Heresy 128

[Eira Seren]

Oh gosh! I hope so! As far as I can see, Roose is an apprentice life force vampire, and Ramsey is an escaped "harvest child" (as probably the original Reek 1.0 was). Why in tarnation doesn't Mel see them in her flames?????

ETA: I like the essay, too!

Thanks!

Roose as an apprentice vampire. . . that's perfect. Crackpot: Mel is seeing Ramsay in her flames. . . she keeps seeing Snow! I always hope'd it'd be Mrs. Dustin who took out one of the Boltons, but could live with an ice shadow.

I'd agree with this.She's all interested.It wouldn't surprise me if she's discounted Stannis as AA and substituted Jon instead since her POV chapter.

But since Jon hasn't succumbed to her charms yet,I suggest she's done the deed with Mance without him exactly knowing what he was getting into,as it were.

The black ice and the red sword have always suggested to me that Jon is the song of ice and fire and that his Targ genes will play an important part of his story,though not the most important.

Oh, yeah, Mel really wants to get in Jon's wolf pants. The significance is finally dawning on me: ice armor, ice sword (WW) Black Ice armor, fire sword (Jon).

Could Mel have drained life from Mance through a less fun method, perhaps through his ruby?

[redriver]

Oh, yeah, Mel really wants to get in Jon's wolf pants. The significance is finally dawning on me: ice armor, ice sword (WW) Black Ice armor, fire sword (Jon).

Could Mel have drained life from Mance through a less fun method, perhaps through his ruby?

I think they went the fun way,Eira.Mance likes the ladies and Mel has propositioned Davos,inter alia.Aside from this bit of deception on Mel's part I don't think Mance is her thrall and I do think he very much knows what he's doing overall.And that's not being a secret Blackfyre or Targeryen.

[Eira Seren]

Oh, yeah, Mel really wants to get in Jon's wolf pants. The significance is finally dawning on me: ice armor, ice sword (WW) Black Ice armor, fire sword (Jon).

Could Mel have drained life from Mance through a less fun method, perhaps through his ruby?

I think they went the fun way,Eira.Mance likes the ladies and Mel has propositioned Davos,inter alia.Aside from this bit of deception on Mel's part I don't think Mance is her thrall and I do think he very much knows what he's doing overall.And that's not being a secret Blackfyre or Targeryen.

What??! We missed another scene where someone produces a "Fat Pink Mast" or some such?? We're not getting 'Fifty Shades of Melisandre'? This won't do!

I'd forgotten about Davos, he is a bit scandalized by her all the way around. Good for Mance, any rate.

[The Snowfyre Chorus]

In that scene where Mel propositions Jon, she predicts the return of his dead rangers from beyond the Wall and says something like "when that day comes, take my hand." Not that anyone here needs to be told that Mel is not trustworthy, but I found it interesting to note that this exact phrase ("take my hand") has appeared on three other occasions in these books so far, and in every case the offer was followed by a deliberate and/or pre-meditated betrayal of trust.

For reference, the phrase "take my hand" is used by:

- Jaime Lannister to Bran at Winterfell, just before he pushes the boy from the tower.

- Meryn Trant to Tyrion on the Blackwater, just before he swings his sword at the dwarf's head.

- Petyr Baelish to Lysa Arryn, just before he pushes her out the Moondoor.

[wolfmaid7]

not to derail this discussion, but I'm going to go ahead and post Part III of my Heaney essay. As always, if it's not your cup of tea, feel free to skip!

Part I and Part II, for reference.

Part III The Body in the Bog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bring home sherry casks from Spain, Sanlucar de Barrameda,

and fill them up again with the spirit of the land

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

For the spirit starts out clear, but see the transformation

after many patient years, when at last the tale unfolds

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

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

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

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

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

but you’re more like an angel in my eyes

Catch the heady vapours as they rise,

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

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

(A snippet of the song)

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

****

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Broagh

Riverbank, the long rigs

ending in broad docken

and a canopied pad

down to the ford.

The garden mould

bruised easily, the shower

gathering in your heelmark

was the black O

in Broagh,

its low tattoo

among the windy boortrees

and rhubarb-blades

ended almost

suddenly, like that last

gh the strangers found

difficult to manage.

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

This is an amazing essay Erien,to do this justice i have to read Part 1 and 2 of which i will do tommorrow after work.But i agree with you about the close relationship between Sing and magic and moreso the "shared song" between individuals like the Starks and the Direwolves and even the Weirwood trees and certain people including the Starks.Much more to write on this but this is great.

Thinking about the possible equivalence/symmetry of shadow babies and white walkers:

This equivalence makes Melisandre appear to be the current fire version of the Night’s Queen, a known succubus. The observed process of birthing such shadow babies is simple and quick, and results in fully armored magical ninjas able to expeditiously take out specifically targeted enemies, no muss, no fuss, then neatly disappear once their mission is complete, leaving no tracks. One visible cost to creating shadow babies is a reduction in vitality in the parental units, especially the male the seed donor. Other costs are less visible, and unknown.

If Val is the current Ice version of the Night’s Queen, as strongly hinted in her white raiment scene with Jon (wedding imagery, with Ghost “giving away the bride,” anyone?), then she may also be a succubus. But somehow I have a hard time imagining Val [or any other(!) human] giving birth to white shadows, at least not directly.

The Ice version seems to be missing some kind of intermediary step, at least as far as what we’ve been shown. Perhaps what’s required is some form of higher quality Ice wight than we’ve seen so far. After all, Mel is undoubtedly unDead. While some Fire wights seem almost normal (e.g., Melisandre, Moqorro), almost all the Ice wights we’ve seen are pretty darn low functioning zombies.

ColdHands, who is said by Leaf to have “died long ago”, is the exception. He’s the most high functioning Ice wight we’ve seen, and he’s still very far from normal seeming, much less so than Mel & Moqorro. Now, it’s entirely possible that greater resemblance to normal people is a function of time and practice, and the older a wight is, the more practiced and skillful it might become at resembling live humans. Perhaps the low functioning zombies are all just tyros, I don’t know.

Is the problem that the Ice side is somehow deficient in glamor skills (to cover up their unhumanness) compared to the Fire side? I don’t know. If Val is actually human, then yes, it appears that Ice doesn’t glamor as well as Fire. If Val is actually unVal, then Ice has Fire beat hands down in the glamor department, it (glamoring skill) just doesn’t get used as often or by as many wights.

******

Alternatively:

We do know that Craster’s wives report that their sons are taken by the White Walkers to become WW themselves. Gilly asserts that the babies “stink of life,” which she says is why the WW (and/or the wights) come to take the babies away. We don’t know if she’s being truthful, or what happens next to the babies exposed, at least not from the books.

I’m wondering if there isn’t a hint in the demonstrated fact that the male seed donor’s vitality is depleted when making a shadow baby. The TV show gives us an evocative scene that implies that the baby’s life force is somehow tapped without killing it. If the baby really is overflowing with excess/abundant life force compared to a low-30’s adult like Stannis, then it’s possible that one baby may be able to supply enough life force for one or more WW, who in turn would live for some undetermined but presumably long interval because they are Ice and develop/accumulate Icey bodies. These WW then go out and patrol the Haunted Forest as directed by whoever is in charge of them. The 13 black clad figures shown in the TV scene have not been explained (and they don’t appear in the books so far as we know), but it seems possible they are the Night’s King and his 12 buddy LCs from way back in the Long Night. Or this generation’s equivalent. I know about the Night King credit that got posted and then rapidly removed from the HBO website, just don’t know how to evaluate that. So another use for the babies "stinking with life" is to be fed on by the 13 guys in black, thus keeping them "alive" for who knows how long.

In any case, we may have a kind of life force vampirism taking place for the presumed purpose of extending life in certain magic users, and this in itself may be the main thing that has magically screwed up the seasonal balance in Terros. It all seems to mirror the Undying of Qarth, doesn’t it?

Anyway, this parallel descriptive outline of my musings about shadow babies and white walkers reinforces Black Crow’s view that the WW are janissaries rather than independent players in the Song.

It also makes me wonder about the actual effectiveness of Drogon burning the putrid blue heart at the HotU and the “shades” of the Undying that got burned away. Were they really destroyed, or were they just “mummers’ Undying” put out for the occasion of Daenerys’ visit.

I get the sense that there is a lot of Propoganda to the NK story and therefore we are not really sure what cost was incured by that union if any.In myths on Shadows they are often refered to a persons soul so we can interpret it as the NK giving that up to create that. Mel is definitely a Succubus type and Stannis is paying the price by constantly depleting his life force.

When it comes to the babies and their lifeforce the myths surrounding that a lot of which is magica lore is that a babies 'soul' is pure and uncorrupted which is the reason why their life force is so powerful.I would love to know if there is more to Val and a lot of it would be answered for me IF the eye color change in her was not a mistake by George because it would show she aint no apprentice.

[Eira Seren]

In that scene where Mel propositions Jon, she predicts the return of his dead rangers from beyond the Wall and says something like "when that day comes, take my hand." Not that anyone here needs to be told that Mel is not trustworthy, but I found it interesting to note that this exact phrase ("take my hand") has appeared on three other occasions in these books so far, and in every case the offer was followed by a deliberate and/or pre-meditated betrayal of trust.

For reference, the phrase "take my hand" is used by:

- Jaime Lannister to Bran at Winterfell, just before he pushes the boy from the tower.

- Meryn Trant to Tyrion on the Blackwater, just before he swings his sword at the dwarf's head.

- Petyr Baelish to Lysa Arryn, just before he pushes her out the Moondoor.

That's really quite creepy, when you mention it. Suddenly Mel seems like a really likely candidate for the attack.

This is an amazing essay Erien,to do this justice i have to read Part 1 and 2 of which i will do tommorrow after work.But i agree with you about the close relationship between Sing and magic and moreso the "shared song" between individuals like the Starks and the Direwolves and even the Weirwood trees and certain people including the Starks.Much more to write on this but this is great.

I get the sense that there is a lot of Propoganda to the NK story and therefore we are not really sure what cost was incured by that union if any.In myths on Shadows they are often refered to a persons soul so we can interpret it as the NK giving that up to create that. Mel is definitely a Succubus type and Stannis is paying the price by constantly depleting his life force.

When it comes to the babies and their lifeforce the myths surrounding that a lot of which is magica lore is that a babies 'soul' is pure and uncorrupted which is the reason why their life force is so powerful.I would love to know if there is more to Val and a lot of it would be answered for me IF the eye color change in her was not a mistake by George because it would show she aint no apprentice.

Thanks, am glad you like it! One of my unanswered questions is whether there are similarities between what Mel does with Stannis, draining his life force, and what the Singers do with the bones of the Giants and animals. . . am just saying, it maybe doesn't seem as benign as what I've painted it. Or maybe their death serves a purpose, and death is not so bad when it is for preserving something so important.

[Arya Havinfun]

In that scene where Mel propositions Jon, she predicts the return of his dead rangers from beyond the Wall and says something like "when that day comes, take my hand." [ADwD, p. 419] Not that anyone here needs to be told that Mel is not trustworthy, but I found it interesting to note that this exact phrase ("take my hand") has appeared on three other occasions in these books so far, and in every case the offer was followed by a deliberate and/or pre-meditated betrayal of trust.

For reference, the phrase "take my hand" is used by:

- Jaime Lannister to Bran at Winterfell, just before he pushes the boy from the tower. [AGoT, p. 81]

- Meryn Trant to Tyrion on the Blackwater, just before he swings his sword at the dwarf's head. [ACoK, p. 647]

- Petyr Baelish to Lysa Arryn, just before he pushes her out the Moondoor. [ASoS, p. 1114]

Good catch, and thank you for noticing this! I took the liberty of adding in page numbers for ease of looking these incidents up. :)

[aDanceWithFlagons]

In that scene where Mel propositions Jon, she predicts the return of his dead rangers from beyond the Wall and says something like "when that day comes, take my hand." Not that anyone here needs to be told that Mel is not trustworthy, but I found it interesting to note that this exact phrase ("take my hand") has appeared on three other occasions in these books so far, and in every case the offer was followed by a deliberate and/or pre-meditated betrayal of trust.

For reference, the phrase "take my hand" is used by:

- Jaime Lannister to Bran at Winterfell, just before he pushes the boy from the tower.

- Meryn Trant to Tyrion on the Blackwater, just before he swings his sword at the dwarf's head.

- Petyr Baelish to Lysa Arryn, just before he pushes her out the Moondoor.

Have not been around much lately, and I have not much to say, but Nice Catch!

[The Snowfyre Chorus]

Good catch, and thank you for noticing this! I took the liberty of adding in page numbers for ease of looking these incidents up. :)

No prob. Thanks for the cites - I'm on my phone, so didn't have that info at hand. Also worth considering is the fact that Mel's offer was essentially "take my hand, and let me help you rescue your sister." So when he agrees to Mel's plan to send Mance to Winterfell, that's when Jon actually "take[s her] hand." If the pattern holds, then Mel's betrayal would already be underway at that point.

.

[addicted to snow]

I would love to know if there is more to Val and a lot of it would be answered for me IF the eye color change in her was not a mistake by George because it would show she aint no apprentice.

Val's eye color change is no mistake… When GRRM was directly asked about this, he evaded the question… Why?… Because it was no accident...

[The Snowfyre Chorus]

Have not been around much lately, and I have not much to say, but Nice Catch!

Thanks, ADWF - and good to see you again!

That's really quite creepy, when you mention it. Suddenly Mel seems like a really likely candidate for the attack.

I thought so too. The betrayal connection really stands out once you string those events together.

Glad to see Heaney Essay Part III, by the way - good stuff! Looking forward to more! And it's already got me thinking about possible functional connections with Winterfell. Luwin's description of the castle to Bran as a "monstrous stone tree... rooted deep in the earth," together with some reading I'm doing on Old Norse death and burial traditions (and the possibility of a pre-Christian era "cult of the dead") make for some interesting possibilities. Winterfell starts to look like, essentially, the Stark family burial mound - with Jon's (and Theon's) dreams providing a glimpse of the dead at their feast in the hollow hill. Interestingly, one of the words for these burial mounds can also be translated as "midden heap" - which is sort of the primary description for Craster's Keep. Craster, who isn't scared of wights, who doesn't mind cold winds because his "roots are sunk deep," and whose wife says they won't leave because "this is our place."

So, lots of burial imagery all 'round...

[addicted to snow]

Not sure about the why and who.We also have these quotes from the chapter-

"The red priestess shuddered.Blood trickled down her thigh,black and smoking.The fire was inside her,an agony,an ecstasy,filling her,searing her,transforming her."

This imagery seems consistent with the Storm's End birth that Davos witnessed.It suggests pregnancy,if that's the word for it.We don't know if Mel has to birth these things after a defined gestation period,if that's the term for it,or whether she can wait 'til the need arises.But birthing such seems to be her intent,-

"She was stronger at the Wall,stronger even than in Asshai.Her every word and gesture was more potent,and she could do things she had never done before.Such shadows as I bring forth here will be terrible,and no creature of the dark will stand before them."

Not sure she has specific target in mind but perhaps she's brewing one as a stand by.This ice shadow idea seems a stretch to me.Once again I think we're trying to find symmetry where none exists.

However,together with the Mance quote above,I think we have several textual signs pointing in the same direction.

ETA I bolded the last line in that quote but as I was typing it,the thought struck me,what can she do that she couldn't do before?

Good post

[addicted to snow]

Interesting esay...

[aDanceWithFlagons]

not to derail this discussion, but I'm going to go ahead and post Part III of my Heaney essay. As always, if it's not your cup of tea, feel free to skip!

Part I and Part II, for reference.

Part III The Body in the Bog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This concept isnt isolated to fantasy or Ireland or Irish poets, ecological or postcolonial theories. Robin Laing (known to some as the Whiskey Bard) has made study and song of Scotlands finest beverage (another kind of spirit). One of the key ingredients for each blend is the water, which frequently contributes the peaty flavors of the surrounding land. In a little love song to uisge beaha, Laing writes:

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

take a master craftmans skill and something harder to define,

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

Bring home sherry casks from Spain, Sanlucar de Barrameda,

and fill them up again with the spirit of the land

then let the wood work to the spirits gain in a process no one fully understands.

For the spirit starts out clear, but see the transformation

after many patient years, when at last the tale unfolds

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

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

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

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

Chorus: Whiskey, youre the devil in disguise, at least to some thats the way it seems,

but youre more like an angel in my eyes

Catch the heady vapours as they rise,

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

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

(A snippet of the song)

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

****

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Broagh

Riverbank, the long rigs

ending in broad docken

and a canopied pad

down to the ford.

The garden mould

bruised easily, the shower

gathering in your heelmark

was the black O

in Broagh,

its low tattoo

among the windy boortrees

and rhubarb-blades

ended almost

suddenly, like that last

gh the strangers found

difficult to manage.

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

I guess I do have a bit more to say. I enjoyed your essay. I recall the first part but missed the second. And I have to say .... alright.

So much to think about, but. This brought up a thought of mine about the bones in the cave. Did the the Singers use these creatures for sustenance or did they let nature's take its course. To let there charges rest with the roots to gain back the left behind consciousness.

I pose this question because I think these bones were skinchanged before death. Giants and wolves and bears oh my! If they were skinchanged then I think they would have been close familiars for the greenseers in the caves. Probably for gathering food. Meat and veggies and all. So, these creatures may be the way the Singers can stay in the caves unseen and still live.

It's not a big deal probably - just something that popped up in my mind.

[Eira Seren]

Thanks, ADWF - and good to see you again!

I thought so too. The betrayal connection really stands out once you string those events together.

Glad to see Heaney Essay Part III, by the way - good stuff! Looking forward to more! And it's already got me thinking about possible functional connections with Winterfell. Luwin's description of the castle to Bran as a "monstrous stone tree... rooted deep in the earth," together with some reading I'm doing on Old Norse death and burial traditions (and the possibility of a pre-Christian era "cult of the dead") make for some interesting possibilities. Winterfell starts to look like, essentially, the Stark family burial mound - with Jon's (and Theon's) dreams providing a glimpse of the dead at their feast in the hollow hill. Interestingly, one of the words for these burial mounds can also be translated as "midden heap" - which is sort of the primary description for Craster's Keep. Craster, who isn't scared of wights, who doesn't mind cold winds because his "roots are sunk deep," and whose wife says they won't leave because "this is our place."

So, lots of burial imagery all 'round...

Glad you liked it! This Winterfell business is interesting. I know we've looked at it as a possible Faerie Mound, Black Crow has posted something I'm pretty sure. Another one I found is Evyta's essay on the Blood Motif, the way she describes the blood being ingested (much like Communion in Catholic Mass) by the Winterfell Heart Tree and the ties to the Stark family history and sacrifice are quite fascinating. This seems to tie in to your cult of the dead. And obviously, being wargs, the Singer's cave and the Winterfell crypts have some other similarities as well. In fact, I wonder what they did with all the direwolf bones. . .

Interesting esay...

Thanks! (I assumed you meant mine, if not, sorry. there are lots of them here). On the Val question, I agree that if Martin's getting evasive about his answers, there's something there he'd like to keep to himself a bit longer.

I guess I do have a bit more to say. I enjoyed your essay. I recall the first part but missed the second. And I have to say .... alright.

So much to think about, but. This brought up a thought of mine about the bones in the cave. Did the the Singers use these creatures for sustenance or did they let nature's take its course. To let there charges rest with the roots to gain back the left behind consciousness.

I pose this question because I think these bones were skinchanged before death. Giants and wolves and bears oh my! If they were skinchanged then I think they would have been close familiars for the greenseers in the caves. Probably for gathering food. Meat and veggies and all. So, these creatures may be the way the Singers can stay in the caves unseen and still live.

It's not a big deal probably - just something that popped up in my mind.

Thank you! That's a question I didn't dare go into at the moment, was trying to keep on track, but the possibility of skinchanging is a good one. Am hoping that, like the direwolves, the critters in question were willing participants. . . but possibly not. Maybe once they got a skinchanger in there, like the ravens. I could see members of the Old Races joining in willingly. . . but then there's the little matter of Leaf calling the Giants 'our bane and our brothers.' That sort of smacks of conflict.

[Arya Havinfun]

Eira Seren said:

And obviously, being wargs, the Singer's cave and the Winterfell crypts have some other similarities as well. In fact, I wonder what they did with all the direwolf bones. . .

Beneath the shadow of the First Keep was an ancient lichyard, its headstones spotted with pale lichen, where the old Kings of Winter had laid their faithful servants. It was there they buried Lady, while her brothers stalked between the graves like restless shadows. She had gone south, and only her bones had returned. [AGoT, p.557]

[addicted to snow]

From another thread...

His death & the rules of warging that was shown to us in ADWD's Prologue… The Ice cells are involved & the way that GRRM said there is a very specific plot device tied to wall blocking communication between a warg & his human… It is complicated but it should also be obvious from SSM's that Jon is going to become a greyer character "Jon has some dark roads to walk"...

Basically what is going to happen (please hold the laughs to a minimum) is:

1. Jon Dies
   
2. Begins 2nd Life in Ghost
   
3. Ghost/Jon travel North of the wall (and Jon is bound to Ghost, he cannot take another body)
   
4. Mel or Val (probably Mel via MMD-like ritual to save Khal Drogo) brings Jon's body back to life.
   
5. Jon's 2nd Life is suddenly over & he is pulled back toward his real body, but can't access it because of the wall.
   
6. Jon's body remains in a vegetable-like state just like Khal drogo was
   
7. Jon's body is thrown into the Ice-Cells. ensuring that Jon's Conciousness will not be able to access it
   
8. Jon's consciousness goes back into Ghost, but is no longer bound to Ghost (he can take other bodies.
   
9. Jon takes Hodor (already broken in) and uses Hodor as his primary body.
   
10. At some point Jon's consciousness become corrupted by Varamyr (perhaps Jon tries to Warg One-Eye)… This gives Jon access to a lifetime worth of Warging experience, but terribly compromises his moral compass at the same time...
    
11. Jon starts collecting skins… human skins...
    
12. Jon is the Night's King, just as Tyrion is Lan the Clever… Note: Nothing like what HBO portrayed as the Night's King...
    

Most of the above speculation actually has a substantial amount of foreshadowing, evidence, and subtle hints to support it, though please don't ask me to list it...

In an interesting twist:

1. Khal Drogo went into one of the dragons & this is why his body was in a vegetable-like state
   
2. When Dany takes her dragon North & the wall falls (or has fallen), the Khal will stumble across Jon's perfectly inhabitable body & take it for his own...
   
3. This is why Dany saw the Blue Rose in the wall of ice… Khal Drogo will come back to her...
   
4. & of course, Bran will take the Khal's Dragon & fulfill his destiny of being the winged-wolf...
   
5. 
   

[Ulthosian Stark]

I wonder if she is now able to meddle with people's dreams, the way Quaithe enters Dany's dreams by using a glass candle. Mel has no glass candle, AFAIK, but if she had found a way to get into someone's dreams, even only to observe, this could be of interest to her.

What makes me think about this dream Jon had the night before he let the wildlings come through the Wall:

"That night he dreamt of wildlings howling from the woods, advancing to the moan of warhorns and the roll of drums. Boom DOOM boom DOOM boom DOOM came the sound, a thousand hearts with a single beat. Some had spears and some had bows and some had axes. Others rode on chariots made of bones, drawn by teams of dogs as big as ponies. Giants lumbered amongst them, forty feet tall, with mauls the size of oak trees.

“Stand fast,” Jon Snow called. “Throw them back.” He stood atop the Wall, alone. “Flame,” he cried, “feed them flame,” but there was no one to pay heed.

They are all gone. They have abandoned me.

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

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

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

The day had come." [ADwD, p.842-843]

The part that caught my eye is in blue. Black Ice armor and a flaming red sword would be just the sort of imagery that would get Mel all interested, donchathink?

If a gnarled hand (a word usually used to describe trees, or roots) grabbed him by the shoulder and a raven literally woke him is there a chance Bloodraven sent him this dream? O-o

Gnarled would be the keyword here, then a raven was on his chest. Both things with connections to Bloodraven.

[Arya Havinfun]

If a gnarled hand (a word usually used to describe trees, or roots) grabbed him by the shoulder and a raven literally woke him is there a chance Bloodraven sent him this dream? O-o

Gnarled would be the keyword here, then a raven was on his chest. Both things with connections to Bloodraven.

Absolutely wonderful catch! I had thought of BloodRaven & Mormont's crow being involved, but I didn't dwell on that aspect. I was focused on the possibility of Mel "tuning in" and observing the blue portion.

Clearly this is a humdinger of an anxiety dream! Now you've made me wonder if *both* Mel & BR might be messing with him in his sleep.

p.s. what does O-o mean? I'm not familiar with that symbol.

[Black Crow]

Glad you liked it! This Winterfell business is interesting. I know we've looked at it as a possible Faerie Mound, Black Crow has posted something I'm pretty sure.

I did a fairly chunky essay on it as part of the Centennial project; you'll find it in Heresy 100 with a link to the associated thread - or go straight to the original through Wolfmaid's guide.

Essentially what I argued was that the original Winterfell was a ringwork on top of a Sidhe hill.