Greenhand

Of all these, the greatest was his firstborn, Garth the Gardener, who made his home on the hill atop the Mander that in time became known as Highgarden, and wore a crown of flowers and vines. All of Garth Greenhand's other children did the Gardener homage as the rightful king of all men, everywhere. From his loins sprang House Gardener, whose kings ruled the Reach beneath the banner of a green hand for many thousands of years, until Aegon the Dragon and his sisters came to Westeros.
 
The list is long, and many are the legends, for there is scarce a noble house in all the Reach that does not boast of descent from one of Garth Greenhand's countless children. Even the heroes of other lands and kingdoms are sometimes numbered amongst the offspring of the Greenhand. Brandon the Builder was descended from Garth by way of Brandon of the Bloody Blade, these tales would have us believe, whilst Lann the Clever was a bastard born to Florys the Fox in some tales or Rowan Gold-Tree in others. However, Lann the Clever's descent from Garth Greenhand is a tale told in the Reach. In the westerlands, it is more oft said that Lann cozened Garth Greenhand himself by posing as one of his sons (Garth had so many that ofttimes he grew confused), thus making off with part of the inheritance that rightly belonged to Garth's true children.
 
********
In the context of the ash, chestnut and oak tree; I think we are pointed to descendants of Garth Greenhands: Tyrion, Bran and Jon.  Bran  is referred to as an old man by Jojen, so I think the old chestnut refers to Bran and Bloodraven since he seems to be young and old at the same time.  I think that rather than a fire bloodlines; we are pointed to the green bloodlines as the important factor.   Jon may come by his Targaryen blood from his great grandmother Rhaella Baratheon; but as Tyrion observes, Jon has more of the North in him.  Jon's fiery temper may come from the Baratheon bloodline which also has an association with Garth Greenhands specifically represented in the armor they wear:  forest green plate and golden antlers.  They are the horned lords and the storm lords.  Storm's End is one of few location that are warded and associated with Bran the Builder.  
 
It's curious that Tyrion is associated with the drunken god and sees the Fountain of the Drunken God in Tyrosh.  Along with the darker elements of Garth's godhood; there is also a similarity to Bacchus; the god of wine.
 
This is an interesting entry in wiki and perhaps a reference to House Stark:
 
When a wolf descends upon your flocks, all you gain by killing him is a short respite, for other wolves will come. If instead you feed the wolf and tame him and turn his pups into your guard dogs, they will protect the flock when the pack comes ravening.[1]
- King Garth IX Gardener.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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For those interested, as I mentioned above, the Ash, the Chestnut and the Oak were discussed almost 3 years ago, here: 

And it was also fairly developed in the "re-reading Jon" section: 

I give you below my amended OP, which reflected later comments in both threads.

--------------------------------------------------

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1. The drunkard was an ash tree, twisted sideways by centuries of wind. (...) A solemn mouth, a broken branch for a nose, two eyes carved deep into the trunk, gazing north up the kingsroad, toward the castle and the wall. 

(...). "Looks a bit like you, Edd,"

(...)

2. A mile farther on, they came upon a second face, carved into a chestnut tree that grew beside an icy stream, where its eyes could watch the old plank bridge that spanned its flow. (...)The chestnut was leafless and skeletal, but its bare brown limbs were not empty. On a low branch overhanging the stream a raven sat hunched, its feathers ruffled up against the cold. When it spied Jon it spread its wings and gave a scream. When he raised his fist and whistled, the big black bird came flapping down, crying "Corn, corn, corn."

(...)

3. Just north of Mole's Town they came upon the third watcher, carved into the huge oak that marked the village perimeter, its deep eyes fixed upon the kingsroad. That is not a friendly face, Jon Snow reflected. (...) but the great oak looked especially angry, as if it were about to tear its roots from the earth and come roaring after them. Its wounds are as fresh as the wounds of the men who carved it.

Initially, without real inner thought, but just from my visualisation of the scenes, Tyrion, Stannis and Victarion came to my mind (twisted and half-nose for T, skeletal and bold for S, angry, huge and wounded for V). Upon reflection, Stark (solemn and gazing north) also came to mind for the Ash and Jon (future wounds and anger) for the Oak. (I will later discard Tyrion and Victarion but I give you these initial thoughts for further counter-discussion).

A quick research gave this:

Ash: Tree of Humankind and Ancestors. Symbolic of the "Bridge" connecting the Spiritual and Physical realm. The Mother.

Chestnut: Tree of Honesty. Symbolic of longevity. Beauty. Connection to the underworld.

Oak: Tree of Strength & Longevity. Symbolic of Truth and ancient wisdom and of the marriage between the god and the goddess. King of Trees. Tree of Thunder.

1. The Ash symbolises Jon's duty as a Stark (his mother) and the NW LC (looking like Edd = looking like a NW member + sounds like 'Ned'), that is to keep looking north as his ancestors have made for centuries, to keep protecting Humankind from Evil. But Jon and / or the whole NW is / are twisted : his sense of duty is fading.

EDIT (input from Fire Eater): An ash tree, Yggdrasil, in Norse mythology held a dragon in its roots, with one root feeding it that stood over Niflheim, the primordial world of ice and cold.

2. The Chesnut is Stannis, the Honest and Enduring king, but also involved with Dark powers and in a way already dead (leafless, skeletal, the raven). He is the King that responded Jon's call but in doing so he abandoned his own values (when Jon raised his fist, the raven came, leaving the Honest and Enduring tree behind) but his help has a price (corn). Stannis is showing the bridge over the icy stream, i.e. a way of escaping his duty as LC to fulfil his other duties / desires / or his alternate destiny.

Possible further development: "Corn for the free folk, (...) none for you". He wondered if they would all be reduced to eating ravens before the coming winter had run its course. Jon will favour supporting the wildlings to supporting Stannnis and may end up fighting and destroying him?

EDIT (purrl1Schmendrick but mostly Hot Pie Swag) - Amended analysis: The Chesnut represents Jon visiting the underworld after his assassination at the Wall. He is a Ghost (in Ghost?), a sacrificed divinity like the Corn King.

EDIT2 (Fire Eater and Frey family reunion): A squirrel communicated between the dragon and a bird perched in the branches. During Ragnorak, the dragon would be freed. A dragon will wake with Bran (who was called a "squirrel" by Ned) working with BR, who is both a raven (his mother's sigil are ravens surrounding a weir wood - Melissa Blackwood) and a dragon (his father is Aegon IV Targaryen).

3. The Oak symbolises Jon as the awakened Dragon (Targ) having crossed the bridge shown by Stannis. Wounded in the process (the stabbing) but also having re-opened old wounds (revenge for his 'old' family) or new ones (revenge for his discovered new family) he takes the King's road at last, furious and mighty (Jon the berserk).

EDIT (Fire Eater) - The heart tree of the Red Keep, the royal capital for centuries, is an oak tree. A dragon waking is always described in terms of anger.

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@Jo Maltese thank you for providing this wonderful analysis and the links. I love the idea of a deeper symbolism behind those trees, and I believe there is a reason why Jon sees them and not some other main character. It is also worth noting that he sees them at a time when he is making some very important decisions, at the beginning of a transitional period. 

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8 hours ago, Julia H. said:

@Jo Maltese thank you for providing this wonderful analysis and the links. I love the idea of a deeper symbolism behind those trees, and I believe there is a reason why Jon sees them and not some other main character. It is also worth noting that he sees them at a time when he is making some very important decisions, at the beginning of a transitional period. 

You are welcome :blush:^_^

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12 hours ago, Jo Maltese said:

For those interested, as I mentioned above, the Ash, the Chestnut and the Oak were discussed almost 3 years ago, here: 

And it was also fairly developed in the "re-reading Jon" section: 

I give you below my amended OP, which reflected later comments in both threads.

--------------------------------------------------

Initially, without real inner thought, but just from my visualisation of the scenes, Tyrion, Stannis and Victarion came to my mind (twisted and half-nose for T, skeletal and bold for S, angry, huge and wounded for V). Upon reflection, Stark (solemn and gazing north) also came to mind for the Ash and Jon (future wounds and anger) for the Oak. (I will later discard Tyrion and Victarion but I give you these initial thoughts for further counter-discussion).

A quick research gave this:

Ash: Tree of Humankind and Ancestors. Symbolic of the "Bridge" connecting the Spiritual and Physical realm. The Mother.

Chestnut: Tree of Honesty. Symbolic of longevity. Beauty. Connection to the underworld.

Oak: Tree of Strength & Longevity. Symbolic of Truth and ancient wisdom and of the marriage between the god and the goddess. King of Trees. Tree of Thunder.

1. The Ash symbolises Jon's duty as a Stark (his mother) and the NW LC (looking like Edd = looking like a NW member + sounds like 'Ned'), that is to keep looking north as his ancestors have made for centuries, to keep protecting Humankind from Evil. But Jon and / or the whole NW is / are twisted : his sense of duty is fading.

EDIT (input from Fire Eater): An ash tree, Yggdrasil, in Norse mythology held a dragon in its roots, with one root feeding it that stood over Niflheim, the primordial world of ice and cold.

2. The Chesnut is Stannis, the Honest and Enduring king, but also involved with Dark powers and in a way already dead (leafless, skeletal, the raven). He is the King that responded Jon's call but in doing so he abandoned his own values (when Jon raised his fist, the raven came, leaving the Honest and Enduring tree behind) but his help has a price (corn). Stannis is showing the bridge over the icy stream, i.e. a way of escaping his duty as LC to fulfil his other duties / desires / or his alternate destiny.

Possible further development: "Corn for the free folk, (...) none for you". He wondered if they would all be reduced to eating ravens before the coming winter had run its course. Jon will favour supporting the wildlings to supporting Stannnis and may end up fighting and destroying him?

EDIT (purrl1Schmendrick but mostly Hot Pie Swag) - Amended analysis: The Chesnut represents Jon visiting the underworld after his assassination at the Wall. He is a Ghost (in Ghost?), a sacrificed divinity like the Corn King.

EDIT2 (Fire Eater and Frey family reunion): A squirrel communicated between the dragon and a bird perched in the branches. During Ragnorak, the dragon would be freed. A dragon will wake with Bran (who was called a "squirrel" by Ned) working with BR, who is both a raven (his mother's sigil are ravens surrounding a weir wood - Melissa Blackwood) and a dragon (his father is Aegon IV Targaryen).

3. The Oak symbolises Jon as the awakened Dragon (Targ) having crossed the bridge shown by Stannis. Wounded in the process (the stabbing) but also having re-opened old wounds (revenge for his 'old' family) or new ones (revenge for his discovered new family) he takes the King's road at last, furious and mighty (Jon the berserk).

EDIT (Fire Eater) - The heart tree of the Red Keep, the royal capital for centuries, is an oak tree. A dragon waking is always described in terms of anger.

I agree, this is great. Thank you for posting.

Jon is a raven and a dragon (from Rhaegar) paired with a wolf (what's her name?), like Odin and the Yggdrasil both.

As for the chestnut being a symbol tree for the underworld... I know everyone here loves Ygritte to death, but she calls herself half a fish, which would make her a mermaid, or a myrmen as told in the story by Patchface. Items from Myr tend to be duplicitous or double-dealing, meaning you think it works one way, but could also betray you if in the wrong hands. I think the scene with Ygritte trying to temp Jon to stay with her in the grotto, including the tales of cannibalism told at that same time, was temptation offered to Jon to stay in the underworld. Jon ultimately rejected the underworld and then the scene carries on (after the Lord's Kiss) with Jon experiencing dawn like he had never seen it before. 

And then we have this, below. Dywen has wooden teeth and can "smell the cold". Dywen, for being such a tertiary character, is pretty mysterious it seems. Dywen emerges with a shaggy grey garron. Odin is known for his grey horse, Sleipnir- but I am not saying Dywen is an Odin figure, just that Odin is represented in Jon's arc a few different ways. Also the chestnut tree with wild roses... well, Lyanna is a goddess of the underworld and something about roses???:

A Clash of Kings - Jon III

On his way back, Jon swung wide of the column's line of march and took a shorter path through the thick of the wood. The sounds of man and horse diminished, swallowed up by the wet green wild, and soon enough he could hear only the steady wash of rain against leaf and tree and rock. It was midafternoon, yet the forest seemed as dark as dusk. Jon wove a path between rocks and puddles, past great oaks, grey-green sentinels, and black-barked ironwoods. In places the branches wove a canopy overhead and he was given a moment's respite from the drumming of the rain against his head. As he rode past a lightning-blasted chestnut tree overgrown with wild white roses, he heard something rustling in the underbrush. "Ghost," he called out. "Ghost, to me."
But it was Dywen who emerged from the greenery, forking a shaggy grey garron with Grenn ahorse beside him.
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On 11/16/2016 at 3:05 PM, ravenous reader said:

That makes sense.  However, it's not strictly true that the First Men only succeeded in targeting weirwoods.  They used fire to indiscriminately burn vast swathes of forest, and fire doesn't respect boundaries.  

In the GOHH prophecy (provided below), the oaks still remember the fire and seem to hold a grudge, by which it's suggested that weirwoods are not the only trees engaged in collective mobilization.

When it comes to trees, GRRM's language choices like fire fail to respect strict boundaries, serving to introduce some ambiguity regarding the precise location of the 'magical front,' which is probably less 'cut and dried' than you suggest.  In fact, many trees are personified and invested with consciousness to varying degrees throughout the text, including weirwoods, oaks, ashes, chestnuts, ironwoods, sentinels, soldier pines, elms, willows, beeches, firs, broad leafs, and ebonies -- although I'll agree of these the weirwoods are the most powerful. 

Think of it as a hierarchical arrangement, one might say an army of trees, with the greenseers at the helm.  Throughout the text there are ample references to the martial aspect of many different species of trees, of which this is just one example:

I agree that there is a possibility of a whole forest hierarchy of trees, So far in the book, Weirwoods have always been the vessels of magic. Bran is fed weirwood paste. There is a weirwood Heart tree in all the ancient castles. The rites of the old gods are performed in front of weirwoods. Jon and Bran are connected by Weirnet in Jon's wolf dream.  

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