POEMS (or other sundry quotes) that remind you of ASOIAF

[ravenous reader]

36 minutes ago, hiemal said:

"The Fool"

Tony Wakeford

Down the centuries, I was at their side
With a song to glorify their genocide's
Always knowing but never appearing too wise
Always had a rhyme to hide their lies
Here I am - just for you
Here I am - here stands the fool
I plot with pretenders and princes,
And I will shed a tear on the loser's grave
And some advice for you, if I may
It's better a knave than a slave
Here I am - just for you
Here I am - here stands the fool
To conspire and devour
That's how these empires are lost and won
I bow my head humbly to mistress and sire
And I will still be alive with the rising of the sun

 

This song reminds me more of Littlefinger than any of the actual fools.

Thanks Hiemal.  That's a really good one for Littlefinger -- the understated irony in the flat delivery of the litany of expressed contradictions is chilling!  

'Always had a rhyme to hide their lies' reminds me of Catelyn's observation of how Littlefinger would glibly smooth over his tracks in childhood already:

Quote

A Game of Thrones - Catelyn IV

Catelyn ignored the implied question. "I am not accustomed to being summoned like a serving wench," she said icily. "As a boy, you still knew the meaning of courtesy."

"I've angered you, my lady. That was never my intent." He looked contrite. The look brought back vivid memories for Catelyn. He had been a sly child, but after his mischiefs he always looked contrite; it was a gift he had. The years had not changed him much. Petyr had been a small boy, and he had grown into a small man, an inch or two shorter than Catelyn, slender and quick, with the sharp features she remembered and the same laughing grey-green eyes. He had a little pointed chin beard now, and threads of silver in his dark hair, though he was still shy of thirty. They went well with the silver mockingbird that fastened his cloak. Even as a child, he had always loved his silver.

And 'here I am -- just for you' reminds me of his paternal 'generosity' in 'rescuing' Sansa from the predicament he manufactured for her -- by framing her for Joffrey's murder.  Ultimately, the song is implying that the real 'fools' are the ones who are buying into the speaker's foolery of them, although he takes care to portray himself as a bystander in the unfolding of events -- the one who offers an accompanying tune, rather than the one plucking the strings and orchestrating the song:

Quote

A Storm of Swords - Sansa VI

"Gentle, pious, good-hearted Willas Tyrell. Be grateful you were spared, he would have bored you spitless. The old woman is not boring, though, I'll grant her that. A fearsome old harridan, and not near as frail as she pretends. When I came to Highgarden to dicker for Margaery's hand, she let her lord son bluster while she asked pointed questions about Joffrey's nature. I praised him to the skies, to be sure . . . whilst my men spread disturbing tales amongst Lord Tyrell's servants. That is how the game is played.

"I also planted the notion of Ser Loras taking the white. Not that I suggested it, that would have been too crude. But men in my party supplied grisly tales about how the mob had killed Ser Preston Greenfield and raped the Lady Lollys, and slipped a few silvers to Lord Tyrell's army of singers to sing of Ryam Redwyne, Serwyn of the Mirror Shield, and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight. A harp can be as dangerous as a sword, in the right hands.

While Littlefinger's not really a fool, he might be considered a fool figure in terms of our 'friend' Patchface's dictum 'clever bird, clever man, clever fool' -- well, he's respectively a mockingbird both reflecting and subtly ridiculing those around him, an intelligent, worldly-wise schemer, and finally perhaps one who has overestimated himself.  The dual meaning implicit in 'clever fool' can connote both the fool who has been underestimated by society, as well as the man who in his hubris has overestimated himself, and overlooked something critical (perhaps another little clever bird-clever fool like Sansa...) -- so I'm not all too sure about him 'still being alive with the rising of the sun', or moon for that matter!

[hiemal]

2 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

Thanks Hiemal.  That's a really good one for Littlefinger -- the understated irony in the flat delivery of the litany of expressed contradictions is chilling!  

'Always had a rhyme to hide their lies' reminds me of Catelyn's observation of how Littlefinger would glibly smooth over his tracks in childhood already:

And 'here I am -- just for you' reminds me of his paternal 'generosity' in 'rescuing' Sansa from the predicament he manufactured for her -- by framing her for Joffrey's murder.  Ultimately, the song is implying that the real 'fools' are the ones who are buying into the speaker's foolery of them, although he takes care to portray himself as a bystander in the unfolding of events -- the one who offers an accompanying tune, rather than the one plucking the strings and orchestrating the song:

While Littlefinger's not really a fool, he might be considered a fool figure in terms of our 'friend' Patchface's dictum 'clever bird, clever man, clever fool' -- well, he's respectively a mockingbird both reflecting and subtly ridiculing those around him, an intelligent, worldly-wise schemer, and finally perhaps one who has overestimated himself.  The dual meaning implicit in 'clever fool' can connote both the fool who has been underestimated by society, as well as the man who in his hubris has overestimated himself, and overlooked something critical (perhaps another little clever bird-clever fool like Sansa...) -- so I'm not all too sure about him 'still being alive with the rising of the sun', or moon for that matter!

We live in hope.

Tony Wakeford has a wealth of ASoIaF-worthy neo-folk, much of it also neo-pagan such as a lot of Sol Invictus:

"Song of the Flower"

Sol Invictus

When the hurt shall bring you woe, God made the healing herb to grow

A bloom on the tree When the apples are ripe Means the end Of somebody's life

Ash when green Is fuel for a Queen

The Michaelmas daisy Among dead leaves Blooms for St. Micheal's Valorous deeds

In dock, out nettle, Don't let the blood settle

Elder tree, Elder tree, Crocked, wrong Never straight And never strong

Never bush And never tree, Since our Lord Was nailed to thee

Under a throne, Our saviour was born If the sagebrush Thrives and grows,

The master's not master -and he knows!

St. Agnes, that's to lovers kind, Come ease the trouble of my mind

Elm do grieve, Oak do hate Willow do walk; If you travels late

 

 

 

[Cridefea]

I don't know if someone have already said it, but in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Coleridge: the life-in-death and the Mariner's glittering eye brings me to mind LSH and the discussiong about her glimmering eyes we had in another thread...

 

He holds him with his glittering eye—

The Wedding-Guest stood still

 

I fear thee and thy glittering eye

And thy skinny hand, so brown.» —

«Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest!

This body dropt not down.

 

And btw there is a song "Good Morning, Captain", inspired by The Rime, that makes me think about a future winter storm in asoiaf:

Scattered remnants of the ship could be seen in the distance,
Blood stained the icy wall of the shore.

I'm the only one left. the storm, took them all,
He managed as he tried to stand.
The tears ran down his face.
Please, it's cold.

When he woke, there was no trace of the ship.
Only the dawn was left behind by the storm.

 

[Walda]

I found this in a medieval leechbook.

It is a metrical charm - a medical procedure that included or was an incantation to ward harmful spirits, or for the healing of the spiritual part of the patient after harmful spirits have attacked them. In verse.

Exactly what it was prescribed for is debatable, but the scholarly consensus seems to be against nightmares/ reduce a fever/ to induce sound sleep/ anticonvulsive therapy/ boot off any dwarf that might be witch-riding the patient. (To the Anglo-Saxon originator of this charm, dwarves were mythical supernatural beings, like elves or imps). As you can see, it has both Pagan and Christian elements.

It is written in Old English, by a now unknown Christian scribe, c.1000 (plus or minus 25 years) and was probably used in the 900's.

Quote

[page f167r]

Wið dweorh man sceal
niman VII lytle oflætan, swylce
man mid ofrað, and writan
þas naman on ælcre
oflætan:Maximianus, Mal-
-chus, Iohannes, Martimi-
-anus, Dionisius, Constan-
-tinus, Serafion. þænne
eft þæt galdor, þæt her æfter
cweð, man sceal singan, æ-
-rest on þæt wynstre eare,
þænne on þæt swiðre eare,
þænne bufan þæs mannes
moldan. And ga þænne an mæden-
-man to and ho hit on his sweo-
-ran, and do man swa þry da-
                                        -gas;

[page f167v]

him bið sona sel. Her com in
gangan, in spiderwiht,hæf-
-de him his haman on handa,
cwæð þæt þu his hæncgest wære,
legde þe his teage an sweo-
-ran.     Ongunnan him of þæm
lande liþan; sona swa hy
of þæm lande coman, þaon-
-gunnan him ða liþu colian.Þa co-
-m in gangan dweores sweostar;
þa geændade heo and aðas swor
ðæt næfre þis ðæm adlegan     derian
ne moste, ne þæm þe þis galdor
begytan mihte,oððe þe þis
galdor  ongalan cuþe. Amen.
Fiað.

Against a dwarf one must take seven little wafers,
like those used in worship, and write these names on each one:
Maximianus,  Malchus, Iohannes, Martimianus,
Dionisius, Constantinus, Serafion.
Then one must sing the charm that is written below,
first into the left ear,
then into the right ear,
then above the man's head.
Then let a maiden go to him
and hang it on his neck,
and do so for three days;

[next page]

he will soon improve.
Here a spider-wight came stalking in.
He had his cloak in his hand, saying you were his steed,
He laid his bonds on your neck. They started sailing from the land;
As soon as they left the land, his limbs began to cool.
Then the dwarf's sister came stalking in.
Then she made amends and swore oaths
That this must never hurt the sick,
Nor he who could gain this charm,
Nor he who could chant this charm.
Amen.
Let it be so.

( Lacnunga, Harley MS 585, pages f 167r,f167v)

The reason I have scanned the original that terrible way, with no regard for sense or metre, even breaking lines off mid-word, is to make it easier to follow the original (click on the link in the quote), that was written line for line like that (although with less punctuation, and with some words run together, or emended). And the italics are mine, to distinguish the incantation from it's instructions.

And here is a spoken version on Youtube

To top it off, the names on the wafers are those of the seven sleepers of Ephesus. This is the original Rip-Van-Winkle story, and in the medieval, people prayed to these saintly martyrs for sound sleep. In ASoIaF, there are elements of it in Grendel's children, in Bran and company entering BR's cave, and also in the tale of Arson Iceaxe.

ETA: I've found another translation of this, by Dr Hostetter of Rutgers University.

Most translations interpret 'hamen' as 'clothing', hence 'his cloak/robe/garment/ dress in his hand'. But Dr Hostetter prefers 'his skin in his hands' ie: that the spider-wight is a skinchanger.

Another possible meaning for 'harmen' is the covering one puts over a draught horse, to attach the traces, bridle, and other constraining or controling devices to. So it could also be interpreted as something like "with his harness in his hands, saying you were his steed/ he attaches his yoke to your neck"

Also, it occurs to me that if the patient's fever had not broke in a day or two, they were very likely to cool into an eternal sleep. So one way or the other, the charm is foolproof.

[Wizz-The-Smith]

Hey everyone.    There has been much discussion regards the mythological inspirations behind the Green men/greenseers in the series, including the Arthurian tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, amongst others.  I stumbled across this beautiful poem when watching a documentary on Sir Gawain's journey, and thought it would fit right in here.   

A poem for Sir Gawain by Simon Armitage

Time now to rise, to strike out with a clenched heart                                                                                   

And no map bar the view from the peak

Where the west wind pummels your cheeks,                                                                                             

Leads with its granite fists.                                                                                                                               

Days of rain, rain that permeates the bone

Personal rain, persecuting the soul.

Days when the promised lake

Is a dishwater pond

Wrung from a grey cloud onto a dead hill.

Eat what the rook or crow leaves on its plate,

Bed down where even the fox won't sleep.

'Til the wain narrows and halts

And you wait in armour or anorak under the ridge

With a campfire tan and hedgerow hair

And a god looks down, silent

Stoney faced, bearded with living moss

This is the place.

The journey over and the story told,

The yarn at the end of its long green thread.

Speak now, for all that you're worth,

As the blade swoons in judgement

Over your pretty head.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

[ravenous reader]

On 2/28/2017 at 9:38 AM, Cridefea said:

I don't know if someone have already said it, but in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Coleridge: the life-in-death and the Mariner's glittering eye brings me to mind LSH and the discussiong about her glimmering eyes we had in another thread...

 

He holds him with his glittering eye—

The Wedding-Guest stood still

 

I fear thee and thy glittering eye

And thy skinny hand, so brown.» —

«Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest!

This body dropt not down.

Hi Cridefea   I apologize for the hiatus between your excellent suggestion and my response.  Thank you for prompting me to re-read and re-think this haunting poem!

Indeed, behold that 'glittering,' 'glimmering' eye that holds him in its gaze...bringing to mind Lady Stoneheart, among others   It's interesting that only one eye is mentioned.  We never hear of the Mariner's eyes in the plural, although, to my knowledge, it's not explicitly stated that he lost one!  It brings to mind the one eye that counts-- 'the third eye' -- in terms of the one-eyed seer trope evoking Odin of Norse mythology, from which GRRM has borrowed to build his own mythology, as exemplified by such pivotal characters such as Bloodraven, Euron, etc.  @LmL observed that Hodor is at one point essentially transformed into a one-eyed ice-giant by the cold, so that when Bran is skinchanging him that makes Bran a one-eyed seer too!

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Bran I

Bran never said the words aloud, but they were often on his lips as their ragged company trudged through groves of ancient oaks and towering grey-green sentinels, past gloomy soldier pines and bare brown chestnut trees. Are we near? the boy would wonder, as Hodor clambered up a stony slope, or descended into some dark crevice where drifts of dirty snow cracked beneath his feet. How much farther? he would think, as the great elk splashed across a half-frozen stream. How much longer? It's so cold. Where is the three-eyed crow?

Swaying in his wicker basket on Hodor's back, the boy hunched down, ducking his head as the big stableboy passed beneath the limb of an oak. The snow was falling again, wet and heavy. Hodor walked with one eye frozen shut, his thick brown beard a tangle of hoarfrost, icicles drooping from the ends of his bushy mustache. One gloved hand still clutched the rusty iron longsword he had taken from the crypts below Winterfell, and from time to time he would lash out at a branch, knocking loose a spray of snow. "Hod-d-d-dor," he would mutter, his teeth chattering.

The sound was strangely reassuring. On their journey from Winterfell to the Wall, Bran and his companions had made the miles shorter by talking and telling tales, but it was different here. Even Hodor felt it. His hodors came less often than they had south of the Wall. There was a stillness to this wood like nothing Bran had ever known before. Before the snows began, the north wind would swirl around them and clouds of dead brown leaves would kick up from the ground with a faint small rustling sound that reminded him of roaches scurrying in a cupboard, but now all the leaves were buried under a blanket of white. From time to time a raven would fly overhead, big black wings slapping against the cold air. Elsewise the world was silent.

Like GRRM's characters with one-eye symbolism, Coleridge's Mariner undergoes a spiritual journey into the wilderness, crossing a critical latitude into a kind of underworld or otherworldly dimension -- you could say analogous to a sort of purgatory or 'frozen hell reserved for Starks' -- from which he returns forever changed, haunted and compelled to tell his tale over and over, seeking some kind of redemption for his crime of killing the albatross.  As you say, a 'death-in-life.'

The poem opens with this preface:

How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country.

Quote

Cape Horn, the southernmost tip of South America, remains a maritime legend to this day, as sailing around this remote point and then through the Drake Passage was (and is) one of the most challenging nautical routes on the planet.

The violent stretch of chaotic water between Antarctica and South America, one frequented by icebergs, huge waves and plagued by gale-force winds, is crossed by sailors with great trepidation. Many still prefer to use the sheltered Strait of Magellan, shown with little (red arrows) on the map.

The opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 subsequently reduced the need for maritime travel around Cape Horn, the notorious site of many ship wreaks, and the final resting place of countless sailors lost in its perilous waters.

From:  http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/infopage/capehorn.htm

Whether one traverses the critical latitude represented by Cape Horn (the landmark circumnavigated by the ship in the Mariner's tale, renowned for its perilous seas and frequent shipwrecks) heading towards the furthest reaches of the remote Southern Ocean towards the South Pole; or other similar fictional critical boundary, be it the Wall, upriver to the 'heart of darkness' of Asshai where none but the shadowbinders dare to venture, through cursed Valyria, or beyond the Summer Sea, etc; all these travellers can be understood not merely as pioneers penetrating uncharted geographic territory, but as 'rangers of the heart,' navigating the fraught interior landscape of the 'human heart in conflict with itself' as they attempt to make sense of this 'tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing'.  You'll have noticed that, as in the Mariner's case, this interior journey is frequently configured as a sea journey, which pleases me in terms of my 'green sea - green see' pun (are you familiar with it?)  Even D&D seem to have recognised its importance in their facetious script, which did not go down so well with some critics:

Spoiler

'Sam and Gilly are still the most boring characters on this show. In this scene, they have stooped to discussing the semantics of "sea" and "see." (You can see the sea as far as the eye can see. Get it?)'

From: http://www.refinery29.com/2016/05/109990/game-of-thrones-season-6-episode-3-recap

To which I say:  the 'sea' might indeed be very interesting to 'see', especially if the seeing eye in question is a 'third eye'!

Anyway, what I've been particularly keen to discuss with you (since I really enjoyed your answers on the Italian poem) is to get your opinion on the quintessential question (which has continued to baffle all readers of the poem, and to which Coleridge has never supplied an adequate answer) regarding why you think the Mariner shot the albatross? 

A little background on the conception of the poem, which originally began as a collaboration between Coleridge and his relatively more famous friend William Wordsworth, who was also the more prodigious writer in comparison:  In the description of how the poem came about, it's interesting to note that a reason for the crime was never given, although both poets agreed the crime was a crucial starting point for the events subsequently explored in the poem.

Quote

An introduction to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Article by:Seamus Perry

Theme:Romanticism

Dr Seamus Perry describes the origins of 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' and considers how Coleridge uses the poem to explore ideas of sin, suffering and salvation.

A failed collaboration

In the Autumn of 1797, Coleridge was nearby William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, in north Somerset; and, despite his wife and young child, he spent as much time as he could with the Wordsworths. Both men, still in their 20s, were published poets, though neither had achieved anything approaching commercial success and money was tight; so, when the three of them decided to go off on a walking tour across the Quantock Hills towards the sea they had to think about funds. They set out, imprudently, at half past four on a November evening, and the poets’ conversation promptly fell, as Dorothy recorded, in a letter on 20 November 1797, to ‘laying the plan of a ballad’. For ballads were fashionable and they hoped to sell their work to a magazine.

Much later in life, Wordsworth would recall his own contribution to their collaborative work:

certain parts I myself suggested; for example, some crime was to be committed which would bring upon the Old Navigator, as Coleridge afterwards delighted to call him, the spectral persecution, as a consequence of that crime and his own wanderings. I had been reading in Shelvocke’s Voyages, a day or two before, that, while doubling Cape Horn, they frequently saw albatrosses in that latitude, the largest sort of sea-fowl, some extending their wings twelve or thirteen feet. ‘Suppose,’ said I, ‘you represent him as having killed one of these birds on entering the South Sea, and that the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge the crime.’ The incident was thought fit for the purpose, and adopted accordingly. I also suggested the navigation of the ship by the dead men, but do not recollect that I had anything more to do with the scheme of the poem. [1]

(Shelvocke’s book was entitled A Voyage Round the World, by Way of the Great South Sea.) Wordsworth’s remarks are self-deprecating; but at first sight it is difficult to see what else of much consequence there is to the ‘scheme of the poem’ besides his contribution – a crime that revolves around the killing of an albatross, and the consequent persecution of a wandering life in a ship of ghoulish horrors.

Nevertheless, although they attempted to pursue the poem together, it was Wordsworth who soon felt himself out of the place in the enterprise: as he remembered, years later, ‘I had very little share in the composition of it, for I soon found that the style of Coleridge and myself would not assimilate’.[2] Wordsworth withdrew, while something about the story of the poem evidently captured Coleridge, and the poem grew and grew over the next few months. When it was published in the summer of 1798 in Lyrical Ballads, which gathered poems by both writers, it was by far the longest in the book.

- See more at: https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/an-introduction-to-the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner#sthash.H4uVQB6g.dpuf

After the Mariner has inexplicably shot down the albatross, the other sailors (like the reader) try to fathom what could have possibly prompted him to such an action, alternately interpreting his action as either a boon or a bane, and attributing praise and blame accordingly, in fickle fashion, depending on their subjective perspective as to the possible consequences of his action for them (mainly in terms of the progress, or lack thereof, of the sea voyage).  

We might see a reflection of this type of thinking in ASOIAF where we are similarly presented with the inexplicable occurrence -- pre-eminently the appearance of the red comet -- also variously interpreted as a bad omen and/or lucky sign by different characters, always with particular reference to that person's situation and localised mythological idiom, with its inevitable biases.  Other mysteries include the origin of the Long Night and the Others -- with the implicit question as to whether anyone in particular is responsible for these calamities.  Who if anyone is to blame?

The passage in question from 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner':

 

And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he 

Was tyrannous and strong: 

He struck with his o'ertaking wings, 

And chased us south along. 

 

With sloping masts and dipping prow, 

As who pursued with yell and blow 

Still treads the shadow of his foe, 

And forward bends his head, 

The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast, 

And southward aye we fled. 

 

And now there came both mist and snow, 

And it grew wondrous cold: 

And ice, mast-high, came floating by, 

As green as emerald. 

 

And through the drifts the snowy clifts 

Did send a dismal sheen: 

Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken— 

The ice was all between. 

 

The ice was here, the ice was there, 

The ice was all around: 

It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, 

Like noises in a swound! 

 

At length did cross an Albatross, 

Thorough the fog it came; 

As if it had been a Christian soul, 

We hailed it in God's name. 

 

It ate the food it ne'er had eat, 

And round and round it flew. 

The ice did split with a thunder-fit; 

The helmsman steered us through! 

 

And a good south wind sprung up behind; 

The Albatross did follow, 

And every day, for food or play, 

Came to the mariner's hollo! 

 

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, 

It perched for vespers nine; 

Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white, 

Glimmered the white Moon-shine.' 

 

'God save thee, ancient Mariner! 

From the fiends, that plague thee thus!— 

Why look'st thou so?'—With my cross-bow 

I shot the ALBATROSS. 

 

PART II 

The Sun now rose upon the right: 

Out of the sea came he, 

Still hid in mist, and on the left 

Went down into the sea. 

 

And the good south wind still blew behind, 

But no sweet bird did follow, 

Nor any day for food or play 

Came to the mariner's hollo! 

 

And I had done a hellish thing, 

And it would work 'em woe: 

For all averred, I had killed the bird 

That made the breeze to blow. 

Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay, 

That made the breeze to blow! 

 

Nor dim nor red, like God's own head, 

The glorious Sun uprist: 

Then all averred, I had killed the bird 

That brought the fog and mist. 

'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay, 

That bring the fog and mist. 

 

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, 

The furrow followed free; 

We were the first that ever burst 

Into that silent sea. 

 

Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, 

'Twas sad as sad could be; 

And we did speak only to break 

The silence of the sea! 

 

All in a hot and copper sky, 

The bloody Sun, at noon, 

Right up above the mast did stand, 

No bigger than the Moon. 

 

Day after day, day after day, 

We stuck, nor breath nor motion; 

As idle as a painted ship 

Upon a painted ocean. 

 

Water, water, every where, 

And all the boards did shrink; 

Water, water, every where, 

Nor any drop to drink. 

 

The very deep did rot: O Christ! 

That ever this should be! 

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs 

Upon the slimy sea. 

 

About, about, in reel and rout 

The death-fires danced at night; 

The water, like a witch's oils, 

Burnt green, and blue and white. 

 

And some in dreams assurèd were 

Of the Spirit that plagued us so; 

Nine fathom deep he had followed us 

From the land of mist and snow. 

 

And every tongue, through utter drought, 

Was withered at the root; 

We could not speak, no more than if 

We had been choked with soot. 

 

Ah! well a-day! what evil looks 

Had I from old and young! 

Instead of the cross, the Albatross 

About my neck was hung. 

 

I also like the personification of the ice -- it reminds me of the Others with their 'cracking, mocking' speech!  

What follows is the Mariner trying to make sense of his crime, and being forced to undergo penance, when the ship's fortunes change for the worse and he becomes a social pariah.  Everyone on board besides him dies -- possibly on account of him -- which reminds me of the curious story of the Last Hero and how his companions all die, one by one.  Why was he the only survivor -- and how did he survive?  Was he responsible in any way for his companions' deaths?

 

And straight the Sun was flecked with bars, 

(Heaven's Mother send us grace!) 

As if through a dungeon-grate he peered 

With broad and burning face. 

 

Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud) 

How fast she nears and nears! 

Are those her sails that glance in the Sun, 

Like restless gossameres? 

 

Are those her ribs through which the Sun 

Did peer, as through a grate? 

And is that Woman all her crew? 

Is that a DEATH? and are there two? 

Is DEATH that woman's mate? 

 

Her lips were red, her looks were free, 

Her locks were yellow as gold: 

Her skin was as white as leprosy, 

The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she, 

Who thicks man's blood with cold. 

 

The naked hulk alongside came, 

And the twain were casting dice; 

'The game is done! I've won! I've won!' 

Quoth she, and whistles thrice. 

 

The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out; 

At one stride comes the dark; 

With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea, 

Off shot the spectre-bark. 

 

We listened and looked sideways up! 

Fear at my heart, as at a cup, 

My life-blood seemed to sip! 

The stars were dim, and thick the night, 

The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed white; 

From the sails the dew did drip— 

Till clomb above the eastern bar 

The hornèd Moon, with one bright star 

Within the nether tip. 

 

One after one, by the star-dogged Moon, 

Too quick for groan or sigh, 

Each turned his face with a ghastly pang, 

And cursed me with his eye. 

 

Four times fifty living men, 

(And I heard nor sigh nor groan) 

With heavy thump, a lifeless lump, 

They dropped down one by one. 

 

The souls did from their bodies fly,— 

They fled to bliss or woe! 

And every soul, it passed me by, 

Like the whizz of my cross-bow! 

 

The mysterious woman with skin 'as white as leprosy' gambling with the Mariner's life reminds me of Melisandre or the stories of the Night's Queen!

Another Coleridge poem which reminds me of ASOIAF -- even more strongly than 'the Rime', given that GRRM has quoted from it verbatim, is 'Kubla Khan.'  I've discussed its relevance previously on many other threads, so I'll just reproduce it here without much commentary.  Notably, the poem was written upon Coleridge emerging from an Opium trip whereafter he attempted to capture his drug-inspired visions.  The phantasmagoric descriptions of the cavern and the poet-seer's experience bears more than a passing resemblance to Bloodraven's cavern and the greenseer enterprise.  And in light of Coleridge's opium addiction, one wonders about the chemical composition of that 'weirwood paste' and the hundred different kinds of mushrooms growing in the cave (and sprouting out of Bloodraven's skull -- literally 'mind-altering'!)

Compare GRRM's text with the poem:

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

The caves were timeless, vast, silent. They were home to more than three score living singers and the bones of thousands dead, and extended far below the hollow hill. "Men should not go wandering in this place," Leaf warned them. "The river you hear is swift and black, and flows down and down to a sunless sea. And there are passages that go even deeper, bottomless pits and sudden shafts, forgotten ways that lead to the very center of the earth. Even my people have not explored them all, and we have lived here for a thousand thousand of your man-years."

 

The World of Ice and Fire - The Bones and Beyond

Deep snows crown the northern Bones, whilst sandstorms oft scour the peaks and valleys of their southern sisters, carving them into strange shapes. In the long leagues between, thundering rivers roar through deep canyons, and small caves open onto vast caverns and sunless seas. 

 

A Dance with Dragons - Bran II

The last part of their dark journey was the steepest. Hodor made the final descent on his arse, bumping and sliding downward in a clatter of broken bones, loose dirt, and pebbles. The girl child was waiting for them, standing on one end of a natural bridge above a yawning chasm. Down below in the darkness, Bran heard the sound of rushing water. An underground river.

 

Kubla Khan

Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment. 

 

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 

A stately pleasure-dome decree: 

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran 

Through caverns measureless to man 

   Down to a sunless sea. 

So twice five miles of fertile ground 

With walls and towers were girdled round; 

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, 

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; 

And here were forests ancient as the hills, 

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. 

 

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted 

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! 

A savage place! as holy and enchanted 

As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted 

By woman wailing for her demon-lover! 

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, 

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, 

A mighty fountain momently was forced: 

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst 

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, 

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail: 

And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever 

It flung up momently the sacred river. 

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion 

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, 

Then reached the caverns measureless to man, 

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean; 

And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far 

Ancestral voices prophesying war! 

   The shadow of the dome of pleasure 

   Floated midway on the waves; 

   Where was heard the mingled measure 

   From the fountain and the caves. 

It was a miracle of rare device, 

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! 

 

   A damsel with a dulcimer 

   In a vision once I saw: 

   It was an Abyssinian maid 

   And on her dulcimer she played, 

   Singing of Mount Abora. 

   Could I revive within me 

   Her symphony and song, 

   To such a deep delight ’twould win me, 

That with music loud and long, 

I would build that dome in air, 

That sunny dome! those caves of ice! 

And all who heard should see them there, 

And all should cry, Beware! Beware! 

His flashing eyes, his floating hair! 

Weave a circle round him thrice, 

And close your eyes with holy dread 

For he on honey-dew hath fed, 

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

 

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

[LmL]

2 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

"Hod-d-d-dor," he would mutter, his teeth chattering.

I just realized that this is as big a clue as we get in the books about the true meaning of the name Hodor. 

[ravenous reader]

1 hour ago, LmL said:

I just realized that this is as big a clue as we get in the books about the true meaning of the name Hodor. 

That's true.  Something else I haven't gotten to the bottom of, although it's definitely a major theme, is how seers often have language impediments, which seems rather counterintuitive since they are the ones receiving the arcane runic knowledge.  In the thread 'The Killing Word,' we were discussing how Will the greenseer figure strangely loses his voice, or the words freeze in his throat, etc. a couple of times.  Any ideas on the significance?  When Bran first meets Bloodraven, GRRM includes this curious reference insinuating that Bloodraven has forgotten how to speak (although in exchange he's obviously gained a whole other facility with 'language' via being connected to the 'weirnet' communication network)!

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Bran II

"Are you the three-eyed crow?" Bran heard himself say. A three-eyed crow should have three eyes. He has only one, and that one red. Bran could feel the eye staring at him, shining like a pool of blood in the torchlight. Where his other eye should have been, a thin white root grew from an empty socket, down his cheek, and into his neck.

"A … crow?" The pale lord's voice was dry. His lips moved slowly, as if they had forgotten how to form words. 

 

[LmL]

24 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

That's true.  Something else I haven't gotten to the bottom of, although it's definitely a major theme, is how seers often have language impediments, which seems rather counterintuitive since they are the ones receiving the arcane runic knowledge.  In the thread 'The Killing Word,' we were discussing how Will the greenseer figure strangely loses his voice, or the words freeze in his throat, etc. a couple of times.  Any ideas on the significance?  When Bran first meets Bloodraven, GRRM includes this curious reference insinuating that Bloodraven has forgotten how to speak (although in exchange he's obviously gained a whole other facility with 'language' via being connected to the 'weirnet' communication network)!

 

Well, it did occur to me recently that the weirwoods silent scream and bloody mouth might by alluding to the symbol of having your tongue torn out. Thistle bites out her tongue when she gets her weirwood makeover if you notice. So if the greenseer figures are choking... it could be that, or just symbolic of decapitation and strangulation as ways to depict sun and moon death. The sun and moon are either like eyes or faces - meaning heads - with invisible bodies, so to speak. So decapitating a moon person... you get the idea. So, Will's words sticking in his throat - together with the dagger in his mouth - could be suggesting him having his tongue cut out / throat cut. The greenseers - the first ones - had to be themselves sacrificed to enter the trees, I am growing increasingly confident. At the least, that is how AA and his crew did it. Cutting out your tongue to gain access to the true speech might be like Odin cutting out his physical eye to open his third eye. That's why the 'singer' or spellweaver might have a problem with physical speech... their song is more abstract or symbolic, I guess? Or they use others as mouthpieces?

[ravenous reader]

This following poem is about Azor Ahai -- a lesson in 'too much winning' (I love the last line of the poem) and the passionate revisions of history couched in dispassion.  The poet had something else in common with Azor Ahai, as both his wife and lover tragically committed suicide, possibly through no small measure on his account, for which he was publicly vilified:

Quote

In a letter to his close friend Lucas Myers, Hughes reflected on his part in the deaths of his wife and lover, confessing that with Plath it was his "insane decisions", while in Wevill's case it was his "insane indecisions". When he granted us a rare interview in London in October 1996, Hughes said Plath's death "was complicated and inevitable, she had been on that track most of her life. But Wevill's was avoidable." Perhaps this was why he tried to erase her from his life.

<snip>

In May 1962, Assia and her third husband, the Canadian poet David Wevill, were invited to spend a weekend with Plath and Hughes, who were then living in the village of North Tawton in Devon. It was on that weekend, as Hughes later wrote in a poem, that "The dreamer in me fell in love with her". Six weeks passed before he and Wevill met alone for the first time, when he came to London for a meeting at the BBC.

But Plath was quick to discover the budding affair. She ordered him out, and he was happy to comply. The following day he knocked on the Wevill's door carrying four bottles of champagne. Wevill made no secret of Hughes' ferocious lovemaking among her office friends. Equally repelled and fascinated, she told Edward Lucie-Smith, "You know, in bed he smells like a butcher." In the next two months he shuttled between the two women.

<snip>

The affair continued, but they lowered its profile and invented a secret code for their correspondence. Hughes dispatched daily love letters to Wevill's home, addressed to F Wall Esq. It was a private joke between the lovers, that Hughes was the fly on the wall at the Wevills'. 

<snip>

Hughes was exploding with ideas. He even found the strength to probe into the suicide of his wife and began writing Crow, handing Wevill the drafts to comment on. Later, he dedicated the book to her and Shura. Wevill's diaries, still in private hands, give a unique account of Hughes at work, "like a great beast, looking over an enormous feast, dazzled and confused by the variety".

Wevill was a perfect partner: artistically inclined, she wrote some poetry and was a rather skilful painter, but she was not ambitious and had no artistic ego herself. "He's almost incapable of performing one word wrong," she wrote admiringly. She said she felt reverence in the company of "one of God's best creations".

<snip>

They continued looking for a house of their own, but Hughes found fault with them all. It dawned on Wevill that being at his side at the time of Plath's suicide had contaminated her for ever, and that he would never marry her. "I have lived on the dream of living with Ted - and this has gone kaput," she wrote in her suicide note to her father. "There could never be another man. Never."

<snip>

Soon after her death, Hughes wrote a poem in which he tormented himself about having been destructive towards his nearest and dearest "who were my life". He never published it. Was it because it contrasted with the account that he wished to leave for posterity? In 1990, he published a volume of 20 poems, Capriccio, which revolved around Wevill. In it, he blamed her for consciously burning herself on Plath's funeral pyre.

<snip>

excerpts taken from: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/oct/19/biography.tedhughes

Quote

Tom Paulin, a poet and friend of Mr. Hughes, said he had watched for years as Mr. Hughes was attacked by strangers who, for instance, repeatedly hacked the name ''Hughes'' from Plath's gravestone. Critics also used to disrupt his poetry readings with shouts of ''murderer!'' And Robin Morgan, the American poet and feminist activist, wrote a poem called ''The Arraignment,'' which began, ''I accuse/Ted Hughes.''

''It's a terrible thing to watch a writer being harried by people who are making moralistic comments about his personal life,'' Mr. Paulin said. ''Writers, and especially poets, think that Hughes has had the roughest ride imaginable, something that nobody deserves.''

''There's a great sense in the literary community that this is a definitive and authoritative statement,'' he continued. ''This great tragic statement is here, and it says to his enemies, 'This far shalt thou go, and no further.' ''

What has Mr. Hughes done to inspire so much anger? Leaving aside the tragedies that seemed to suffuse his early life (Assia Wevill, the woman for whom he left Plath, killed herself and their 2-year-old daughter five years later, using gas, as Plath had done), he has been most criticized for tampering with Plath's work after she died, even as he benefited financially from it.

Editing of Journals Called Unforgivable

When he published her last and most famous volume of poems, ''Ariel,'' for instance, he omitted the poems that were angriest and most damning of him. At the same time, he edited passages out of Plath's journals before publication, destroyed the final volume, and said he had lost another volume of journals and an unfinished novel.

''That to me seems unforgivable, when she was such a great writer,'' said Ronald Hayman, author of ''The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath.'' ''He's destroyed her side of the story, literally wiped out history.''

From: http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/27/books/a-divided-response-to-hughes-poems.html

 

Crow’s Fall

When Crow was white he decided the sun was too white.
He decided it glared much too whitely.
He decided to attack it and defeat it.

He got his strength up flush and in full glitter.
He clawed and fluffed his rage up.
He aimed his beak direct at the sun’s centre.

He laughed himself to the centre of himself

And attacked.

At his battle cry trees grew suddenly old,
Shadows flattened.

But the sun brightened -
It brightened, and Crow returned charred black.

He opened his mouth but what came out was charred black.

“Up there,” he managed,
“Where white is black and black is white, I won.”

 

– Ted Hughes

 

 

[Good Guy Garlan]

Not a poem, but "The Yawning Grave" by Lord Huron reminds me a lot of the Others/Bloodraven/the CotF: 

I know the rain like the clouds know the sky
I speak to birds and tell them where to fly
I sing the songs that you hear on the breeze
I write the names of the rocks and the trees

Oh, you fool, there are rules I am coming for you
Darkness brings evil things, oh, the reckoning begins

I tried to warn you when you were a child
I told you not to get lost in the wild
I sent omens and all kinds of signs
I taught you melodies, poems, and rhymes

Oh, you fool, there are rules, I am coming for you
(You can run but you can't escape)
Darkness brings evil things, oh, the reckoning begins
(You will open the yawning grave)

Oh, you fool, there are rules, I am coming for you
(You can run but you can't escape)
Darkness brings evil things, oh, the reckoning begins
(You will open the yawning grave)

[ravenous reader]

1 hour ago, Good Guy Garlan said:

Not a poem, but "The Yawning Grave" by Lord Huron reminds me a lot of the Others/Bloodraven/the CotF: 

I know the rain like the clouds know the sky
I speak to birds and tell them where to fly
I sing the songs that you hear on the breeze
I write the names of the rocks and the trees

Oh, you fool, there are rules I am coming for you
Darkness brings evil things, oh, the reckoning begins

I tried to warn you when you were a child
I told you not to get lost in the wild
I sent omens and all kinds of signs
I taught you melodies, poems, and rhymes

Oh, you fool, there are rules, I am coming for you
(You can run but you can't escape)
Darkness brings evil things, oh, the reckoning begins
(You will open the yawning grave)

Oh, you fool, there are rules, I am coming for you
(You can run but you can't escape)
Darkness brings evil things, oh, the reckoning begins
(You will open the yawning grave)

Hi @Good Guy Garlan    I'm pleased to make your acquaintance -- welcome to our poetry thread.  Of course songs are welcome and appropriate, being the oldest form of poetry.  If you read the intro on the very first page of the thread, you'll see I favor an eclectic, inclusive and creative approach, with an accordingly generous definition of 'poetry' by which I've decreed, well predicted, that this thread cannot be 'derailed'!

What a beautiful song!

 

[Cridefea]

17 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

Indeed, behold that 'glittering,' 'glimmering' eye that holds him in its gaze...bringing to mind Lady Stoneheart, among others 

 

17 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

GRRM has borrowed to build his own mythology, as exemplified by such pivotal characters such as Bloodraven, Euron, etc

I wrote LSH because of that old thread, but if I have to choose he could be more similar to Euron. I've re-read the description in AFFC and even people's feeling in his presence is similar.

17 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

Like GRRM's characters with one-eye symbolism, Coleridge's Mariner undergoes a spiritual journey into the wilderness, crossing a critical latitude into a kind of underworld or otherworldly dimension -- you could say analogous to a sort of purgatory or 'frozen hell reserved for Starks' -- from which he returns forever changed, haunted and compelled to tell his tale over and over, seeking some kind of redemption for his crime of killing the albatross.  As you say, a 'death-in-life.'

 

17 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

not merely as pioneers penetrating uncharted geographic territory, but as 'rangers of the heart,' navigating the fraught interior landscape of the 'human heart in conflict with itself' as they attempt to make sense of this 'tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing'.  You'll have noticed that, as in the Mariner's case, this interior journey is frequently configured as a sea journey,

Exactly, the Journey is very symbolic in all the litterature (I've written a brief thesis about it), and the sea journey even more. For me they are both interior journey, but  the difference is that in the Quest or similar journey (Brienne, Arya) the symbolism concerns the identity issue, the personal growth and problem solving, while the sea journey concerns the emotive part of yourself, the risk is to lose yourself it is something deeper and powerful, you can't decide where you are going, you are at the mercy of forces  outside your control.(Euron)

Journeys are loved by readers because of their function: they provide us examples of characters that confront their own blocks and overcome them. And I think this is one of the reason why Asoiaf  is so popular, it shows many plots and characters people can use as a "mirror" . Sea journey, too. But they are often more tormented, it's easier to feel the anguish.

And in this interpretation it's interesting the one-eye symbolism, in this troubled time you loose the clear vision. If you "survive" you lost an eye but the vision of the world is different.

17 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

Anyway, what I've been particularly keen to discuss with you (since I really enjoyed your answers on the Italian poem) is to get your opinion on the quintessential question (which has continued to baffle all readers of the poem, and to which Coleridge has never supplied an adequate answer) regarding why you think the Mariner shot the albatross? 

I think even the Mariner doesn't know why he shot the albatross. It's the kind of action that a person acts when he/she is facing struggles, the result is something that hurts the people around you and yourself too. A choice that you can't change, you can just accept the consequences and tell your story to free yourself from the guilty. (parallelisms with asoiaf??)

17 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

After the Mariner has inexplicably shot down the albatross, the other sailors (like the reader) try to fathom what could have possibly prompted him to such an action, alternately interpreting his action as either a boon or a bane, and attributing praise and blame accordingly, in fickle fashion, depending on their subjective perspective as to the possible consequences of his action for them (mainly in terms of the progress, or lack thereof, of the sea voyage).  

this is one of the best part, for me. And  it's the meaning of this action they are trying to figure it out, even the Mariner himself. Probably one of the reason he has to tell his story, too. The sense research.

17 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

Last Hero and how his companions all die, one by one.  Why was he the only survivor -- and how did he survive?  Was he responsible in any way for his companions' deaths?

great parallelism!

 

17 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

Other mysteries include the origin of the Long Night and the Others -- with the implicit question as to whether anyone in particular is responsible for these calamities.  Who if anyone is to blame?

idem

17 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

I also like the personification of the ice -- it reminds me of the Others with their 'cracking, mocking' speech!

yes I really like it too

17 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

Another Coleridge poem which reminds me of ASOIAF -- even more strongly than 'the Rime', given that GRRM has quoted from it verbatim, is 'Kubla Khan.'  I've discussed its relevance previously on many other threads, so I'll just reproduce it here without much commentary.  Notably, the poem was written upon Coleridge emerging from an Opium trip whereafter he attempted to capture his drug-inspired visions.  The phantasmagoric descriptions of the cavern and the poet-seer's experience bears more than a passing resemblance to Bloodraven's cavern and the greenseer enterprise.  And in light of Coleridge's opium addiction, one wonders about the chemical composition of that 'weirwood paste' and the hundred different kinds of mushrooms growing in the cave (and sprouting out of Bloodraven's skull -- literally 'mind-altering'!)

great! and this is linked to the idea that the cave are a-temporal, an un-place.

 

17 hours ago, LmL said:

I just realized that this is as big a clue as we get in the books about the true meaning of the name Hodor. 

true!

[ravenous reader]

On 4/5/2017 at 3:00 AM, LmL said:

Well, it did occur to me recently that the weirwoods silent scream and bloody mouth might by alluding to the symbol of having your tongue torn out. Thistle bites out her tongue when she gets her weirwood makeover if you notice. So if the greenseer figures are choking... it could be that, or just symbolic of decapitation and strangulation as ways to depict sun and moon death. The sun and moon are either like eyes or faces - meaning heads - with invisible bodies, so to speak. So decapitating a moon person... you get the idea. So, Will's words sticking in his throat - together with the dagger in his mouth - could be suggesting him having his tongue cut out / throat cut. The greenseers - the first ones - had to be themselves sacrificed to enter the trees, I am growing increasingly confident. At the least, that is how AA and his crew did it. Cutting out your tongue to gain access to the true speech might be like Odin cutting out his physical eye to open his third eye. That's why the 'singer' or spellweaver might have a problem with physical speech... their song is more abstract or symbolic, I guess? Or they use others as mouthpieces?

These are all great ideas, LmL!    I agree about throat, tongue and neck being related to decapitation and strangulation.  For example, in our 'mythical astronomy' breakdown of Bran's assassination attempt, the silver-smoke-grey wolf decapitates the stranger assassin (the greenseer proxy, Other figure, like the comet sent from the void of deep space)  by launching himself at the man's throat; analogous to wighted Waymar in the prologue getting revenge on Will by strangling him.  If the assassin is a 'cat's paw' or 'Hand' to the greenseer king, as it were, then decapitating him is analogous to cutting off the hand of the sun.  So there appears to be a relation between losing ones hand, tongue, head (or eye), as the cost for greenseeing.  Could there by undertones of 'cutting off ones nose [or tongue!] to spite ones own [and/or ones brother's] face'?!  Using the Prologue as allegory again, what did Will really achieve by smiting his own brother with his 'secret tongue' (the sorcerous whispers I was positing as the 'killing word'), who then turned around and annihilated him, twisting his head off like one of the sables in the end?!

The idea of the greenseer being struck dumb brings to mind this passage, the implications of which are often debated in conjunction with other passages which seem to contradict it.  

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

"Father." Bran's voice was a whisper in the wind, a rustle in the leaves. "Father, it's me. It's Bran. Brandon."

Eddard Stark lifted his head and looked long at the weirwood, frowning, but he did not speak. He cannot see me, Bran realized, despairing. He wanted to reach out and touch him, but all that he could do was watch and listen. I am in the tree. I am inside the heart tree, looking out of its red eyes, but the weirwood cannot talk, so I can't.

Eddard Stark resumed his prayer. Bran felt his eyes fill up with tears. But were they his own tears, or the weirwood's? If I cry, will the tree begin to weep?

Here it seems clear that there are limits to what Bran can achieve via his weirwood 'avatar.'  In particular, he is not able to communicate with his father.  He can only watch in frustration.  However, later he is able to communicate via the heart tree 'interface' withTheon using simple words.  Why the difference?

I especially like your idea of having to cut out ones physical tongue in order to gain the 'True Tongue' -- the sacrifice of oneself to oneself like Odin in order to receive the runes.  Although there seems to be ambiguity at work here -- the 'True Tongue' (of which I'm assuming the ravens' 'secret tongue' is a dialect or even the same language) being additionally associated with murder.  Rather than intentional self-sacrifice, the primary impulse of the greenseer who destroyed the moon and elicited the Others seems to have been a murderous intention towards his own brother, which then came back to haunt him in turn.

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - The Prince of Winterfell

Above their heads the trees were full of ravens, their feathers fluffed as they hunched on bare brown branches, staring down at the pageantry below. Maester Luwin's birds. Luwin was dead, and his maester's tower had been put to the torch, yet the ravens lingered. This is their home. Theon wondered what that would be like, to have a home.

Then the mists parted, like the curtain opening at a mummer show to reveal some new tableau. The heart tree appeared in front of them, its bony limbs spread wide. Fallen leaves lay about the wide white trunk in drifts of red and brown. The ravens were the thickest here, muttering to one another in the murderers' secret tongue. Ramsay Bolton stood beneath them, clad in high boots of soft grey leather and a black velvet doublet slashed with pink silk and glittering with garnet teardrops. A smile danced across his face. "Who comes?" His lips were moist, his neck red above his collar. "Who comes before the god?"

Theon answered. "Arya of House Stark comes here to be wed. A woman grown and flowered, trueborn and noble, she comes to beg the blessings of the gods. Who comes to claim her?"

@Cowboy Dan was the first to bring to my attention that there are plenty of examples of people biting their tongues and/or blood welling up in their mouths, becoming wordless in the conventional sense, etc., as an integral part of such paranormal experiences, e.g. Sam at the Fist of the First Men tripping on a root and falling to his knees before he receives the 'divine intervention' which urged him on to slay the Other (the italicized words addressing him, as if emanating from an external source possibly); Bran when he's skinchanging; Arya when she's initiated into the art of putting on a face; Jon being attacked by the other warg via the eagle; Theon communing with Bran at the heart tree; Jaime losing his swordhand together with being 'weirwood-stump' transformed.

-- Bran:

Quote

A Clash of Kings - Bran VII

"Bran?" It was Meera's voice. "You were thrashing, making terrible noises. What did you see?"

"Winterfell." His tongue felt strange and thick in his mouth. One day when I come back I won't know how to talk anymore. "It was Winterfell. It was all on fire. There were horse smells, and steel, and blood. They killed everyone, Meera."

He felt her hand on his face, stroking back his hair. "You're all sweaty," she said. "Do you need a drink?"

"A drink," he agreed. She held a skin to his lips, and Bran swallowed so fast the water ran out of the corner of his mouth. He was always weak and thirsty when he came back. And hungry too. He remembered the dying horse, the taste of blood in his mouth, the smell of burnt flesh in the morning air. "How long?"

"Three days," said Jojen. The boy had come up softfoot, or perhaps he had been there all along; in this blind black world, Bran could not have said. "We were afraid for you."

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Bran II

Everything turned inside out and upside down, and Bran found himself back inside his own skin, half-buried in the snow. The burning wight loomed over him, etched tall against the trees in their snowy shrouds. It was one of the naked ones, Bran saw, in the instant before the nearest tree shook off the snow that covered it and dropped it all down upon his head.

The next he knew, he was lying on a bed of pine needles beneath a dark stone roof. The cave. I'm in the cave. His mouth still tasted of blood where he'd bitten his tongue, but a fire was burning to his right, the heat washing over his face, and he had never felt anything so good. Summer was there, sniffing round him, and Hodor, soaking wet. Meera cradled Jojen's head in her lap. And the Arya thing stood over them, clutching her torch.

"The snow," Bran said. "It fell on me. Buried me."

-- Jon:

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A Storm of Swords - Jon II

Jon turned at the sudden sound of wings. Blue-grey feathers filled his eyes, as sharp talons buried themselves in his face. Red pain lanced through him sudden and fierce as pinions beat round his head. He saw the beak, but there was no time to get a hand up or reach for a weapon. Jon reeled backward, his foot lost the stirrup, his garron broke in panic, and then he was falling. And still the eagle clung to his face, its talons tearing at him as it flapped and shrieked and pecked. The world turned upside down in a chaos of feathers and horseflesh and blood, and then the ground came up to smash him.

The next he knew, he was on his face with the taste of mud and blood in his mouth and Ygritte kneeling over him protectively, a bone dagger in her hand. He could still hear wings, though the eagle was not in sight. Half his world was black. "My eye," he said in sudden panic, raising a hand to his face.

"It's only blood, Jon Snow. He missed the eye, just ripped your skin up some."

This passage is very similar to the one describing how the three-eyed crow violently opened Bran's third eye in the so-called 'coma dream'.

-- Arya:

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A Dance with Dragons - The Ugly Little Girl

"Sit," the priest commanded. She sat. "Now close your eyes, child." She closed her eyes. "This will hurt," he warned her, "but pain is the price of power. Do not move."

Still as stone, she thought. She sat unmoving. The cut was quick, the blade sharp. By rights the metal should have been cold against her flesh, but it felt warm instead. She could feel the blood washing down her face, a rippling red curtain falling across her brow and cheeks and chin, and she understood why the priest had made her close her eyes. When it reached her lips the taste was salt and copper. She licked at it and shivered.

"Bring me the face," said the kindly man. The waif made no answer, but she could hear her slippers whispering over the stone floor. To the girl he said, "Drink this," and pressed a cup into her hand. She drank it down at once. It was very tart, like biting into a lemon. A thousand years ago, she had known a girl who loved lemon cakes. No, that was not me, that was only Arya.

-- Sam:

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A Storm of Swords - Samwell I

Sobbing, he took another step.

A root beneath the crust caught his toe, and Sam tripped and fell heavily to one knee, so hard he bit his tongue. He could taste the blood in his mouth, warmer than anything he had tasted since the Fist. This is the end, he thought. Now that he had fallen he could not seem to find the strength to rise again. He groped for a tree branch and clutched it tight, trying to pull himself back to his feet, but his stiff legs would not support him. The mail was too heavy, and he was too fat besides, and too weak, and too tired.

 A Storm of Swords - Samwell III

His fumbling fingers finally found the dagger, but when he slammed it up into the wight's belly the point skidded off the iron links, and the blade went spinning from Sam's hand. Small Paul's fingers tightened inexorably, and began to twist. He's going to rip my head off, Sam thought in despair. His throat felt frozen, his lungs on fire. He punched and pulled at the wight's wrists, to no avail. He kicked Paul between the legs, uselessly. The world shrank to two blue stars, a terrible crushing pain, and a cold so fierce that his tears froze over his eyes. Sam squirmed and pulled, desperate . . . and then he lurched forward.

Small Paul was big and powerful, but Sam still outweighed him, and the wights were clumsy, he had seen that on the Fist. The sudden shift sent Paul staggering back a step, and the living man and the dead one went crashing down together. The impact knocked one hand from Sam's throat, and he was able to suck in a quick breath of air before the icy black fingers returned. The taste of blood filled his mouth. He twisted his neck around, looking for his knife, and saw a dull orange glow. The fire! Only ember and ashes remained, but still . . . he could not breathe, or think . . . Sam wrenched himself sideways, pulling Paul with him . . . his arms flailed against the dirt floor, groping, reaching, scattering the ashes, until at last they found something hot . . . a chunk of charred wood, smouldering red and orange within the black . . . his fingers closed around it, and he smashed it into Paul's mouth, so hard he felt teeth shatter.

-- Theon:

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A Dance with Dragons - The Turncloak

Snow was falling on the godswood too, melting when it touched the ground. Beneath the white-cloaked trees the earth had turned to mud. Tendrils of mist hung in the air like ghostly ribbons. Why did I come here? These are not my gods. This is not my place. The heart tree stood before him, a pale giant with a carved face and leaves like bloody hands.

A thin film of ice covered the surface of the pool beneath the weirwood. Theon sank to his knees beside it. "Please," he murmured through his broken teeth, "I never meant …" The words caught in his throat. "Save me," he finally managed. "Give me …" What? Strength? Courage? Mercy? Snow fell around him, pale and silent, keeping its own counsel. The only sound was a faint soft sobbing. Jeyne, he thought. It is her, sobbing in her bridal bed. Who else could it be? Gods do not weep. Or do they?

The sound was too painful to endure. Theon grabbed hold of a branch and pulled himself back to his feet, knocked the snow off his legs, and limped back toward the lights. There are ghosts in Winterfell, he thought, and I am one of them.

-- Jaime:

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A Storm of Swords - Jaime III

 “Oh yeth,” said Vargo Hoat. “Half the gold in Cathterly Rock, I thall have. But firth I mutht thend him a methage.” He said something in his slithery goatish tongue.

Vargo Hoat from Qohor with his 'slithery goatish tongue' and prominent speech impediment (lisp) is the warlock/greenseer equivalent here.  He wants to send a message to another warlockian greenseer figure, Tywin (the one who uses 'quills and ravens' to get his point across).

Jaime is the horned lord (the catspaw) made a fool of by a trickster, another horned lord (the goat has horns and a dunce's cap too) .  Note the jester in motley dancing on Jaime's back, in a similar vein to that quintessential image @Pain killer Jane has identified of Tyrion (the fool in motley) mounting another fool's back (Dontos) in order to cloak the bride, Sansa (the Nissa / weirwood).

the goat -- greenseer

the catspaw, Jaime -- comet or moon meteor, the sun's son (Tywin's son)

desired target Tywin -- sun.  Remember, the greenseer wants to steal the fire of the gods which involves stealing gold from the sun like Lann.  The Goat desires to extract gold from the 'man who shits gold' himself -- Tywin Lannister.  So stealing the fire of the gods involves attacking the source -- namely, the sun -- not the moon which is its pale reflection.

the silver arakh -- the ice moon or comet

Who is the 'fire moon' in the equation?

 

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Urswyck shoved him in the back, and a jester in green and pink motley kicked his legs out from under him. When he hit the ground one of the archers grabbed the chain between Jaime’s wrists and used it to yank his arms out in front of him. The fat Dothraki put aside his knife to unsheathe a huge curved arakh, the wickedly sharp scythe-sword the horselords loved.

They mean to scare me. The fool hopped on Jaime's back, giggling, as the Dothraki swaggered toward him. The goat wants me to piss my breeches and beg his mercy, but he'll never have that pleasure. He was a Lannister of Casterly Rock, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard; no sellsword would make him scream.

Sunlight ran silver along the edge of the arakh as it came shivering down, almost too fast to see. And Jaime screamed.

 

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A Storm of Swords - Jaime IV

With a bowl and a sharp blade, Qyburn cleaned the stump while Jaime gulped down strongwine, spilling it all over himself in the process. His left hand did not seem to know how to find his mouth, but there was something to be said for that. The smell of wine in his sodden beard helped disguise the stench of pus.

Nothing helped when the time came to pare away the rotten flesh. Jaime did scream then, and pounded his table with his good fist, over and over and over again. He screamed again when Qyburn poured boiling wine over what remained of his stump. Despite all his vows and all his fears, he lost consciousness for a time. When he woke, the maester was sewing at his arm with needle and catgut. "I left a flap of skin to fold back over your wrist."

"You have done this before," muttered Jaime, weakly. He could taste blood in his mouth where he'd bitten his tongue.

Jaime, previously so glib, is reduced to wordlessness, screaming, unconsciousness (this is the realm of the 'third eye' which he similarly encountered in his fever dream at the weirwood stump).  Note the bitten tongue.  'Biting ones tongue' also has the connotation of someone having been cut down to size, humbled by his own hubris.  Now that Jaime has had his false tongue snipped, he is ready to receive the 'true tongue' -- which includes telling Brienne the truth in their intimate 'heart-to-heart' in the Aphrodite (Dawn) bathtub scene.

Perhaps Euron's mute crew on his ship the 'Silence' is a perversion of this concept, where Euron is hoping that by sacrificing others instead of himself he may attain higher wisdom. On the other hand, as you point out with Varamyr and Thistle, greenseeing/skinchanging has its dark side, where others are assaulted, being reduced to mere 'mouthpieces' for the greenseer by having their own tongues cut out.  Bran is not exempt from this abomination in the case of Hodor who can only stutter his name in various tonalities.  What makes Bran's exploitation of Hodor particularly cruel is that Hodor seems to be afflicted with something which one might diagnose today as 'expressive aphasia' (e.g. as a result of a brain injury or stroke), which makes him incapable of expressing his preferences using language, while at the same time preserving his ability to understand what is happening around him to a far greater degree than people realize.  The proof for this is that he's quite capable of comprehending and successfully following complex verbal commands issued to him, although reproducing the same linguistic complexity would be beyond him.  Furthermore, when Bran is nesting in his body and mind, Bran comprehends Hodor's internal fear, pain and rejection of the intrusive presence, although Hodor is limited by his disability in expressing these emotions to the outside world.

GRRM seems to be saying something about the 'silent shout', this paranormal psychic faculty extended to all five senses, 'the true hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and feeling', which paradoxically entails losing those sensory organs literally and/or symbolically (e.g. Arya becoming blind, Gared losing his ears to frostbite, Tyrion losing his nose, Theon losing multiple body parts to Ramsay, Bran losing his legsetc.).  One way in which GRRM highlights the acquisition of spiritual insight is by using a literary device called 'synesthesia'(which is also an entity in psychiatric phenomenology) whereby different senses are juxtaposed in a counterintuitive way.  For example, Jon thinks that Melisandre 'smells red' (impossible since the faculty of smell and sight are inexplicably combined); or Old Nan claims to smell the comet; or Dywen and Jon smell the cold (combining sense of smell and temperature).

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A Clash of Kings - Jon IV

The forester sucked on his spoon a moment. He had taken out his teeth. His face was leathery and wrinkled, his hands gnarled as old roots. "Seems to me like it smells . . . well . . . cold."

"Your head's as wooden as your teeth," Hake told him. "There's no smell to cold."

There is, thought Jon, remembering the night in the Lord Commander's chambers. It smells like death. Suddenly he was not hungry anymore. He gave his stew to Grenn, who looked in need of an extra supper to warm him against the night.

Seams and Voice were just discussing these themes on his 'Lyanna: gift from old gods' thread, pointing out the telepathic bond between Summer and Bran:

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A Clash of Kings - Bran VI

He ran toward the sound, his brother racing beside him. The stone dens rose before them, walls slick and wet. He bared his teeth, but the man-rock took no notice. A gate loomed up, a black iron snake coiled tight about bar and post. When he crashed against it, the gate shuddered and the snake clanked and slithered and held. Through the bars he could look down the long stone burrow that ran between the walls to the stony field beyond, but there was no way through. He could force his muzzle between the bars, but no more. Many a time his brother had tried to crack the black bones of the gate between his teeth, but they would not break. They had tried to dig under, but there were great flat stones beneath, half-covered by earth and blown leaves.

Snarling, he paced back and forth in front of the gate, then threw himself at it once more. It moved a little and slammed him back. Locked, something whispered. Chained. The voice he did not hear, the scent without a smell.

 

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The other ways were closed as well. Where doors opened in the walls of man-rock, the wood was thick and strong. There was no way out.

There is, the whisper came, and it seemed as if he could see the shadow of a great tree covered in needles, slanting up out of the black earth to ten times the height of a man. Yet when he looked about, it was not there. The other side of the godswood, the sentinel, hurry, hurry . . .

Through the gloom of night came a muffled shout, cut short.

Swiftly, swiftly, he whirled and bounded back into the trees, wet leaves rustling beneath his paws, branches whipping at him as he rushed past. He could hear his brother following close. They plunged under the heart tree and around the cold pool, through the blackberry bushes, under a tangle of oaks and ash and hawthorn scrub, to the far side of the wood . . . and there it was, the shadow he'd glimpsed without seeing, the slanting tree pointing at the rooftops. Sentinel, came the thought.

He remembered how it was to climb it then. The needles everywhere, scratching at his bare face and falling down the back of his neck, the sticky sap on his hands, the sharp piney smell of it. It was an easy tree for a boy to climb, leaning as it did, crooked, the branches so close together they almost made a ladder, slanting right up to the roof.

Growling, he sniffed around the base of the tree, lifted a leg and marked it with a stream of urine. A low branch brushed his face, and he snapped at it, twisting and pulling until the wood cracked and tore. His mouth was full of needles and the bitter taste of the sap. He shook his head and snarled.

His brother sat back on his haunches and lifted his voice in a ululating howl, his song black with mourning. The way was no way. They were not squirrels, nor the cubs of men, they could not wriggle up the trunks of trees, clinging with soft pink paws and clumsy feet. They were runners, hunters, prowlers.

The ululating howl black with mourning is reminiscent of Mirri's ululating funeral dirge.

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Off across the night, beyond the stone that hemmed them close, the dogs woke and began to bark. One and then another and then all of them, a great clamor. They smelled it too; the scent of foes and fear.

A desperate fury filled him, hot as hunger. He sprang away from the wall loped off beneath the trees, the shadows of branch and leaf dappling his grey fur . . . and then he turned and raced back in a rush. His feet flew kicking up wet leaves and pine needles, and for a little time he was a hunter and an antlered stag was fleeing before him and he could see it, smell it, and he ran full out in pursuit. The smell of fear made his heart thunder and slaver ran from his jaws, and he reached the falling tree in stride and threw himself up the trunk, claws scrabbling at the bark for purchase. Upward he bounded, up, two bounds, three, hardly slowing, until he was among the lower limbs. Branches tangled his feet and whipped at his eyes, grey-green needles scattered as he shouldered through them, snapping. He had to slow. Something snagged at his foot and he wrenched it free, snarling. The trunk narrowed under him, the slope steeper, almost straight up, and wet. The bark tore like skin when he tried to claw at it. He was a third of the way up, halfway, more, the roof was almost within reach . . . and then he put down a foot and felt it slip off the curve of wet wood, and suddenly he was sliding, stumbling. He yowled in fear and fury, falling, falling, and twisted around while the ground rushed up to break him . . .

And then Bran was back abed in his lonely tower room, tangled in his blankets, his breath coming hard. "Summer," he cried aloud. "Summer." His shoulder seemed to ache, as if he had fallen on it, but he knew it was only the ghost of what the wolf was feeling. Jojen told it true. I am a beastling.

 

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A Clash of Kings - Jon VII

Jon?

The call came from behind him, softer than a whisper, but strong too. Can a shout be silent? He turned his head, searching for his brother, for a glimpse of a lean grey shape moving beneath the trees, but there was nothing, only . . .

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.

He sniffed at the bark, smelled wolf and tree and boy, but behind that there were other scents, the rich brown smell of warm earth and the hard grey smell of stone and something else, something terrible. Death, he knew. He was smelling death. He cringed back, his hair bristling, and bared his fangs.

@cgrav  I enjoyed your thoughts on 'silence' on the other thread.  Any further ideas to add about the 'silent killing word'?

[cgrav]

@ravenous reader No breakthroughs, but as I read excerpts around the word "silence" I'm definitely seeing a pattern of death foreshadowing. In many places Silence is the subject of the sentence, given agency. Replacing Silence with Death seems to often yield completely sensible statements within the context of the story.

Of course Death is a complicated subject in this story, so I'm still ruminating on how it figures into the whole undeath and Greenseer themes.

I also overlooked another very important silent character: Lady Stonheart. 

It seems that nobody gets resurrected and keeps their voice. Silence is the price of a second life, perhaps. A skinchanger can't really speak through their animal, a Greenseer can't speak directly through the tree, the wights make no sound... is Ghost undead? Will Jon come back voiceless?

if Bran can actually be heard through the Weirwood, then it would indicate a transcendent theme in his story. 

Certain settings are equivalent to the underworld-ish realm, including the Godswood, Beyond the Wall and Under the Sea,where these silent characters do appear to have the voices of nature. In that way, we can understand Ghost's initial "sound" (or maybe Jon's ability to hear it) as a clue that Jon/Ghost exist in a place straddling life and death - Just like the Wall.

It appears I had more thoughts than I thought! Hopefully some more concrete themes can be found in all this.

[ravenous reader]

On 4/1/2017 at 8:35 AM, Walda said:

I found this in a medieval leechbook.

It is a metrical charm - a medical procedure that included or was an incantation to ward harmful spirits, or for the healing of the spiritual part of the patient after harmful spirits have attacked them. In verse.

Exactly what it was prescribed for is debatable, but the scholarly consensus seems to be against nightmares/ reduce a fever/ to induce sound sleep/ anticonvulsive therapy/ boot off any dwarf that might be witch-riding the patient. (To the Anglo-Saxon originator of this charm, dwarves were mythical supernatural beings, like elves or imps). As you can see, it has both Pagan and Christian elements.

It is written in Old English, by a now unknown Christian scribe, c.1000 (plus or minus 25 years) and was probably used in the 900's.

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[page f167r]

Wið dweorh man sceal
niman VII lytle oflætan, swylce
man mid ofrað, and writan
þas naman on ælcre
oflætan:Maximianus, Mal-
-chus, Iohannes, Martimi-
-anus, Dionisius, Constan-
-tinus, Serafion. þænne
eft þæt galdor, þæt her æfter
cweð, man sceal singan, æ-
-rest on þæt wynstre eare,
þænne on þæt swiðre eare,
þænne bufan þæs mannes
moldan. And ga þænne an mæden-
-man to and ho hit on his sweo-
-ran, and do man swa þry da-
                                        -gas;

[page f167v]

him bið sona sel. Her com in
gangan, in spiderwiht,hæf-
-de him his haman on handa,
cwæð þæt þu his hæncgest wære,
legde þe his teage an sweo-
-ran.     Ongunnan him of þæm
lande liþan; sona swa hy
of þæm lande coman, þaon-
-gunnan him ða liþu colian.Þa co-
-m in gangan dweores sweostar;
þa geændade heo and aðas swor
ðæt næfre þis ðæm adlegan     derian
ne moste, ne þæm þe þis galdor
begytan mihte,oððe þe þis
galdor  ongalan cuþe. Amen.
Fiað.

Against a dwarf one must take seven little wafers,
like those used in worship, and write these names on each one:
Maximianus,  Malchus, Iohannes, Martimianus,
Dionisius, Constantinus, Serafion.
Then one must sing the charm that is written below,
first into the left ear,
then into the right ear,
then above the man's head.
Then let a maiden go to him
and hang it on his neck,
and do so for three days;

[next page]

he will soon improve.
Here a spider-wight came stalking in.
He had his cloak in his hand, saying you were his steed,
He laid his bonds on your neck. They started sailing from the land;
As soon as they left the land, his limbs began to cool.
Then the dwarf's sister came stalking in.
Then she made amends and swore oaths
That this must never hurt the sick,
Nor he who could gain this charm,
Nor he who could chant this charm.
Amen.
Let it be so.

( Lacnunga, Harley MS 585, pages f 167r,f167v)

The reason I have scanned the original that terrible way, with no regard for sense or metre, even breaking lines off mid-word, is to make it easier to follow the original (click on the link in the quote), that was written line for line like that (although with less punctuation, and with some words run together, or emended). And the italics are mine, to distinguish the incantation from it's instructions.

And here is a spoken version on Youtube

To top it off, the names on the wafers are those of the seven sleepers of Ephesus. This is the original Rip-Van-Winkle story, and in the medieval, people prayed to these saintly martyrs for sound sleep. In ASoIaF, there are elements of it in Grendel's children, in Bran and company entering BR's cave, and also in the tale of Arson Iceaxe.

Thank you @Walda !    That was very interesting, and ties into some of my recent thoughts regarding this kind of 'magical thinking,' which similarly figures quite prominently in GRRM's text:

In that thread, @Unchained also mentioned the significance of the runes, specifically the list of spells or the 'Ljothatal', a collection of charms conferring superpowers on Odin from the 'Havamal', which I've referenced below.  The metrical charm from the medieval leechbook you discussed may shed some light as to the purpose of the second charm in the list, which has unfortunately been left ambiguous due to missing text.  It seems that those who would master the art of 'leechcraft' might refer to practitioners specialising in healing via exorcism, with the wafers representing the seven martyrs functioning as scapegoats into which the illness in question may be transferred, and safely channeled away from the patient -- analogous to how the martyrs were sealed in the cave.

[ravenous reader]

Since Odin's 'Rune Song' from the 'Havamal' has come up, I will leave two different translations -- by Bellows and Thorpe -- here as a reference.  I have highlighted the eighteen spells in red and purple in the two provided versions respectively for easy access, should we wish to discuss the applications in the context of ASOIAF either on this or my 'Killing Word' thread.

No-one really knows when or by whom the Havamal was authored.  The only surviving source for Hávamál is the 13th century Codex Regius.  Bellows explains a bit on the background:

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There existed from very early times a collection of proverbs and wise counsels, which were attributed to Othin just as the Biblical proverbs were to Solomon. This collection, which presumably was always elastic in extent, was known as "The High One's Words," and forms the basis of the present poem. To it, however, were added other poems and fragments dealing with wisdom which seemed by their nature to imply that the speaker was Othin. Thus a catalogue of runes, or charms, was tacked on, and also a set of proverbs, differing essentially in form from those comprising the main collection. Here and there bits of verse more nearly narrative crept in; and of course the loose structure of the poem made it easy for any reciter to insert new stanzas almost at will. This curious miscellany is what we now have as the Hovamol.

Five separate elements are pretty clearly recognizable: (1) the Hovamol proper (stanzas 1-80), a collection of proverbs and counsels for the conduct of life; (2) the Loddfafnismol (stanzas 111-138), a collection somewhat similar to the first, but specific ally addressed to a certain Loddfafnir; (3) the Ljothatal (stanzas 147-165), a collection of charms; (4) the love-story of Othin and Billing's daughter (stanzas 96-102), with an introductory dissertation on the faithlessness of women in general (stanzas 81-95), which probably crept into the poem first, and then pulled the story, as an apt illustration, after it; (5) the story of how Othin got the mead of poetry--the draught which gave him the gift of tongues--from the maiden Gunnloth (stanzas 103-110). There is also a brief passage (stanzas 139 146) telling how Othin won the runes, this passage being a natural introduction to the Ljothatal, and doubtless brought into the poem for that reason.

p. 29

It is idle to discuss the authorship or date of such a series of accretions as this. Parts of it are doubtless among the oldest relics of ancient Germanic poetry; parts of it may have originated at a relatively late period. Probably, however, most of its component elements go pretty far back, although we have no way of telling how or when they first became associated.

 

Translation by Henry Adams Bellows, with his accompanying notes:

147. The songs I know | that king's wives know not,
Nor men that are sons of men;
The first is called help, | and help it can bring thee
In sorrow and pain and sickness.

148. A second I know, | that men shall need
Who leechcraft long to use;
.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .

[146. This stanza as translated here follows the manuscript reading, except in assuming a gap between lines 3 and 5. In Vigfusson and Powell's Corpus Poeticum Boreale the first three lines have somehow been expanded into eight. The last two lines are almost certainly misplaced; Bugge suggests that they belong at the end of stanza 144. Thund: another name for Othin. When home he came: presumably after obtaining the runes as described in stanzas 139 and 140.

147. With this stanza begins the Ljothatal, or list of charms. The magic songs themselves are not given, but in each case the peculiar application of the charm is explained. The passage, which is certainly approximately complete as far as it goes, runs to the end of the poem. In the manuscript and in most editions line 4 falls into two half-lines, running:

"In sickness and pain | and every sorrow."]

p. 64

149. A third I know, | if great is my need
Of fetters to hold my foe;
Blunt do I make | mine enemy's blade,
Nor bites his sword or staff.

150. A fourth I know, | if men shall fasten
Bonds on my bended legs;
So great is the charm | that forth I may go,
The fetters spring from my feet,
Broken the bonds from my hands.

152. A fifth I know, | if I see from afar
An arrow fly 'gainst the folk;
It flies not so swift | that I stop it not,
If ever my eyes behold it.

152. A sixth I know, | if harm one seeks
With a sapling's roots to send me;
The hero himself | who wreaks his hate
Shall taste the ill ere I.

153. A seventh I know, | if I see in flames
The hall o'er my comrades' heads;
It burns not so wide | that I will not quench it,
I know that song to sing.

[148. Second, etc., appear in the manuscript as Roman numerals. The manuscript indicates no gap after line 2.

152. The sending of a root with runes written thereon was an excellent way of causing death. So died the Icelandic hero Grettir the Strong.]

p. 65

154. An eighth I know, | that is to all
Of greatest good to learn;
When hatred grows | among heroes' sons,
I soon can set it right.

155. A ninth I know, | if need there comes
To shelter my ship on the flood;
The wind I calm | upon the waves,
And the sea I put to sleep.

156. A tenth I know, | what time I see
House-riders flying on high;
So can I work | that wildly they go,
Showing their true shapes,
Hence to their own homes.

157. An eleventh I know, | if needs I must lead
To the fight my long-loved friends;
I sing in the shields, | and in strength they go
Whole to the field of fight,
Whole from the field of fight,
And whole they come thence home.

158. A twelfth I know, | if high on a tree
I see a hanged man swing;

[156. House-riders: witches, who ride by night on the roofs of houses, generally in the form of wild beasts. Possibly one of the last two lines is spurious.

157. The last line looks like an unwarranted addition, and line 4 may likewise be spurious.

158. Lines 4-5 are probably expanded from a single line.]

p. 66

So do I write | and color the runes
That forth he fares,
And to me talks.

159. A thirteenth I know, | if a thane full young
With water I sprinkle well;
He shall not fall, | though he fares mid the host,
Nor sink beneath the swords.

160. A fourteenth I know, | if fain I would name
To men the mighty gods;
All know I well | of the gods and elves,
Few be the fools know this.

161. A fifteenth I know, | that before the doors
Of Delling sang Thjothrörir the dwarf;
Might he sang for the gods, | and glory for elves,
And wisdom for Hroptatyr wise.

162. A sixteenth I know, | if I seek delight
To win from a maiden wise;
The mind I turn | of the white-armed maid,
And thus change all her thoughts.

[159. The sprinkling of a child with water was an established custom long before Christianity brought its conception of baptism.

161. This stanza, according to Müllenhoff, was the original conclusion of the poem, the phrase "a fifteenth" being inserted only after stanzas 162-165 had crept in. Delling: a seldom mentioned god who married Not (Night). Their son was Dag (Day). Thjothrörir: not mentioned elsewhere. Hroptatyr: Othin.]

p. 67

163. A seventeenth I know, | so that seldom shall go
A maiden young from me;
.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .

164. Long these songs | thou shalt, Loddfafnir,
Seek in vain to sing;
Yet good it were | if thou mightest get them,
Well, if thou wouldst them learn,
Help, if thou hadst them.

165. An eighteenth I know, | that ne'er will I tell
To maiden or wife of man,--
The best is what none | but one's self doth know,
So comes the end of the songs,--
Save only to her | in whose arms I lie,
Or who else my sister is.

[163. Some editors have combined these two lines with stanza 164. Others have assumed that the gap follows the first half-line, making "so that-from me" the end of the stanza.

164. This stanza is almost certainly an interpolation, and seems to have been introduced after the list of charms and the Loddfafnismol (stanzas 111-138) were combined in a single poem, for there is no other apparent excuse for the reference to Loddfafnir at this point. The words "if thou mightest get them" are a conjectural emendation.

165. This stanza is almost totally obscure. The third and fourth lines look like interpolations.]

 

This is the translation by Benjamin Thorpe:

148. Those songs I know
which the king's wife knows not
nor son of man.
Help the first is called,
for that will help thee
against strifes and cares.

149. For the second I know,
what the sons of men require,
who will as leeches live.

***********************
***********************
***********************

150. For the third I know,
if I have great need
to restrain my foes,
the weapons'edge I deaden:
of my adversaries
nor arms nor wiles harm aught.

151. For the forth I know,
if men place
bonds on my limbs,
I so sing
that I can walk;
the fetter starts from my feet,
and the manacle from my hands.

152. For the fifth I know,
I see a shot from a hostile hand,
a shaft flying amid the host,
so swift it cannot fly
that I cannot arrest it,
if only I get sight of it.

153. For the sixth I know,
if one wounds me
with a green tree's roots;
also if a man
declares hatred to me,
harm shall consume them sooner than me.

154. For the seventh I know,
if a lofty house I see
blaze o'er its inmates,
so furiously it shall not burn
that I cannot save it.
That song I can sing.

155. For the eighth I know,
what to all is
useful to learn:
where hatred grows
among the sons of men -
that I can quickly assuage.

156. For the ninth I know,
if I stand in need
my bark on the water to save,
I can the wind
on the waves allay,
and the sea lull.

157. For the tenth I know,
if I see troll-wives
sporting in air,
I can so operate
that they will forsake
their own forms,
and their own minds.

158. For the eleventh I know,
if I have to lead
my ancient friends to battle,
under their shields I sing,
and with power they go
safe to the fight,
safe from the fight;
safe on every side they go.

159. For the twelfth I know,
if on a tree I see
a corpse swinging from a halter,
I can so grave
and in runes depict,
that the man shall walk,
and with me converse.

160. For the thirteenth I know,
if on a young man
I sprinkle water, 
he shall not fall,
though he into battle come:
that man shall not sink before swords.

161. For the fourteenth I know,
if in the society of men
I have to enumerate the gods,
Æsir and Alfar,
I know the distinctions of all.
This few unskilled can do.

162. For the fifteenth I know
what the dwarf Thiodreyrir sang
before Delling's doors.
Strength he sang to the Æsir,
and to the Alfar prosperity,
wisdom to Hroptatýr.

163. For the sixteenth I know,
if a modest maiden's favour and affection
I desire to possess,
the soul I change
of the white-armed damsel,
and wholly turn her mind.

164. For the seventeenth I know,
that that young maiden will
reluctantly avoid me.
These songs, Loddfafnir!
thou wilt long have lacked;
yet it may be good if thou understandest them,
profitable if thou learnest them.

165. For the eighteenth I know
that which I never teach
to maid or wife of man,
(all is better 
what one only knows.
This is the closing of the songs)
save her alone
who claspsme in her arms,
or is my sister.

166. Now are sung the 
High-one's songs,
in the High-one's hall,
to the sons of men all-useful,
but useless to the Jötun's sons.
Hail to him who has sung them!

Hail to him who knows them!
May he profit who has learnt them!
Hail to hose who have listened to them!

********************************* 

 

In summary, the list of charms:

1. helping to relieve sorrow, pain and sickness
2. healing through leeches, exorcism?
3. warding against the weapons of ones enemies, e.g. blunting the swords of enemies
4. escaping imprisonment
5. stopping an arrow in flight
6.  deflecting and reversing an enemy's curse, so that it backfires on the one who sent it; what I've termed 'counter-mocking'
7. putting out a fire
8. dispelling hatred
9. calming the wind and sea, protecting a ship against shipwreck
10. scattering witches
11. lending strength to and protecting warriors 
12. raising the dead, necromancy
13. protecting warriors using holy water
14. conferring special knowledge of the gods
15. conferring strength, prosperity and wisdom (special chant sung at dawn...'before Delling's doors')
16. seducing a lady, a love charm
17. binding the affections of a lady, so she can't leave for a rival
18. the final one is a secret charm he's keeping to himself!  (perhaps indicative of how the ultimate power resides in silence, in possessing arcane knowledge to which others are not privy)

[LmL]

I'm way behind, but a few thoughts. 

@ravenous reader: great catch on Jon's Odin makeover being similar to Bran's, that's excellent. I should have seen that! Good call. 

Also, you found another "Weirwood as a pale giant" quote, that's awesome! I had only found the one. Do you know of any others? 

I had another thought but now I need to go back and reread your comment to remember. Oh yes - the wolf song black with mourning. That's another Valyrian steel sword / sound that broke the moom double entendre, just like Window's Wail (the sword named after a scream) and the dragonbinder horn (whose sound splits the air like swordthrust and a shivering hot scream): "black mourning" referring to black Dawn swords (v steel) and the ululating howl referring to the moon breaking song of Nissa Nissa. As the black wolf sings, the silver smoked wolf climbs a tree ladder (or tries to) and then falls back to the ground. That's pretty nice because it ties the silver smoke wolf - the rising Ash and smoke - to the idea of a tree as a Jacob's Ladder. The smoke Rises to the stars as well in the scene with the stallion who mounts the world and a few others. The rising Ash is what forms the image of the ash tree, so it should be a ladder to the stars. So in this scene, we have both methods for a greenseer to reach into the Stars - the horn (Shaggy's howl) and the astral projection tree. 

[ravenous reader]

The Peach

 

I want to talk about peaches as a forbidden fruit.

The sweet, messy juice of the peach is highly suggestive of the sweet satisfaction of bloodshed – the original sin.  As Euron remarks, there’s nothing sweeter than the wine taken off a beaten foe, including his brothers, particularly Victarion to whom he is speaking here among that number (having stolen his woman, his men, etc. from him):

A Feast for Crows - The Reaver

‘’There's no wine half so sweet as wine taken from a beaten foe."

 The temptation of the forbidden fruit of the Dornishman’s wife who tastes like a peach:

A Storm of Swords - Jon I

The Dornishman's wife would sing as she bathed,

in a voice that was sweet as a peach,

But the Dornishman's blade had a song of its own...

So basically when he 'tastes the Dornishman's wife,' it's safe to say she tastes like a peach!

The brothel-cum-brotherhood-without-banners base of 'The Peach':

A Storm of Swords - Arya V

Valar morghulis, Arya thought.

On the east side of the market square stood a modest inn with whitewashed walls and broken windows. Half its roof had burnt off recently, but the hole had been patched over. Above the door hung a wooden shingle painted as a peach, with a big bite taken out of it. They dismounted at the stables sitting catty-corner, and Greenbeard bellowed for grooms.

The buxom red-haired innkeep howled with pleasure at the sight of them, then promptly set to tweaking them. "Greenbeard, is it? Or Greybeard? Mother take mercy, when did you get so old? Lem, is that you? Still wearing the same ratty cloak, are you? I know why you never wash it, I do. You're afraid all the piss will wash out and we'll see you're really a knight o' the Kingsguard! And Tom o' Sevens, you randy old goat! You come to see that son o' yours? Well, you're too late, he's off riding with that bloody Huntsman. And don't tell me he's not yours!"

The temptations of power, arcane knowledge, whispers, little birds, Varys...

A Storm of Swords - Tyrion II

The eunuch was humming tunelessly to himself as he came through the door, dressed in flowing robes of peach-colored silk and smelling of lemons. When he saw Tyrion seated by the hearth, he stopped and grew very still. "My lord Tyrion," came out in a squeak, punctuated by a nervous giggle.

"So you do remember me? I had begun to wonder."
    “It is so very good to see you looking so strong and well.” Varys smiled his slimiest smile. “Though I confess, I had not thought to find you in mine own humble chambers.”

    “They are humble. Excessively so, in truth.” Tyrion had waited until Varys was summoned by his father before slipping in to pay him a visit. The eunuch’s apartments were sparse and small, three snug windowless chambers under the north wall. “I’d hoped to discover bushel baskets of juicy secrets to while away the waiting, but there’s not a paper to be found.” He’d searched for hidden passages too, knowing the Spider must have ways of coming and going unseen, but those had proved equally elusive. “There was water in your flagon, gods have mercy,” he went on, “your sleeping cell is no wider than a coffin, and that bed . . . is it actually made of stone, or does it only feel that way?”

    Varys closed the door and barred it. “I am plagued with backaches, my lord, and prefer to sleep upon a hard surface.”

    “I would have taken you for a featherbed man.”

    “I am full of surprises. Are you cross with me for abandoning you after the battle?”

    “It made me think of you as one of my family.”

    “It was not for want of love, my good lord. I have such a delicate disposition, and your scar is so dreadful to look upon . . .” He gave an exaggerated shudder. “Your poor nose . . .”

    Tyrion rubbed irritably at the scab. “Perhaps I should have a new one made of gold. What sort of nose would you suggest, Varys? One like yours, to smell out secrets? Or should I tell the goldsmith that I want my father’s nose?” He smiled. “My noble father labors so diligently that I scarce see him anymore. Tell me, is it true that he’s restoring Grand Maester Pycelle to the small council?”

 

From Wikipedia: Etymology --

The scientific name persica, along with the word "peach" itself and its cognates in many European languages, derives from an early European belief that peaches were native to Persia. The Ancient Romans referred to the peach as malum persicum "Persian apple" [the word 'malum' may be a pun, possibly having led to a misinterpretation of biblical text; see below], later becoming French pêche, hence the English "peach".  The scientific name, Prunus persica, literally means "Persian plum", as it is closely related to the plum.

In Western Europe, the forbidden fruit was often depicted as an apple, possibly because of a misunderstanding of, or a pun on mălum, a native Latin noun which means evil (from the adjective malus), and mālum, another Latin noun, borrowed from Greek μῆλον, which means apple. In the Vulgate, Genesis 2:17 describes the tree as de ligno autem scientiae boni et mali: "but of the tree (lit. wood) of knowledge of good and evil" (mali here is the genitive of malum).

Thus, the upshot of all this is that it's by no means certain that the 'forbidden fruit' was even an apple, as is commonly assumed!  In some respects, a fruit such as the peach is more suited symbolically, considering that unlike the apple it's a particularly juicy, messy, sticky fruit which is apt to stain the eater.  

There may additionally be a pun on the French word 'pêche' from which 'peach' is derived, with the word in French for 'sin':

 (from http://www.200words-a-day.com/french-verb-pecher.html)

The French for sin is the regular ER verb pécher.
To remember this, imagine the trespasser sins by stealing the special PEACH. 
pécher can also mean: to trespass, to err.
Related words include:
  - le péché (nm) : sin.
  - pécher par excès de prudence : to be on the safe side.
Note: pêcher (v) : to fish, to go fishing for, to catch. / la pêche (nf) : peach; fishing.
 

Fallen Fruits

Double inverse movement: Eve reaching up to pluck the fruit; and the fruit reaching down/falling down, mirroring her own Fall.

The ‘curious’ peach -- curiosity leads to someones downfall.

And now,  a poem about someone who like Stannis was confronted with the temptation of eating a peach; however, unlike Stannis pathetically refrained from eating one.  I see Stannis deciding to go ahead with murdering his brother as tantamount to plucking the tempting, juicy (i.e. sticky, bloody) peach waved in his face, and eating it.  Dear Stannis wasn't such a 'square,' after all; however, he will surely go down as a murderer and a traitor.  In contrast, in the refusal of the frightening peach ('Do I dare to eat a peach...Do I dare disturb the universe?'), the protagonist of the following poem proved unfortunately to be nothing more than a 'milquetoast' of a man, though his saving grace was that he's also one of the greatest, although most controversial, poets.

 

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse 
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, 
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. 
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo

Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, 
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

 

Let us go then, you and I, 

When the evening is spread out against the sky 

Like a patient etherized upon a table; 

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, 

The muttering retreats 

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels 

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: 

Streets that follow like a tedious argument 

Of insidious intent 

To lead you to an overwhelming question ... 

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” 

Let us go and make our visit. 

 

In the room the women come and go 

Talking of Michelangelo. 

 

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, 

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, 

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, 

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, 

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 

And seeing that it was a soft October night, 

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. 

 

                                 And indeed there will be time 

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, 

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; 

There will be time, there will be time 

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; 

There will be time to murder and create, 

And time for all the works and days of hands 

That lift and drop a question on your plate; 

Time for you and time for me, 

And time yet for a hundred indecisions, 

And for a hundred visions and revisions, 

Before the taking of a toast and tea. 

 

In the room the women come and go 

Talking of Michelangelo. 

 

And indeed there will be time 

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” 

 

Time to turn back and descend the stair, 

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair — 

(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”) 

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, 

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin — 

(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”) 

Do I dare 

Disturb the universe? 

In a minute there is time 

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. 

 

                                 For I have known them all already, known them all: 

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; 

I know the voices dying with a dying fall 

Beneath the music from a farther room. 

               So how should I presume? 

 

And I have known the eyes already, known them all— 

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, 

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, 

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, 

Then how should I begin 

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? 

               And how should I presume? 

 

And I have known the arms already, known them all— 

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare 

(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!) 

Is it perfume from a dress 

That makes me so digress? 

Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. 

               And should I then presume? 

               And how should I begin? 

 

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes 

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ... 

 

I should have been a pair of ragged claws 

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. 

 

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! 

Smoothed by long fingers, 

Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers, 

Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. 

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, 

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, 

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, 

I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter; 

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, 

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 

And in short, I was afraid. 

 

And would it have been worth it, after all, 

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, 

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, 

Would it have been worth while, 

To have bitten off the matter with a smile, 

To have squeezed the universe into a ball 

To roll it towards some overwhelming question, 

To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead, 

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— 

If one, settling a pillow by her head 

               Should say: “That is not what I meant at all; 

               That is not it, at all.” 

 

And would it have been worth it, after all, 

Would it have been worth while, 

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, 

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— 

And this, and so much more?— 

It is impossible to say just what I mean! 

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: 

Would it have been worth while 

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, 

And turning toward the window, should say: 

               “That is not it at all, 

               That is not what I meant, at all.” 

 

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; 

Am an attendant lord, one that will do 

To swell a progress, start a scene or two, 

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, 

Deferential, glad to be of use, 

Politic, cautious, and meticulous; 

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; 

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— 

Almost, at times, the Fool. 

 

I grow old ... I grow old ... 

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. 

 

Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach? 

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. 

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. 

 

I do not think that they will sing to me. 

 

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves 

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back 

When the wind blows the water white and black. 

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea 

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

 

-- T.S.  Eliot

Source: Collected Poems 1909-1962 (1963)

 

 

 And another poem about the temptations of the Garden:

 

The Garden

How vainly men themselves amaze 

To win the palm, the oak, or bays, 

And their uncessant labours see 

Crown’d from some single herb or tree, 

Whose short and narrow verged shade 

Does prudently their toils upbraid; 

While all flow’rs and all trees do close 

To weave the garlands of repose. 

 

Fair Quiet, have I found thee here, 

And Innocence, thy sister dear! 

Mistaken long, I sought you then 

In busy companies of men; 

Your sacred plants, if here below, 

Only among the plants will grow. 

Society is all but rude, 

To this delicious solitude. 

 

No white nor red was ever seen 

So am’rous as this lovely green. 

Fond lovers, cruel as their flame, 

Cut in these trees their mistress’ name; 

Little, alas, they know or heed 

How far these beauties hers exceed! 

Fair trees! wheres’e’er your barks I wound, 

No name shall but your own be found. 

 

When we have run our passion’s heat, 

Love hither makes his best retreat. 

The gods, that mortal beauty chase, 

Still in a tree did end their race: 

Apollo hunted Daphne so, 

Only that she might laurel grow; 

And Pan did after Syrinx speed, 

Not as a nymph, but for a reed. 

 

What wond’rous life in this I lead! 

Ripe apples drop about my head; 

The luscious clusters of the vine 

Upon my mouth do crush their wine; 

The nectarine and curious peach 

Into my hands themselves do reach; 

Stumbling on melons as I pass, 

Ensnar’d with flow’rs, I fall on grass. 

 

Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, 

Withdraws into its happiness; 

The mind, that ocean where each kind 

Does straight its own resemblance find, 

Yet it creates, transcending these, 

Far other worlds, and other seas; 

Annihilating all that’s made 

To a green thought in a green shade. 

 

Here at the fountain’s sliding foot, 

Or at some fruit tree’s mossy root, 

Casting the body’s vest aside, 

My soul into the boughs does glide; 

There like a bird it sits and sings, 

Then whets, and combs its silver wings; 

And, till prepar’d for longer flight, 

Waves in its plumes the various light. 

 

Such was that happy garden-state, 

While man there walk’d without a mate; 

After a place so pure and sweet, 

What other help could yet be meet! 

But ’twas beyond a mortal’s share 

To wander solitary there: 

Two paradises ’twere in one 

To live in paradise alone. 

 

How well the skillful gard’ner drew 

Of flow’rs and herbs this dial new, 

Where from above the milder sun 

Does through a fragrant zodiac run; 

And as it works, th’ industrious bee 

Computes its time as well as we. 

How could such sweet and wholesome hours 

Be reckon’d but with herbs and flow’rs!  

 

-- Andrew Marvell

 

 

A Clash of Kings - Catelyn III

"All this of snakes and incest is droll, but it changes nothing. You may well have the better claim, Stannis, but I still have the larger army." Renly's hand slid inside his cloak. Stannis saw, and reached at once for the hilt of his sword, but before he could draw steel his brother produced . . . a peach. "Would you like one, brother?" Renly asked, smiling. "From Highgarden. You've never tasted anything so sweet, I promise you." He took a bite. juice ran from the corner of his mouth.

"I did not come here to eat fruit." Stannis was fuming.

"My lords!" Catelyn said. "We ought to be hammering out the terms of an alliance, not trading taunts." 

"A man should never refuse to taste a peach," Renly said as he tossed the stone away. "He may never get the chance again. Life is short, Stannis. Remember what the Starks say. Winter is coming." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"I did not come here to be threatened, either."

"Nor were you," Renly snapped back. "When I make threats, you'll know it. If truth be told, I've never liked you, Stannis, but you are my own blood, and I have no wish to slay you. So if it is Storm's End you want, take it . . . as a brother's gift. As Robert once gave it to me, I give it to you."

"It is not yours to give. It is mine by rights."

Sighing, Renly half turned in the saddle. "What am I to do with this brother of mine, Brienne? He refuses my peach, he refuses my castle, he even shunned my wedding . . . "

"We both know your wedding was a mummer's farce. A year ago you were scheming to make the girl one of Robert's whores."

"A year ago I was scheming to make the girl Robert's queen," Renly said, "but what does it matter? The boar got Robert and I got Margaery. You'll be pleased to know she came to me a maid."

"In your bed she's like to die that way."

"Oh, I expect I'll get a son on her within the year. Pray, how many sons do you have, Stannis? Oh, yes - none." Renly smiled innocently. "As to your daughter, I understand. If my wife looked like yours, I'd send my fool to service her as well."

"Enough!" Stannis roared. "I will not be mocked to my face, do you hear me? I will not!" He yanked his longsword from its scabbard. The steel gleamed strangely bright in the wan sunlight, now red, now yellow, now blazing white. The air around it seemed to shimmer, as if from heat.

Catelyn's horse whinnied and backed away a step, but Brienne moved between the brothers, her own blade in hand. "Put up your steel!" she shouted at Stannis.

Cersei Lannister is laughing herself breathless, Catelyn thought wearily.

Stannis pointed his shining sword at his brother. "I am not without mercy," thundered he who was notoriously without mercy. "Nor do I wish to sully Lightbringer with a brother's blood. For the sake of the mother who bore us both, I will give you this night to rethink your folly, Renly. Strike your banners and come to me before dawn, and I will grant you Storm's End and your old seat on the council and even name you my heir until a son is born to me. Otherwise, I shall destroy you."

Renly laughed. "Stannis, that's a very pretty sword, I'll grant you, but I think the glow off it has ruined your eyes. Look across the fields, brother. Can you see all those banners?"

"Do you think a few bolts of cloth will make you king?"

"Tyrell swords will make me king. Rowan and Tarly and Caron will make me king, with axe and mace and warhammer. Tarth arrows and Penrose lances, Fossoway, Cuy, Mullendore, Estermont, Selmy, Hightower, Oakheart, Crane, Caswell, Blackbar, Morrigen, Beesbury, Shermer, Dunn, Footly . . . even House Florent, your own wife's brothers and uncles, they will make me king. All the chivalry of the south rides with me, and that is the least part of my power. My foot is coming behind, a hundred thousand swords and spears and pikes. And you will destroy me? With what, pray? That paltry rabble I see there huddled under the castle walls? I'll call them five thousand and be generous, codfish lords and onion knights and sellswords. Half of them are like to come over to me before the battle starts. You have fewer than four hundred horse, my scouts tell me - freeriders in boiled leather who will not stand an instant against armored lances. I do not care how seasoned a warrior you think you are, Stannis, that host of yours won't survive the first charge of my vanguard."

"We shall see, brother." Some of the light seemed to go out of the world when Stannis slid his sword back into its scabbard. "Come the dawn, we shall see."

"I hope your new god's a merciful one, brother."

Stannis snorted and galloped away, disdainful. The red priestess lingered a moment behind. "Look to your own sins, Lord Renly," she said as she wheeled her horse around.

Catelyn and Lord Renly returned together to the camp where his thousands and her few waited their return. "That was amusing, if not terribly profitable," he commented. "I wonder where I can get a sword like that? Well, doubtless Loras will make me a gift of it after the battle. it grieves me that it must come to this."

"You have a cheerful way of grieving," said Catelyn, whose distress was not feigned.

"Do I?" Renly shrugged. "So be it. Stannis was never the most cherished of brothers, I confess. Do you suppose this tale of his is true? If Joffrey is the Kingslayer's get - "

" - your brother is the lawful heir."

"While he lives," Renly admitted. "Though it's a fool's law, wouldn't you agree? Why the oldest son, and not the best-fitted? The crown will suit me, as it never suited Robert and would not suit Stannis. I have it in me to be a great king, strong yet generous, clever, just, diligent, loyal to my friends and terrible to my enemies, yet capable of forgiveness, patient - "

           " - humble?" Catelyn supplied. 

Renly laughed. "You must allow a king some flaws, my lady."

Catelyn felt very tired. It had all been for nothing. The Baratheon brothers would drown each other in blood while her son faced the Lannisters alone, and nothing she could say or do would stop it. It is past time I went back to Riverrun to close my father's eyes, she thought. That much at least I can do. I may be a poor envoy, but I am a good mourner, gods save me.

 

A Clash of Kings - Davos II

"Robert could piss in a cup and men would call it wine, but I offer them pure cold water and they squint in suspicion and mutter to each other about how queer it tastes." Stannis ground his teeth. "If someone said I had magicked myself into a boar to kill Robert, likely they would believe that as well."

"You cannot stop them talking, my liege," Davos said, "but when you take your vengeance on your brothers' true killers, the realm will know such tales for lies."

Stannis only seemed to half hear him. "I have no doubt that Cersei had a hand in Robert's death. I will have justice for him. Aye, and for Ned Stark and Jon Arryn as well."

"And for Renly?" The words were out before Davos could stop to consider them.

For a long time the king did not speak. Then, very softly, he said, "I dream of it sometimes. Of Renly's dying. A green tent, candles, a woman screaming. And blood." Stannis looked down at his hands. "I was still abed when he died. Your Devan will tell you. He tried to wake me. Dawn was nigh and my lords were waiting, fretting. I should have been ahorse, armored. I knew Renly would attack at break of day. Devan says I thrashed and cried out, but what does it matter? It was a dream. I was in my tent when Renly died, and when I woke my hands were clean."

Ser Davos Seaworth could feel his phantom fingertips start to itch. Something is wrong here, the onetime smuggler thought. Yet he nodded and said, "I see."

"Renly offered me a peach. At our parley. Mocked me, defied me, threatened me, and offered me a peach. I thought he was drawing a blade and went for mine own. Was that his purpose, to make me show fear? Or was it one of his pointless jests? When he spoke of how sweet the peach was, did his words have some hidden meaning?" The king gave a shake of his head, like a dog shaking a rabbit to snap its neck. "Only Renly could vex me so with a piece of fruit. He brought his doom on himself with his treason, but I did love him, Davos. I know that now. I swear, I will go to my grave thinking of my brother's peach."

 

A Clash of Kings - Davos II

"B-but," Davos stammered, "Lord Renly only came here because you had laid siege to the castle. He was marching toward King's Landing before, against the Lannisters, he would have—"

Stannis shifted in his seat, frowning. "Was, would have, what is that? He did what he did. He came here with his banners and his peaches, to his doom . . . and it was well for me he did. Melisandre saw another day in her flames as well. A morrow where Renly rode out of the south in his green armor to smash my host beneath the walls of King's Landing. Had I met my brother there, it might have been me who died in place of him."

"Or you might have joined your strength to his to bring down the Lannisters," Davos protested. "Why not that? If she saw two futures, well . . . both cannot be true."

 

A Storm of Swords - Davos IV

"It means that the battle is begun," said Melisandre. "The sand is running through the glass more quickly now, and man's hour on earth is almost done. We must act boldly, or all hope is lost. Westeros must unite beneath her one true king, the prince that was promised, Lord of Dragonstone and chosen of R'hllor."

"R'hllor chooses queerly, then." The king grimaced, as if he'd tasted something foul. "Why me, and not my brothers? Renly and his peach. In my dreams I see the juice running from his mouth, the blood from his throat. If he had done his duty by his brother, we would have smashed Lord Tywin. A victory even Robert could be proud of. Robert . . ." His teeth ground side to side. "He is in my dreams as well. Laughing. Drinking. Boasting. Those were the things he was best at. Those, and fighting. I never bested him at anything. The Lord of Light should have made Robert his champion. Why me?"

"Because you are a righteous man," said Melisandre.

Note, in the last quote how the juice of the peach running from Renly's mouth is equated with the blood flowing from his throat, thus clearly drawing the parallel we've been discussing here, in addition to revealing Stannis's guilt over the kinslaying via the repetition of the visceral image.  Stannis’s preoccupation with the peach and his unclean hands is reminiscent of Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’ for a number of reasons.

For those of you unfamiliar with the play, it focuses on one man’s ambition to become King of Scotland, following a prophecy by three witches in which it was revealed.  So driven is he subsequently to realise the prophecy, he engages in a vicious cycle of murder which leaves him and his wife ruined, wracked with guilt and mentally unhinged by the end of the play.

As it would so happen a lot of things occur in threes in the play – three witches, three curses, and three or four ‘brothers’ (sound familiar?) – namely, Duncan the King of Scotland and his two subordinates, Macbeth and Banquo, and perhaps yet a fourth.

Lady Macbeth, Macbeth’s wife, persuades him to murder the king while he is overnighting at their house (breach of ‘guest right’), blaming the murder on the two chamberlains accompanying the king whom they have drugged to facilitate their plan (the scapegoats) who are then sacrificed the next morning before they can tell their side of the story.

Macbeth the traitor kills his king and later Banquo as well, although his son escapes.  In the end Macbeth is defeated by yet another, Macduff, in a curious fulfilment of a prophecy whereby the witches assure Macbeth he will only be overcome by one not born out woman (who turns out to be born via Caesarian Section) and when Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Hill (the soldiers use tree-camouflage disguising their advance, the same way the northerner’s outwitted Asha and her men in the Wolfswood).

“Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts! Unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top full
Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry "Hold, hold!” 
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 5

“I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other.” 
― Macbeth, Act 1, Scene7 

“Look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under it.” 
― Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 5

“By the pricking of my thumbs, 
Something wicked this way comes.” 
― Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 1

Enter LADY MACBETH, with a taper

Lo you, here she comes! This is her very guise;
and, upon my life, fast asleep. Observe her; stand close.

Doctor

How came she by that light?

Gentlewoman

Why, it stood by her: she has light by her
continually; 'tis her command.

Doctor

You see, her eyes are open.

Gentlewoman

Ay, but their sense is shut.

Doctor

What is it she does now? Look, how she rubs her hands.

Gentlewoman

It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus
washing her hands: I have known her continue in
this a quarter of an hour.

LADY MACBETH

Yet here's a spot.

Doctor

Hark! she speaks: I will set down what comes from
her, to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly.

LADY MACBETH

Out, damned spot! out, I say!--One: two: why,
then, 'tis time to do't.--Hell is murky!--Fie, my
lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we
fear who knows it, when none can call our power to
account?--Yet who would have thought the old man
to have had so much blood in him.

Doctor

Do you mark that?

LADY MACBETH

The thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?--
What, will these hands ne'er be clean?--No more o'
that, my lord, no more o' that: you mar all with
this starting.

Doctor

Go to, go to; you have known what you should not.

Gentlewoman

She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of
that: heaven knows what she has known.

LADY MACBETH

Here's the smell of the blood still: all the
perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little
hand. Oh, oh, oh!

Doctor

What a sigh is there! The heart is sorely charged.

Gentlewoman

I would not have such a heart in my bosom for the
dignity of the whole body.

Doctor

Well, well, well,--

Gentlewoman

Pray God it be, sir.

Doctor

This disease is beyond my practise: yet I have known
those which have walked in their sleep who have died
holily in their beds.

LADY MACBETH

Wash your hands, put on your nightgown; look not so
pale.--I tell you yet again, Banquo's buried; he
cannot come out on's grave.

Doctor

Even so?

LADY MACBETH

To bed, to bed! there's knocking at the gate:
come, come, come, come, give me your hand. What's
done cannot be undone.--To bed, to bed, to bed!

Exit

Doctor

Will she go now to bed?

Gentlewoman

Directly.

Doctor

Foul whisperings are abroad: unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds
To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets:
More needs she the divine than the physician.
God, God forgive us all! Look after her;
Remove from her the means of all annoyance,
And still keep eyes upon her. So, good night:
My mind she has mated, and amazed my sight.
I think, but dare not speak.  

Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1 

 

Plucking the peach is akin to eating of the forbidden fruit – like the apple in the Garden of Eden.

For example, we see this symbolism introduced in conjunction with Bran, the latest incarnation of the naughty little boy who climbed too high:

A Game of Thrones - Bran II

Then for a while the guards would chase him whenever they saw him on the roofs, and try to haul him down. That was the best time of all. It was like playing a game with his brothers, except that Bran always won. None of the guards could climb half so well as Bran, not even Jory. Most of the time they never saw him anyway. People never looked up. That was another thing he liked about climbing; it was almost like being invisible.

He liked how it felt too, pulling himself up a wall stone by stone, fingers and toes digging hard into the small crevices between. He always took off his boots and went barefoot when he climbed; it made him feel as if he had four hands instead of two. He liked the deep, sweet ache it left in the muscles afterward. He liked the way the air tasted way up high, sweet and cold as a winter peach. He liked the birds: the crows in the broken tower, the tiny little sparrows that nested in cracks between the stones, the ancient owl that slept in the dusty loft above the old armory. Bran knew them all.

Most of all, he liked going places that no one else could go, and seeing the grey sprawl of Winterfell in a way that no one else ever saw it. It made the whole castle Bran's secret place.

Like Bran, Renly with his peaches is an overreacher who took a fall.

And Dany who eats the peach picked at the Western wall (biblical reference) of a garden in Vaes Tolero, the city of bones in the Red Waste:

A Clash of Kings - Daenerys I

Irri broke her reverie to tell her that Ser Jorah Mormont was outside, awaiting her pleasure. "Send him in," Dany commanded, sand-scrubbed skin tingling. She wrapped herself in the lionskin. The hrakkar had been much bigger than Dany, so the pelt covered everything that wanted covering.

"I've brought you a peach," Ser Jorah said, kneeling. It was so small she could almost hide it in her palm, and overripe too, but when she took the first bite, the flesh was so sweet she almost cried. She ate it slowly, savoring every mouthful, while Ser Jorah told her of the tree it had been plucked from, in a garden near the western wall.

 

A Clash of Kings - Daenerys I

"Whatever there is," Dany answered. "Seek for other cities, living and dead. Seek for caravans and people. Seek for rivers and lakes and the great salt sea. Find how far this waste extends before us, and what lies on the other side. When I leave this place, I do not mean to strike out blind again. I will know where I am bound, and how best to get there."

And so they went, the bells in their hair ringing softly, while Dany settled down with her small band of survivors in the place they named Vaes Tolorro, the city of bones. Day followed night followed day. Women harvested fruit from the gardens of the dead. Men groomed their mounts and mended saddles, stirrups, and shoes. Children wandered the twisty alleys and found old bronze coins and bits of purple glass and stone flagons with handles carved like snakes. One woman was stung by a red scorpion, but hers was the only death. The horses began to put on some flesh. Dany tended Ser Jorah's wound herself, and it began to heal.

 

Littlefinger who enjoys the juice but takes care not to get his hands sticky (a metaphor for how he is responsible for many a murder while 'keeping his hands clean'):

A Storm of Swords - Sansa VI

"So one of the Kettleblacks put the poison in Joff's cup?" Ser Osmund had been near the king all night, she remembered.

"Did I say that?" Lord Petyr cut the blood orange in two with his dagger and offered half to Sansa. "The lads are far too treacherous to be part of any such scheme . . . and Osmund has become especially unreliable since he joined the Kingsguard. That white cloak does things to a man, I find. Even a man like him." He tilted his chin back and squeezed the blood orange, so the juice ran down into his mouth. "I love the juice but I loathe the sticky fingers," he complained, wiping his hands. "Clean hands, Sansa. Whatever you do, make certain your hands are clean."

Sansa spooned up some juice from her own orange. "But if it wasn't the Kettleblacks and it wasn't Ser Dontos . . . you weren't even in the city, and it couldn't have been Tyrion . . ."

 

Blood oranges -- not so dissimilar to peaches...

A Feast for Crows - The Captain Of Guards

As he honed the axe, Hotah thought of Norvos, the high city on the hill and the low beside the river. He could still recall the sounds of the three bells, the way that Noom's deep peals set his very bones to shuddering, the proud strong voice of Narrah, weet Nyel's silvery laughter. The taste of wintercake filled his mouth again, rich with ginger and pine nuts and bits of cherry, with nahsa to wash it down, fermented goat's milk served in an iron cup and laced with honey. He saw his mother in her dress with the squirrel collar, the one she wore but once each year, when they went to see the bears dance down the Sinner's Steps. And he smelled the stench of burning hair as the bearded priest touched the brand to the center of his chest. The pain had been so fierce that he thought his heart might stop, yet Areo Hotah had not flinched. The hair had never grown back over the axe.

Only when both edges were sharp enough to shave with did the captain lay his ash-and-iron wife down on the bed. Yawning, he pulled off his soiled clothes, tossed them on the floor, and stretched out on his straw-stuffed mattress. Thinking of the brand had made it itch, so he had to scratch himself before he closed his eyes. I should have gathered up the oranges that fell, he thought, and went to sleep dreaming of the tart sweet taste of them, and the sticky feel of the red juice on his fingers.

Dawn came too soon.

 

 

From an Atlas of the Difficult World

I know you are reading this poem 
late, before leaving your office 
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window 
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet 
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem 
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean 
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven 
across the plains’ enormous spaces around you. 
I know you are reading this poem 
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear 
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed 
and the open valise speaks of flight 
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem 
as the underground train loses momentum and before running 
up the stairs 
toward a new kind of love 
your life has never allowed. 
I know you are reading this poem by the light 
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide 
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada. 
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room 
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers. 
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light 
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out, 
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know 
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick 
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on 
because even the alphabet is precious. 
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove 
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your 
hand 
because life is short and you too are thirsty. 
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language 
guessing at some words while others keep you reading 
and I want to know which words they are. 
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn 
between bitterness and hope 
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse. 
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else 
left to read 
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

–Adrienne Rich, from An Atlas of the Difficult World

 

To all who are reading this poem -- thank you; I hear you though I hear you not, and good night!  RR

 

[Cridefea]

Great work RR!! I loved the Eliot's love song. And it's great the parallelism Stannis/Macbeth ...

Yes, I think Peach it's very symbolic, in asoiaf too! It's interesting that in China the peach represents immortality while there are so much blood/juice symbolism here. Medioeval/Persian(?) gardens seems to help the symbolism of good health/lust//sin etc.

Curiousity of the day : I haven't noticed it before you wrote it,  Peach in italian is Pesca but in many italian dialects is persica (southern dialects) or persiga (in my dialect). Thank you!

18 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse 
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, 
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. 
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo

Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, 
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

so much fire here

In the same canto there is this: 

Quote

E il Mastin Vecchio e il Nuovo, che fecer di Montagna il mal governo, là dove soglion fan d'i denti succhio.

Mastin in italian is The Hound (the old and the new) and Montagna is the Mountain:

Quote

The old mastiff of Verrucchio and the young, 

That tore Montagna in their wrath, still make,

Where they are wont, an augre of their fangs.        45

  “Lamone’s city, and Santerno’s,  range

Under the lion of the snowy lair, 

Inconstant partisan, that changeth sides,

Or ever summer yields to winter’s frost.