The bear and the maiden fair - an analysis of all bear related themes in aSoIaF

[a black swan]

10 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

~snip~

That was great to read, thank you!

 

About the black swans,  is there any significance to grrm having 3 Black ones together? The improbability is just so high... one is rare enough as it is. 

So that might be 3 black swan events coming up in Arya's story. But what could they be?

 

 

[sweetsunray]

@Cowboy Dan... It's plain synergy.

There is actually a sinister association to honey, even in aGoT. In Cat's 3rd chapter she orders "bread and honey" after waking from ther 4 day milk of the poppy sleep (after the assassination attempt in Bran's tower room). The servants return with "bread, butter, honey, bacon, boiled egg, blackbery jam, wedge of cheese and mint tea". Cat sees all the food and finds she has no appetite after all.

It was impossible to do the decoding of the actual food meaning in my latest chthonic cycle essay that I just published on my blog today, but I did figure it out (have it on draft, but had to cut it frm that essay that's already 15k words long). It all has to do with male usurpation and patriarchy from female power roles.

"bread and honey" are both symbols for earth goddesses such as Demeter. Bread seems the easiest one: everybody knows that a grainstalk of corn is a symbol of Demeter and Persephone (and similar goddesses in other cultures). What is lesser known is that Demeter's initiate priestesses were called Melissae, which means "honeybees". This is not just for Demeter priestesses. Artemis's priestesses and Athena's priestesses were also called Melissae. Demeter, Persephone, Artemis and Athena went by a title "Potnia", which came from Crete and means "Mistress of the House". But the original Knossos Potnia was also referred to as "Pure Mother Bee".

The empire of the Hittites which shares the timeline of bronze age Crete has 2 legends of which the Demeter-Persephone myth is an echo of at least one of them. One of the Hittite legends is with a missing farmer god and everyone goes hungry and animals stop having babies. Ther alterernative Hittite legend has his sister going missing, after her grandmother promised to get her land and husband. Anyway, in both legends a search is done, with the help of a bee. In the first a bee goes by herself, stings the farmer god several times to wake him up. He gets angry and becomes destructive. A goddess of medicine and magic soothes him and puts his anger into the underworld from which it cannot escape. In the female-gone-missing version the Grand Mother and the bee search for the girl, and it's the Grand Mother who becomes angry and destructive and her anger gets put into the earth. It's of course the complete female version that is very much Demeter-Persephone like. Except where did the bee go to in the later Greek version? She never went anywhere. She's still there. Hecate (goddess of medicine and magic) helps Demeter search for Persephone. She's the helper worker bee (virginal) of Demeter in the Greek version, and the bee with Grand Mother is the Hittite Hecate. In the Hittite farmer god version, Grand Mother does not seem to perform the search, only the bee and the HIttite Hecate helps later. But notice that the bee stung the farmer god 'several times'. The only bee who can sting several times without dying is the Queen Bee, and Grand Mother = Queen Bee.

So, we arrive at this Potnia concept = Pure Mother Bee = Queen Bee. The Queen Bee of a hive is the Mistress of the House, the Mother of all, while all her priestesses are "worker bees". But hives swarm. At some point the Queen Bee swarms out with a great number of her worker bees and establishes a new hive somewhere else. Meanwhile a Virgin Queen Bee comes out of her pup, kills any other rival Virgin Queen Bee in pupae or larvae stage with her stinger until she's the sole one left, flies out to the locations where drones gather, mates with 5-19 drones (who all die shortly, the ejaculation is so explosive, they shoot more than semen... once in a lifteime experience) returns to the hive and starts laying eggs.

Obviously Ancient cultures regarded "great goddesses" (weaving, farming, moon and hunting) as Queen Bees, and their priestesses were called honeybees,because they worked for their mistress of the house. With the Hittites they were called Melittas. With the Greeks and Minoan cultures they were Melissas. With the jews they were called deborahs. That's right. Open the bible, books of Judges. 3 Judge is a woman, warrior, prophetess called Deborah, and deborah means "bee". And her female followers are called "deborahs".

You should by now think... hmmmm. Melissandre, priestess, sold in slavery to the red temple to "serve" her god... And she's called Melissandre. Coincidence? ABSOLUTELY NOT. There's also Melissa Blackwood, whose son is Bloodraven who serves the Old Gods. And Melissandre regards herself and Bloodraven as serving opposing gods.

There's just one mighty problem with Melissandre: she doesn't serve a goddess, she serves a male fire/sun god. Basically you have a situation here of a female worker bee serving a King Bee. But King Bees do not exist in nature. Is there an analogues example in history and mythology of a male usurping worker bees for himself? Yup!

You probably heard of the Pythia of Delphi, the oracle of Apollo, right? The Pythia was also called "Dephic bee". And Apollo usurped Deplhi for himself after he slew Gaia's female underworld child the Python. The oracle was called Delphic Bee before and after Apollo's usurpation. There is evidence the Oracle was in use since the Bronze Age and dedicated to Gaia (Great Eearth Mother) , before Apollo's dedication in 800 BC. And it makes sort of sense that they were called bees, because there's a fissure/crack/cave like setting, and feral bees tend to seek hollows, fissures, etc for their nest. Apollo's plant was the laurel and there grew plenty of it on Mount Parnassus. And honey made of mountain and sheep laurel makes for "mad honey" (toxic, but in small measures can cause halucinations). While it's conjecture, Homeric hymns talk about Apollo sending priests of Crete to Delphi and have Apollo reveal to Hermes that 3 bee maidens (flying here and there and with meal on their heads) oracle there. Homer's claim that it are priests of Crete running the place is inconsistent with 800 BC and later when Delphi was dedicated to Apollo, because it were local people who worked there. But it would fit with findings pre-dating Apollo's usurpation. Homer wasn't telling anything about Apollo's time, but revealing pre-Apollo stuff about Delphi. And in that sense Crete does fit, since the Greeks learned the bee-keeping from the Minoans, and not the othre way around. 

So, Apollo having an oracle called "Delphic bee", now that does fit R'hllor and Melissandre, especially since Apollo was a "god of light".

And then we have the Eurydice and Orpheus legend. Virgil's story of 29 BC is the presently most known one and it presents Orpheus in a sympathetic light. But in Plato's version Orpheus is a coward. Basically, Virgil's story goes like this: Eurydice dances in the meadow on her wedding day (remember how bees "waggle dance"). Aristaeus, Apollo's son and patron of pastoral farming (husbandry, dairy making, bee-keeping, fruit trees) sees Eurydice, chases her. She flees and is bitten by a viper. She dies. Orpheus (who plays a lyre like Apollo) goes to the udnerworld to get her back. Meanwhile Eurydice's sisters avenge themselves of their sister's death and Aristeus' hive gets sick and dies out. After counceling, he slaughters 4 bulls and 4 cows, and lets it all rot. New bees are born spontaneously out of this ritual (pure fantasy, never happens) and he has a new bee-hive. 

Now, Eurydice was actually some late addition to the Orphic hymns and actually means a title that was used for Persephone (a Queen Bee). And we have 3 Apollo references in the Eurydice-Orpheus myth. Orpheus takes the poetic, charming singing Apollo for himself. Aristaeus' takes Apollo's pastoral patron stuff (Aristaeus is also more a title than a name... it means "the best", and Aristaeus didn't appear in the Eurydice legend until Virgil wrote it) and then there's the "viper" (Apollo usurping Delphi with his "Python victory" murder). The myth actually seems more of a meta-comment on what happened to religion and myths. We have a Virgin Queen Bee dancing in the meadow to mate. But then she gets killed, usurped by Apollo with his "I slew the evil earth religions". However, if a Virgin Queen Bee is killed before she gots to mate and lay eggs, the whole hive dies out in time, since the Virgin Queen Bee won't fly out before she killed all her rival Virgin Queen Bees in the same hive with her stinger. If she dies prematurely, the hive has no bee anymore to lay eggs, and that's the end of it then. The worker bees are all sexually immature females. They can never lay eggs themselves. Apply it to patriarchy trying to get control over these priestesses following their great goddesses and the system falls apart. Persephone and Demeter were the Queen Bees of farming. But suddenly Apollo and Aristaeus become the farmer gods, via cattle. And what are the new worker bees born from in the legend - exactly "bulls and cows". And the male gods become King Bees with bees serving them.

Remember the Deborah of the Book of Judges? She was the 3rd Judge. The last judge is Samson. He kills a lion and lets the carcass rot. What is spontaneously born out of the lion's carcass? Exactly - a swam of bees.

When Cat asks for "bread and honey" she's basically asking for the symbols of Queen Bee Demeter. What she is served instead are the lies of Apollo, or Aristaeus: bacon (husbandry), wedge of cheese + butter (dairy), blackberry jam (fruit trees) and honey (bee-keeping), Oh and Mint tea (Mint is a symbol for LF, big big liar, and Persephone's rival who claims Hades loves the nymph Minthe better, and Persephone tramples her for it and changes her in a mint bush). Catelyna asks for simple earth goddes stuff and she gets patriarchi lies and usuraption instead. No wonder she loses her appetite.

And with Melissandre's name, backstory and serving a male god, GRRM is aware of this. And that's what "honey" stands for: sweet lies. And it's important in relation to the bear, because he's a hunter society symbol, predating the bull patriarchy.

[a black swan]

3 hours ago, Cowboy Dan said:

@DutchArya

Perhaps there's another persepctive here. Arya may be viewing the swans but it's not a portent specifically for her. I've seen it suggested that Harrenhal will be a center point for a number of climaxes later in the series. My own research tends to support this, there seems to be a lot of set up involving the God's Eye to the south. Perhaps the 3 Black Swan events will occur at the God's Eye and isn't necessarily meant as set up for Arya?

No, I think they are about Arya as the swan, water, lake, dancing themes are all connected to her narrative as well. 

I suspect 3 black swan events to occur in Arya's Winds/Dream storylines. The setup of everything grrm has put into her has to pay off in a big way. She brings the surprise factor in several ways: She is considered "dead" so her return is unexpected to anyone that matters in Westeros, people with keen eyes like sweetsunray are able to unravel all the clues in hindsight, and Arya is one of the first characters GRRM created along with Jon & Tyrion and one of the main players, so her impact will be big in the rest of the story. She fits the black swan theory both by definition and through literary evidence. 

She is the black swan in her family by looks and behaviour and grrm has her literally wanting to dance on water, grow wings (on several occasions), becoming more graceful both physically and mentally, she hears the lake calling to her...etc among many many other examples.   

 

[a black swan]

4 hours ago, Cowboy Dan said:

Lastly with swans I wanted to point out the sigil of House Swann that is mentioned is always described as swans fighting, one side of the "dance" you mentioned earlier. But if you look at the sigil its self on the wiki you can see if their breasts and beaks touched the dead space in their necks would form a heart symbol. This would be the other half of the dance represented by a marriage, promised with a kiss. Don't have any great revelation with that, just a neat aside I thought y'all might enjoy.

Arya literally lures Raff to his death in "Mercy".

Swanns are also very difficult to kill or be seduced. 

I love how affected Arya is with Ravella Swann and how much importance she gives her. Arya is willing to do things she doesn't like or change herself just because of Lady Smallwood. 

Some of the women tried to put her in a dress and make her do needlework, but they weren't Lady Smallwood and she was having none of it. - Arya

Plus when Arya is the Hound's prisoner, she thinks of places she could run away to: Winterfel being her first choice. But she also thinks about going to Acorn Hall and finding Lady Smallwood. 

And also here, the imagery is very interesting and a callback to Lady Smallwood and her calling Arya pretty:

 

No one seemed to pay them any mind. They splashed past rows of brightly colored pavilions, their walls of wet silk lit up like magic lanterns by lamps and braziers inside; pink and gold and green they glimmered, striped and fretty and chequy, emblazoned with birds and beasts, chevrons and stars, wheels and weapons. Arya spotted a yellow tent with six acrons on its panels, three over two over one. Lord Smallwood, she knew, remembering Acorn Hall so far away, and the lady who'd said she was pretty. - Arya, ASOS

[sweetsunray]

7 hours ago, DutchArya said:

No, I think they are about Arya as the swan, water, lake, dancing themes are all connected to her narrative as well. 

I suspect 3 black swan events to occur in Arya's Winds/Dream storylines. The setup of everything grrm has put into her has to pay off in a big way. She brings the surprise factor in several ways: She is considered "dead" so her return is unexpected to anyone that matters in Westeros, people with keen eyes like sweetsunray are able to unravel all the clues in hindsight, and Arya is one of the first characters GRRM created along with Jon & Tyrion and one of the main players, so her impact will be big in the rest of the story. She fits the black swan theory both by definition and through literary evidence. 

She is the black swan in her family by looks and behaviour and grrm has her literally wanting to dance on water, grow wings (on several occasions), becoming more graceful both physically and mentally, she hears the lake calling to her...etc among many many other examples.   

 

Well, when you think you spot a new foreshadowing scene in the earlier books it is tempting to think it is not yet something that has happened.

The 3 black swans are in aCoK, before Arya, Gendry and Hotpie are taken prisoner by the Mountain, so there's aCoK, aSoS, aFfC and aDwD where we have to look for very improbable events in Arya's arc. There are at least 2 I can easily think of.

1. The weasel soup chapter by the end of aCOK sounds like something that could count as a black swan event. And that was written like a magical fairytal for Arya to begin with. I mean Faceless Men, Stark prisoners like Trojan horses, Vargo Hoat already planning with Roose to take Amory down. Improbable event.
2. Next would be Arya dragging her mother out of the Green Fork as Nymeria and becoming LS. We see it happen in Arya's dream. At the epilogue we find out she's resurrected. Nobody would have expected that. Improbable event in aSoS.

I'd say there's only 1 black swan event left.

 

[a black swan]

Quote

 

Faint and far away the light burned, low on the horizon, shining through the sea mists. “It looks like a star,” said Arya.

“The star of home,” said Denyo.

The star of home. Arya stood at the prow, one hand resting on the gilded figurehead, a maiden with a bowl of fruit. For half a heartbeat she let herself pretend that it was her home ahead. - Arya

 

Such beautiful writing. 

Reminds me of Jon's advice to Arya, that different roads may lead to the same Castle.

Maybe Arya will see that star again, on her way home truly. 

[sweetsunray]

5 minutes ago, DutchArya said:

Such beautiful writing. 

Reminds me of Jon's advice to Arya, that different roads may lead to the same Castle.

Maybe Arya will see that star again, on her way home truly. 

And the "maiden with a bowl of fruit" is a Persephone call-out

[sweetsunray]

Update news! For now I'll just post my blog link, but I'll copy the article to update part of the older "first-draft" essays.

https://sweeticeandfiresunray.wordpress.com/2016/08/28/harrenhals-curse/

I went over the whole Harrenhal events, from the moment the bear is brought in until Jaime sees him half buried in the bear pit upon his return to HH, that are bear related. And this gave far deeper insight, certainly in relation to the song, the bear folklore, bear legends. New realizations were made

1. Gregor Clegane = bear character, who flies back to King's Landing, after enacting bear revenge on Vargo Hoat, by a bird. Why is he a bear? Jaime thinks of the bear in the bear pit as "Gregor Clegane with a pelt". Hence, Gregor is a bear without a pelt.
2. Jaime = bear character. He sleeps with his head on a bearskin when he has his doom dream
3. Jaime (as stand in bear) steals Brienne the maiden from Vargo Hoat out of the pit, hence Jaime & Brienne are wedded (just not bedded yet)
4. Arya has a princess role: the bear's denied the princess, but in one of the aftermath HH revenge scenes, Sandor kills Castellan Polliver and she gets a sword out of it (Wayland's princess gets his sword when he has avenged himself)

Preview of unpublished update: I've also gone more deeper into "Goat", and I've been going over Craster's Keep again and now will expand to include the attack on the Fist scenes. But basically Craster is another Goat/Ram (lacking an ear), pretending to be a friend to bears with his bear ring and living in a bear den (the usurper). The Prologue of Chett, Lark and Small Paul includes a bear hunt - 3 hunters dumb enough to talk about "tracking and hunting" bear right where the wighted bear track is, and then continue to chat about "murdering the old bear in his sleep at the third watch", and calling each other by name... Remember how bears can understand human speech. Its almost as if the Fist attack was performed and led by the snow bear to prevent "the Old Bear from being murdered in his sleep" (that snow bear doesn't know that's a LC of course). But those 3 hunters are certainly all killed and hunted (apart from the other 260 brothers). The surviving conspirators include Lophand and Clubfoot (maimed feet and hands like Vargo), who then commit the mutiny. So there are multiple "goat" characters as there are like dozens of bear characters. And I will now proclaim LF a goat-character, and it's been staring us right in the face since the very beginning. He has a goatee!!!!!!!

ETA: I also suggest to read aSoS, Samwell II a few times, about the secret larder, and blood sausage made from "pork", and Samwell becoming sick from the delicious pork smell as they burn Bannen, and Edd remarking how he's sure Sam (Ser Piggy) might even taste better (in his dry wisdom humor). Those sausages from the secret larder - are they pork, or are they made from dead rangers of Benjen's party? Bran, Meera and Jojen and Hodor believe they're eating pork too in Bran II of aDwD. The hints for Craster having murdered at least some of the rangers of Benjen's search party are already given in the aCoK Craster Keep chapter: "bite parallels, axe parallels, etc

[Seams]

7 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

Preview of unpublished update: I've also gone more deeper into "Goat", ... So there are multiple "goat" characters as there are like dozens of bear characters. And I will now proclaim LF a goat-character, and it's been staring us right in the face since the very beginning. He has a goatee!!!!!!!

I have found a goat / Hoat / Groat connection and even a connection to Gregor Clegane. Excerpts from old posts in this forum:

The ruthless and utterly disgusting Vargo Hoat is nicknamed The Goat. He keeps a chain of linked coins from all the places he has fought. Penny's brother is named Groat, which is also the name for one of the smallest coins in circulation. Groat and Penny are mummers, and Vargo Hoat's sellsword group is sometimes called The Bloody Mummers. Aside from the rhyming names and the shared performer and coin motif, we have this vignette from Penny, who would like Tyrion to assume her brother's role in the jousting act now that Groat was beheaded as a result of the reward offered for Tyrion's head.

“By myself, all I can do is ride around in circles. And even if the queen should laugh, where will I go afterward? We never stay in one place long. The first time they see us they laugh and laugh, but by the fourth or fifth time, they know what we’re going to do before we do it. Then they stop laughing, so we have to go somewhere new. We make the most coin in the big cities, but I always liked the little towns the best. Places like that, the people have no silver, but they feed us at their own tables, and the children follow us everywhere.”

That’s because they have never seen a dwarf before, in their wretched pisspot towns, Tyrion thought. The bloody brats would follow around a two-headed goat if one turned up. Until they got bored with its bleating and slaughtered it for supper.

So Groat and the two-headed goat have a slaughter association; similarly, Vargo Hoat is eventually dismembered and fed to human beings. Before he dies, though, Hoat has a reputation for traveling to towns throughout the Westeros countryside, taking their food and their silver to support the Lannister and Bolton encampments at Harrenhal. The goal and methods are different, but the pattern of "making a living" by targeting a series of communities in succession is similar.

I think I understand the reason for this particular wordplay by GRRM. Groat and The Goat both end up as pawns who are played and then cruelly discarded by high-born people playing A Game of Thrones (known as AGoT). The message is that small folk are not taught how to play the games of high-born children (another thought that strikes Tyrion when Penny suggests they play a game), even if they think they have done everything asked of them and are going to make it into the big leagues, as Vargo Hoat believes when he strikes a bargain with Roose Bolton. So goats represent the vulnerable small folk and they end up as part of the larger slaughtered meat and butcher motif that runs throughout the books. (See also Lamb Men.)

The conclusion I offered about the exploitation of the small folk was made without the benefit of your extensive knowledge of the background mythology and symbolism. It seems unlikely this conclusion will follow if Littlefinger is part of the goat group. On the other hand, maybe he's riding for a fall . . .

Of course, Tyrion eventually wears the wooden armor of Groat and takes up his painted and re-painted shield. So he becomes part of the goat motif if this analysis is correct.

I'll throw out just one more Gregor / Robert Strong connection: ... Hoat is dismembered by Gregor Clegane and forced to eat his own body parts. Hoat is killed at Harrenhal. Groat and Penny's act at Joffrey's wedding reception includes a knight being beheaded and a melon being found inside of his disembodied helmet (the helmet lands in the lap of Falyse Stokeworth's husband).

Strangely, I wonder if BOTH Tyrion and Ser Robert Strong are the men born out of the death of the boy, Joffrey. Penny holds Tyrion responsible for the death of her brother, Groat. Gregor was the guy who butchered Vargo Hoat. It was really Cersei who was behind Groat's death, and Tywin who ordered the torture death of Vargo Hoat. Does this mean that Tyrion and Robert Strong are being compared? Is Tyrion turning into a warrior monster? Who represents Qyburn in Tyrion's arc? Penny?

I am also betting the ranch that Littlefinger has dragon eggs. I think he got them from Groat - he either bought them around the time that he hired Penny and Groat to perform at Joffrey's wedding feast, or he arranged to kill Groat (making it appear to be part of the dwarf-hunting frenzy that resulted from Cersei's bounty on Tyrion's head) and took the eggs. The two eggs were "a grand gift" from the Sealord of Braavos to Groat and Penny after he enjoyed their performance. Beware the mummer's dragon . . .

But this departs from the focus of the thread. Your preview got me all excited! I look forward to reading your as-yet-unpublished update when it is ready for mass consumption.

[sweetsunray]

4 hours ago, Seams said:

I'll throw out just one more Gregor / Robert Strong connection: ... Hoat is dismembered by Gregor Clegane and forced to eat his own body parts. Hoat is killed at Harrenhal. Groat and Penny's act at Joffrey's wedding reception includes a knight being beheaded and a melon being found inside of his disembodied helmet (the helmet lands in the lap of Falyse Stokeworth's husband).

But Gregor is enacting bear revenge here, Seams. That's why George made Gregor a bear. He's even called to King's Landing by a bird. Well, read my update of Harrenhal's curse on my blog and then that will be clear.

I agree about "small folk", but Groat is not a goat figure.

Vargo, Craster (Ram), and LF are goat-characters in their greediness. Yup, they're from lower stock, and they try to have it all in a lifetime. When Jaime sees that chain around Vargo's neck he thinks "Greed is the key to this man". And Vargo is enormously greedy. He chops off Jaime's hand to make him less valuable to others, so he can give Jaime to Karstarks and they offered Alys Karstark as bride to the one who gives them Jaime. Vargo wants to be Lord of Karhold. Roose sets Jaime free though and lets Vargo keep Brienne who Vargo believed was a sack of sapphires. He knows he's been lied to, but when her father offers 300 golden dragons for her, he's like, "Nah, I'll just rape her" but she bites his ear and then he prefers to throw her in the bear pit than getting the ransom. Pride and greed. And it's what keeps him at Harrenhal, even though the Mountain's coming.

So, yup, they're lowborn but they want to be emperors of the world if they could, and they're cruel. I agree the way he dies is most gruesome, but he too chopped off feet and ankles (was what he was known for). And I agree that he's used by the big players.

Craster is a ram. It's basically same scenario. (You'll like the lamb/Craster's children/sons in aCoK, Jon III). The man's greedy. He's the host, but Mormont is the one ending up feeding him, giving him axe and crossbow as guest gift (it's supposed to be the other way around). Sits on the sole chair in the room. Has 19 wives (greed is the key). And for some nutty reason he believes he's safe in the Haunted forest because of his deal with the Others. But he already had to give them all his sheep. But Craster is a cruel, vicious man. As a character he's like the Bloodstone Emperor: enslavement, necromancy, incest, worshiping evil gods (Others), oh and murder and cannibalism too. 

 

[sweetsunray]

5 hours ago, Seams said:

Strangely, I wonder if BOTH Tyrion and Ser Robert Strong are the men born out of the death of the boy, Joffrey. Penny holds Tyrion responsible for the death of her brother, Groat. Gregor was the guy who butchered Vargo Hoat. It was really Cersei who was behind Groat's death, and Tywin who ordered the torture death of Vargo Hoat. Does this mean that Tyrion and Robert Strong are being compared? Is Tyrion turning into a warrior monster? Who represents Qyburn in Tyrion's arc? Penny?

The comparison was always there.

Tyrion is called a "giant", Gregor is called a "giant", from aGoT on. Jon thinks of Tyrion as a small bear in his furs (bear fur) in aGoT at the Wall. Jaime thinks the bear in the bearpit is Gregor with a pelt. Strong is another one of those words that I call "bear" words.

The PIE word that actually is supposed to mean "bear" is *rktos. (arctic and ursus are derivation from it). The PIE word our literal word bear comes from means "brown". The PIE words slavic languages used to identify the animal with means "honey eater". And the PIE root for the Baltic word used to identity the animal means "shaggy/hairy". So Germanic, Slavic and Baltic people never referred to bears using the actual PIE word for it, but used descriptive pet names almost: "brown one", "honey eater", "shaggy". 

The PIE word *rktos itself is believed to be more of descriptive too, but it's not a euphemism. It describes the revenge nature of the animal - "destroyer". Once you know this, perhaps Tyrion's character does not come out of the blue at all, since he's a very vindictive guy.  

[Meera of Tarth]

17 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

Update news! For now I'll just post my blog link, but I'll copy the article to update part of the older "first-draft" essays.

https://sweeticeandfiresunray.wordpress.com/2016/08/28/harrenhals-curse/

I went over the whole Harrenhal events, from the moment the bear is brought in until Jaime sees him half buried in the bear pit upon his return to HH, that are bear related. And this gave far deeper insight, certainly in relation to the song, the bear folklore, bear legends. New realizations were made

1. Gregor Clegane = bear character, who flies back to King's Landing, after enacting bear revenge on Vargo Hoat, by a bird. Why is he a bear? Jaime thinks of the bear in the bear pit as "Gregor Clegane with a pelt". Hence, Gregor is a bear without a pelt.
2. Jaime = bear character. He sleeps with his head on a bearskin when he has his doom dream
3. Jaime (as stand in bear) steals Brienne the maiden from Vargo Hoat out of the pit, hence Jaime & Brienne are wedded (just not bedded yet)
4. Arya has a princess role: the bear's denied the princess, but in one of the aftermath HH revenge scenes, Sandor kills Castellan Polliver and she gets a sword out of it (Wayland's princess gets his sword when he has avenged himself)

Preview of unpublished update: I've also gone more deeper into "Goat", and I've been going over Craster's Keep again and now will expand to include the attack on the Fist scenes. But basically Craster is another Goat/Ram (lacking an ear), pretending to be a friend to bears with his bear ring and living in a bear den (the usurper). The Prologue of Chett, Lark and Small Paul includes a bear hunt - 3 hunters dumb enough to talk about "tracking and hunting" bear right where the wighted bear track is, and then continue to chat about "murdering the old bear in his sleep at the third watch", and calling each other by name... Remember how bears can understand human speech. Its almost as if the Fist attack was performed and led by the snow bear to prevent "the Old Bear from being murdered in his sleep" (that snow bear doesn't know that's a LC of course). But those 3 hunters are certainly all killed and hunted (apart from the other 260 brothers). The surviving conspirators include Lophand and Clubfoot (maimed feet and hands like Vargo), who then commit the mutiny. So there are multiple "goat" characters as there are like dozens of bear characters. And I will now proclaim LF a goat-character, and it's been staring us right in the face since the very beginning. He has a goatee!!!!!!!

ETA: I also suggest to read aSoS, Samwell II a few times, about the secret larder, and blood sausage made from "pork", and Samwell becoming sick from the delicious pork smell as they burn Bannen, and Edd remarking how he's sure Sam (Ser Piggy) might even taste better (in his dry wisdom humor). Those sausages from the secret larder - are they pork, or are they made from dead rangers of Benjen's party? Bran, Meera and Jojen and Hodor believe they're eating pork too in Bran II of aDwD. The hints for Craster having murdered at least some of the rangers of Benjen's search party are already given in the aCoK Craster Keep chapter: "bite parallels, axe parallels, etc

It's very compelling. I almost didn't believet it when you found that parallel in Jaime's dream. 

Sure that that scene had to be very meaningful. It's the more direct refrence one can imagine of THe Bear song, and you have studied it on a deeper level. very interesting.

Jaime and Brienne= "married".

[The Fattest Leech]

@sweetsunray. O just want to say real quickly that I have been reading here and I love it all. I can see the amount of work you have put into this and can appreciate that 

In my spare time , I always wanted to do a song by song analysis of the meanings and foreshadowing of one (if that thread doesn't exist already). 

[sweetsunray]

6 minutes ago, Meera of Tarth said:

It's very compelling. I almost didn't believet it when you found that parallel in Jaime's dream. 

Sure that that scene had to be very meaningful. It's the more direct refrence one can imagine of THe Bear song, and you have studied it on a deeper level. very interesting.

Jaime and Brienne= "married".

Well, the books involve "skinchanging" doesn't it? Jaime skinchanged the bear-spirit so to speak.

Yup, Jaime and Brienne are already wedded, per the song and the custom, as bear and maiden. First they danced with swords, when "Urswyck" found them, and she looked red as if they had been "fucking" instead of "fighting". Then he steals her from a goat. It's time to lick that honey from her hair   and assure the Tarth bloodline.

[Meera of Tarth]

1 hour ago, sweetsunray said:

Well, the books involve "skinchanging" doesn't it? Jaime skinchanged the bear-spirit so to speak.

Yup, Jaime and Brienne are already wedded, per the song and the custom, as bear and maiden. First they danced with swords, when "Urswyck" found them, and she looked red as if they had been "fucking" instead of "fighting". Then he steals her from a goat. It's time to lick that honey from her hair   and assure the Tarth bloodline.

I just posted a link about this in the J/B thread.

[sweetsunray]

43 minutes ago, The Fattest Leech said:

@sweetsunray. O just want to say real quickly that I have been reading here and I love it all. I can see the amount of work you have put into this and can appreciate that 

In my spare time , I always wanted to do a song by song analysis of the meanings and foreshadowing of one (if that thread doesn't exist already). 

I don't think there's a thread of analysis song by song. But I do think you can use the songs we have lyrics from as a type of parallel map. 

[Tijgy]

Great work. It was a very interesting read and I appreciate the time you put on this. I really love analysis which are on symbolism of the texts and which refer to old lore and such. So, well done . 

And I am proud to say I suspected the hidden bear would be Gendry. I feel like I deserve a price for this (or maybe you do because it was a good logical conclusion.  

On 23-7-2015 at 8:03 PM, sweetsunray said:

So, the bear and wolf have a type of symbolic symbiotic relation with each other. So, for the plot in the books, we should see less bears in winter time, and instead it's the 'time for wolves'... but with the 'dream of spring' we should see a resurgence of bears.

I found this pretty interesting. I think the symbiotic relation between the wolves and the bears is sometimes pretty clear in the books, something that is symbolized in the dance between Robb, the Young Wolf, and Dacey, one of the she-bears. 

Like you said, it were the wolves who "wrestled" to win Bear Island and gave it to the Bears. It were the wolves who with the aid of the bears protected the North ("their forest"). During the WoT5K the Old She-Bear was one of Robb's trusted generals and together with Glover the one he entrusted with bringing the message to Reed so he would be able to save the North. Dacey was also one of the sworn swords.  

And now the wolves are gone, the bears are not staying in the den during winter but decided to fight to protect the North by 1° freeing Deepwood Motte in the wolfswood* and 2° by going to save the little wolf cub and take Winterfell, the castle of the wolves, back. Both the wolves and the bears are taking turns to protect each other territory, Bear Island and the wolfswood. 

The protection of the Wall also fell on the wolves and the bears together. Jeor Mormont was until his dead the Lord Commander and he was been replaced by a young wolf, Jon Snow. And I also think you cannot ignore the importance of Ben and Ned Stark as protectors of the Wall. Ben was apparently a very talented first ranger and the mind behind the current patrol system. And Ned and Ben were planning together to raise new lordlings in the Gift. 

His lord father had once talked about raising new lords and settling them in the abandoned holdfasts as a shield against wildlings. The plan would have required the Watch to yield back a large part of the Gift, but his uncle Benjen believed the Lord Commander could be won around, so long as the new lordlings paid taxes to Castle Black rather than Winterfell. "It is a dream for spring, though," Lord Eddard had said. "Even the promise of land will not lure men north with a winter coming on."

(This plan to protect the North and the Wall would have required the collaboration of the wolves and the Old Bear)

I also believe you said bears where one of the animals accompanying Odin/Wodan. Odin/Wodan is also heavily associated with wolves and ravens. 

And while you have indeed a lot of swan references regarding Arya, she will always be above everything a she-wolf. So Gendry and Arya are another example of a symbiotic relationship between a wolf and a bear (and the dancing couple of Robb and Dacey in reverse). 

And I do not think you referred to him yet, but I might have found someone who might wanting to take revenge like the chained bear during the RW - although he is associated mostly with giants. 

"The Greatjon had drunk another Lord of Walder's brood under the table, Petyr Pimple this time. The lad has a third his capacity, what did he expect? Lord Umber wiped his mouth, stood, and began to sing. "a bear there was, a bear, a BEAR! All black and brown and covered with hair."

 

I failed at. He’d cozened the huge northman into drinking enough wine to kill any three normal men, yet after Roslin had been bedded the Greatjon still managed to snatch the sword of the first man to accost him and break his arm in the snatching. It had taken eight of them to get him into chains, and the effort had left two men wounded, one dead, and poor old Ser Leslyn Haigh short half a ear. When he couldn’t fight with his hands any longer, Umber had fought with his teeth.

 

[sweetsunray]

4 hours ago, Tijgy said:

Great work. It was a very interesting read and I appreciate the time you put on this. I really love analysis which are on symbolism of the texts and which refer to old lore and such. So, well done . 

Thank you, and it's nowhere near finished. I''m going through the earlier ideas again and there were loose ends what I was not yet sure what it was about. Craster's Keep and the Fist belong together and well, I'm starting to get a fuller picture now.

The recent realization in relation to Harrenhal that Jaime is a bear-character and actually his journey with Brienne from RR ro HH is very much a parallel to Arya-Gendry, and that Gregor is a revenge bear helped with what's going on with that giant snow bear at the Fist.

I also noted there are more bears in the NW. I'll leave the quotes to prove it for the essay I'm writing out, but basically Bedwyck (Giant), Brown Bernarr, Black Bernarr, Aemon, Samwell, Clubfoot Karl, Chett, Softfoot, Small Paul, and Bowen Marsh are all bear characters, and Ollo Lophand probably too, and maybe Bannen. I suspect Stonesnake may be a bear too, because he talks about the mountain being like a mother and suck her teats.

Anyway you can see there are quite a number of bears, and you could divide them in loyal good protective bears (with loyal friends like tree Dywen and Edd, bat Pyp and aurochs Grenn) and then corrupted (wighted, undead, revenge) bears.

Then you have the sables: fierce, and brave knights but stupid, like Royce, Jaremy and Thoren. And once in a while you have a shadowcat like Dirk.

Anyway, there are quite a lot of bears at the Wall in the NW. But here's the folklore issue with bears. They seek a den in the "fall" to hide from "winter" and "sleep", or they are hunted down and become meat. And we see all our main bear-characters die or disappear or go in hiding in the fall: Sansa at the Vale, Sandor at QI, Jaime & Brienne at the BwB, Samwell's at Oldtown, Gendry's with the BwB not knowing who he is, etc, etc

While the link between Giant and bear is hinted at since aGoT, it is very much pronounced in the prologue of aSoS with the wighted snow bear. First they shout a giant, then a bear. And Sam writes in his notes "being attacked by a giant or a bear". The giants look bear-like. And Tormund has his tale about hiding in a giant's abdomen for a winter and killing her after, though he admits to Jon he sucked her teats, and then emerged when it was spring again. Tormund is a bear character and is metaphorically describing his birth, and his mother probably died not long after his birth. And sure polar bears may not actually den in winter, but Tormund's two stories both involve wintersleep metaphors. 

Anyway Giants = Bears = Mountains.

But as was noted before: what the hell happens if all those bears go den in winter? They're supposed to protect the forest/realm (which is why we have so many bear characters in the NW).

And then we read the NW vows and what is said about the Horn of Joramun:

• We are the "horn that wakes the sleepers"
• The Horn of Joramun wakes the giants from the earth.

Who are the sleepers? Bears are. Who are giants from the earth? Bears are.

When that horn blows not only will we see natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis and avalanches (mountains waking up), but all the bears will be woken from their den and re-emerge from their hiding place.

Quote

And I am proud to say I suspected the hidden bear would be Gendry. I feel like I deserve a price for this (or maybe you do because it was a good logical conclusion.  

[sweetsunray]

5 hours ago, Tijgy said:

And I do not think you referred to him yet, but I might have found someone who might wanting to take revenge like the chained bear during the RW - although he is associated mostly with giants. 

"The Greatjon had drunk another Lord of Walder's brood under the table, Petyr Pimple this time. The lad has a third his capacity, what did he expect? Lord Umber wiped his mouth, stood, and began to sing. "a bear there was, a bear, a BEAR! All black and brown and covered with hair."

 

I failed at. He’d cozened the huge northman into drinking enough wine to kill any three normal men, yet after Roslin had been bedded the Greatjon still managed to snatch the sword of the first man to accost him and break his arm in the snatching. It had taken eight of them to get him into chains, and the effort had left two men wounded, one dead, and poor old Ser Leslyn Haigh short half a ear. When he couldn’t fight with his hands any longer, Umber had fought with his teeth.

And what about Harrion Karstark? The Karstarks come wearing pelts of seal, bear and wolf in Bran's chapters (courtesy PainkillerJane for that find). We have Rickard Karstark killing "2 boys" in revenge (like Wayland) and then Harrion is sent by Roose to attack Duskendale with Glover, captured and kept a prisoner in Maidenpool. His family in the North wanted to provoke the crown in killing him. I really don't think Harrion will be a happy camper when he makes his way back North. Some of those Karstarks will become wolf and grizzly food imo (seals).

[Meera of Tarth]

36 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

Thank you, and it's nowhere near finished. I''m going through the earlier ideas again and there were loose ends what I was not yet sure what it was about. Craster's Keep and the Fist belong together and well, I'm starting to get a fuller picture now.

The recent realization in relation to Harrenhal that Jaime is a bear-character and actually his journey with Brienne from RR ro HH is very much a parallel to Arya-Gendry, and that Gregor is a revenge bear helped with what's going on with that giant snow bear at the Fist.

I also noted there are more bears in the NW. I'll leave the quotes to prove it for the essay I'm writing out, but basically Bedwyck (Giant), Brown Bernarr, Black Bernarr, Aemon, Samwell, Clubfoot Karl, Chett, Softfoot, Small Paul, and Bowen Marsh are all bear characters, and Ollo Lophand probably too, and maybe Bannen. I suspect Stonesnake may be a bear too, because he talks about the mountain being like a mother and suck her teats.

Anyway you can see there are quite a number of bears, and you could divide them in loyal good protective bears (with loyal friends like tree Dywen and Edd, bat Pyp and aurochs Grenn) and then corrupted (wighted, undead, revenge) bears.

Then you have the sables: fierce, and brave knights but stupid, like Royce, Jaremy and Thoren. And once in a while you have a shadowcat like Dirk.

Anyway, there are quite a lot of bears at the Wall in the NW. But here's the folklore issue with bears. They seek a den in the "fall" to hide from "winter" and "sleep", or they are hunted down and become meat. And we see all our main bear-characters die or disappear or go in hiding in the fall: Sansa at the Vale, Sandor at QI, Jaime & Brienne at the BwB, Samwell's at Oldtown, Gendry's with the BwB not knowing who he is, etc, etc

While the link between Giant and bear is hinted at since aGoT, it is very much pronounced in the prologue of aSoS with the wighted snow bear. First they shout a giant, then a bear. And Sam writes in his notes "being attacked by a giant or a bear". The giants look bear-like. And Tormund has his tale about hiding in a giant's abdomen for a winter and killing her after, though he admits to Jon he sucked her teats, and then emerged when it was spring again. Tormund is a bear character and is metaphorically describing his birth, and his mother probably died not long after his birth. And sure polar bears may not actually den in winter, but Tormund's two stories both involve wintersleep metaphors. 

Anyway Giants = Bears = Mountains.

But as was noted before: what the hell happens if all those bears go den in winter? They're supposed to protect the forest/realm (which is why we have so many bear characters in the NW).

And then we read the NW vows and what is said about the Horn of Joramun:

• We are the "horn that wakes the sleepers"
• The Horn of Joramun wakes the giants from the earth.

Who are the sleepers? Bears are. Who are giants from the earth? Bears are.

When that horn blows not only will we see natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis and avalanches (mountains waking up), but all the bears will be woken from their den and re-emerge from their hiding place.

Oh I like that!

And Sam is also a bear??!!

Oh, that's becoming more and more interesting. Have you already explained Sam or did I miss something?