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Nennymoans and merlings; more Patchface tinfoil


hiemal

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"It is always summer under the sea. The merwives wear nennymoans in their hair and weave gowns of silver seaweed. I know. I know…" ACoK

Patchface's ravings always fascinate me and boredom has had me turning this one about and look for meaning and trying to land another wallop on my favorite dead seahorse:

The first sentence seems an obvious inversion- it is cold and dark under the sea,Patchface's lines twice mention snow for example-  and the last part of the second second sentence unlikely (a gown would be a clinging absurdity over a fish's tail). It is the nennymoans that have my eye.

The terrestrial anemone, the flower, was believed classically to bloom only when the wind was blowing- and this, I think, is the key this passage. This is a reference to the Storm God.

The marine anemone is a filter feeder- that is, it feeds solely on what is brought to it by the ocean's currents, the winds of the deep and our link to the Storm God and to the merlings who, like the anemones their women wear, eat what the storm (and their wiles and guile) can provide.

That some species of marine anemone are venomous is, of course, also suggestive but I think that the link to the merfolk's tradition of luring ships and sailors to their destruction for food and sport and their link to the Storm God whose prophet Patchface and champion Euron are going to be playing a bigger role in The Winds of Winter is less about poison and more about those winds (or currents).

 

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That's a tough one.  If we equate 'under the sea' with the sea of trees; then always summer could represent the caves of the CotF and the merwives as brides of the greenseers.  Weaving is a euphamism for magic.  Coldhands says that spells are woven into the Wall and Melisandre talks of weaving spells.  The CotF weave gowns of silver seaweed for the White Walkers who are camouflaged or glamored; reflecting the surrounding forest like silver mirrors.  Wearing Nennymoans or anemones,  stinging or poisonous flowers in their hair, brings to mind Ned's fever dream of a storm of petals as blue as the eyes of death and Sansa's poisonous hair net.   The blue flower at the wall that Dany sees in her vision of HoU: Acontium also called Monkshood or Wolf Bane?

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Sometimes I wish Patchface hadn't been so right on some of his "prophecies" so we didn't have to try to make sense of his nonsensical ones. 

9 hours ago, Blue-Eyed Wolf said:

I thought it was a reference to Sansa at the purple wedding with the poison in her hair and she was wearing a silver gown.

I think your thinking of this.

Quote

"I dreamt such a clangor I thought my head might burst, drums and horns and pipes and screams, but the saddest sound was the little bells. I dreamt of a maid at a feast with purple serpents in her hair, venom dripping from their fangs. And later I dreamt that maid again, slaying a savage giant in a castle built of snow." She turned her head sharply and smiled through the gloom, right at Arya. "You cannot hide from me, child. Come closer, now." - Arya VIII, ASoS

But your guess is as good as mine. Damn Patchface. 

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12 minutes ago, TheDemonicStark said:

Patchface is like the scariest thing in the whole series.

Right!? Anyone else waiting for him to go full on Pennywise and and say "We all float down here?"

 

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5 hours ago, Lord Vance II said:

I think your thinking of this.

Quote

"I dreamt such a clangor I thought my head might burst, drums and horns and pipes and screams, but the saddest sound was the little bells. I dreamt of a maid at a feast with purple serpents in her hair, venom dripping from their fangs. And later I dreamt that maid again, slaying a savage giant in a castle built of snow." She turned her head sharply and smiled through the gloom, right at Arya. "You cannot hide from me, child. Come closer, now." - Arya VIII, ASoS

But your guess is as good as mine. Damn Patchface. 

Actually, it's both.  Patchface also has visions of the red wedding and purple.  And Dany also had visions of the red wedding in her visions.  In a sense they are both corroborating the GoHH.  Where I think we lose Patchface especially when he makes his "starfish soup served by crabs" vision and no one has a solid answer for that one.  I think he may be describing events that have not yet happened, but we may understand it later    

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Patchface's lines are usually a response to something else being discussed or occurring in his immediate environment, so it helps to look at the larger scene if you want to sort out one or more of his lines. It won't give us all the answers, but it might help to move the ball down the field a bit.

The nennymoans line is part of a discussion and internal thoughts by Maester Cressen and Shireen Baratheon about the end of summer, the comet, Melisandre and the arrival of the white raven from the Citadel. Pretty big death and rebirth symbols, imho. Cressen feels compassion for the disfigured Shireen, "the saddest child that [he] had ever known."  Cressen's mood is grim in general - he contemplates whether it would have been kinder to give young Patchface an overdose of milk of the poppy instead of nursing him back to life after he was washed ashore, and he thinks of Shireen's condition as a mark of his own failure. So I think we are being reminded of the major theme around killing children: King Robert wanted to kill Dany but Ned said he shouldn't; Tywin Lannister ordered the murder of Rhaegar's children; etc. Cressen seems to be wishing he had either killed or completely cured two children, although the references to Shireen as a "mark of failure" are vague. Cressen's POV describes Dragonstone as a grim and lonely citadel (interesting choice of comparisons there), Stannis as never learning to laugh, and losing pride in the maester's chain that is now cold and heavy on his skin.

This chapter is also a prologue chapter and Cressen will attempt murder and then die at the end of it. As a prologue, it must be providing some guidance about what the reader can expect in ACoK and in the books going forward. Knowing that Cressen is our red shirt in this prologue away team (i.e., fated to die) we can also look for foreshadowing about his own death in his thoughts. He seems to be regretting his maester career and lamenting that he wasn't better at it.

Some of this maester regret also came across in some of Maester Luwin's conversations with Bran. There I felt that Luwin had really been interested in magic, but the maester training pounded that enthusiasm out of him. Luwin and Cressen both give the children inaccurate guidance about magic - Cressen says that dragons can't come to life and Luwin says that dreams can't predict the future or reflect distant events that are unknown to the dreamer. When Luwin dies, he deliberately crawls to the weirwood, which may show his true colors in spite of the maester training; it seems like a demonstration of faith in so-called magic - a wish to bleed out with the old gods. He allows himself to be mercifully killed by Osha, who seems to be of the mysterious, beyond-the-Wall, magic-believing realm. As if he is willing to become a human blood sacrifice to the old gods. Cressen will similarly sacrifice himself in this chapter, although his sacrifice may be entirely wasted, as his goal is to kill Melisandre, who seems unaffected by his poison.

It wouldn't surprise me if Patchface's role in the Cressen chapter is similar to Osha's role in the death of Luwin, even though Patchface doesn't slit Cressen's throat. The Fool is a messenger from the magic world who provides some cryptic thoughts about the underworld.

On 9/11/2016 at 7:12 PM, hiemal said:

"It is always summer under the sea. The merwives wear nennymoans in their hair and weave gowns of silver seaweed. I know. I know…" ACoK

... it is cold and dark under the sea,Patchface's lines twice mention snow for example-  and the last part of the second second sentence unlikely (a gown would be a clinging absurdity over a fish's tail). It is the nennymoans that have my eye.

Ok. So let's look at the specifics of the line.

It's hard to google nennymoans now without just seeing this Patchface quote come up a million times, but there really does seem to be a blue flower that is called (or nicknamed) nennymoan. Hmm. Seems like I've seen blue flowers mentioned in this forum somewhere. Something to do with Lyanna and Jon Snow? How could that be relevant to a discussion of the arrival of winter? (I don't know if there has a been a discussion of the white ravens in the forum already, but it seems to me that there is a strong possibility of a Jon Snow symbol here, too. The fact that the white ravens are bred at the Citadel wouldn't be consistent with Jon symbolism, though. The white raven in this prologue refers to Shireen as "Lady," and that seems linked to the death of Sansa's direwolf, who was killed by order of King Robert for an offense she did not commit. Foreshadowing Shireen's fate?)

If nennymoan is just a variation on the word anemone, why didn't GRRM just use the more familiar word anemone here? Maybe nennymoan just sounds sillier, and that is a good fit for a fool's silliness. But maybe he wanted the allusion to "moaning" in this imagery. In the series, moans are associated with having sex, with complaining and with the pain of death. In ACoK, however, we start to read about the moans of warhorns - there are several references. Maybe this is just coincidental, but maybe Patchface's "prophecy" has to do with the beginning of warfare.

Hair / heir - I believe references to hair are often (usually? always?) references to people's children. We know that Jon Arryn and Ned Stark had figured out that Cersei's children were not Robert's because of their hair color, and there are numerous other clues about heredity (hair-edity?) based on hair.

Weave - I like the comment from @LynnS about weaving representing magic. Good one.

Silver - Often associated with Targaryen or Valyrian hair color. But there was a rumor about Tywin buying silver to make swords to kill wargs and Sansa's hairnet was silver with amethysts. So there's a possibility that silver is associated with delivering death. Silver is also the color of the maester's link for healing, but Cressen specifically says of the silver link in this prologue that "the world preferred to forget that men who knew how to heal also knew how to kill."

Wordplay - But here's another possibility: the search site tells me that this prologue contains two of only a few references to wyverns (two-legged dragons) in the whole book. Cressen says he originally feared the stone creatures on the walls of the castle at Dragonstone, but now they are old friends. He specifically refers to a hellhound and a wyvern - the hellhound almost certainly alludes to a direwolf and the wyvern to a dragon. So why didn't GRRM use the word dragon here, and save us having to look up the meaning of wyvern? Maybe because he wants us to look at "merwives wear nennymoans" as an anagram. The phrase contains all of the letters for wyvern and what else - omen? insane? nonsense? semen? In his thoughts, Cressen speaks of omens and recalls that "the fisherfolk liked to say that a mermaid had taught [Patchface] to breathe water in return for his seed."

Just yesterday, I enjoyed reading a thread about Davos and his possible ties to the Targaryens. I acknowledged that the OP seemed correct in linking Davos to Patchface, and noted that Davos has also been associated with a stone gargoyle (that he considers to be an old friend) and that there is semen and impregnation imagery with Davos smuggling the onions into Storm's End. So this Cressen prologue shares a lot of elements with that Davos analysis, and could be giving us indirect hints about Davos. Like Cressen, we know that Davos also wants to kill Melisandre at one point. Davos also has a bond with Shireen. Cressen and Davos share a genuine devotion to Stannis, who they believe to be a good and just man and the rightful king. I believe that Cressen is a symbolic Davos stand-in for the early part of this chapter. When Cressen dies, it will represent the death of some aspect of Davos or foreshadow something that will come later in his storyline. Don't trust Melisandre? Don't mess with Melisandre? Don't be trapped on Dragonstone? I'll have to think about this.

Anagrams can be a bottomless pit because you can get carried away looking for them everywhere and because they sometimes yield so many possibilities that you can rationalize almost any connection you are predisposed to find. But another potential anagram in this sentence really gives me pause for thought: silver seaweed = wise red leaves. In the Puns and Wordplay thread, there is a post about deserter = red trees. I suspect that GRRM is finding ways to bring the weirwood network, with its white wood and red leaves, into story lines that otherwise appear to be unrelated to the gods wood and to Bran's ability to see things. Essentially, the red trees are everywhere, and the fools, such as Patchface, know this and drop their cryptic hints for the rest of us, if only we knew how to understand them.

Edit: In the thoughts I posted yesterday in the thread about Davos (see link, above), I said that the only fools we had seen murdered were Jinglebell (real name Aegon) and Ser Dontos. But I forgot that Melisandre puts Patchface's stag helmet on Cressen's head before he drinks the poison. I bet that's significant - not only because it shows that Cressen is a "fool" (which means he is wise but that people around him don't recognize his wisdom); but also because the helmet with antlers represents King Robert and King Renly. In Cressen's death, we are actually seeing an echo of Robert's death by poisoned wine and foreshadowing of Renly's death by Melisandre's magic.

Also: Some or all of Patchface's references to fish may be references to poison. In the Puns & Wordplay thread, we realized that GRRM was using words from foreign languages in some of his puns - specifically German words for egg (Ei) and iron (Eisen) and poison (Gift). It occurs to me that the French word for fish is poisson. I'm going to reexamine some of Patchface's fish lines to see whether they relate to Cressen or other characters ingesting poison.

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1 hour ago, Seams said:

Maybe this is just coincidental, but maybe Patchface's "prophecy" has to do with the beginning of warfare.

Thank you Seams, that was an enjoyable post!  Patchface does seem to respond to the situation at hand and some of his gibberish has been prophetic and I do think he has some sense of the coming war with the iron born who could also represent merlings and merwives. or drowned men and salt wives.  Aeron weaves seaweed into his hair and beard and his robes are grey, green and blue. So we have this line from Patchface as well:

I will lead it. We will march into the sea and out again. Under the waves we will ride seahorses, and mermaids will blow seashells to announce our coming, oh, oh, oh.

Seahorses  could represents ships or longboats and seashells would then be war horns and we have Euron with his dragon horn.   

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1 hour ago, Blue-Eyed Wolf said:

Actually, it's both.  Patchface also has visions of the red wedding and purple.  And Dany also had visions of the red wedding in her visions.  In a sense they are both corroborating the GoHH.  Where I think we lose Patchface especially when he makes his "starfish soup served by crabs" vision and no one has a solid answer for that one.  I think he may be describing events that have not yet happened, but we may understand it later    

I'm thinking that fish are prey and starfish are those who follow the faith of the seven; fish could be anyone who isn't iron born.

Under the sea, men marry fishes (salt wives).

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2 hours ago, Seams said:

Patchface's lines are usually a response to something else being discussed or occurring in his immediate environment, so it helps to look at the larger scene if you want to sort out one or more of his lines. It won't give us all the answers, but it might help to move the ball down the field a bit.

The nennymoans line is part of a discussion and internal thoughts by Maester Cressen and Shireen Baratheon about the end of summer, the comet, Melisandre and the arrival of the white raven from the Citadel. Pretty big death and rebirth symbols, imho. Cressen feels compassion for the disfigured Shireen, "the saddest child that [he] had ever known."  Cressen's mood is grim in general - he contemplates whether it would have been kinder to give young Patchface an overdose of milk of the poppy instead of nursing him back to life after he was washed ashore, and he thinks of Shireen's condition as a mark of his own failure. So I think we are being reminded of the major theme around killing children: King Robert wanted to kill Dany but Ned said he shouldn't; Tywin Lannister ordered the murder of Rhaegar's children; etc. Cressen seems to be wishing he had either killed or completely cured two children, although the references to Shireen as a "mark of failure" are vague. Cressen's POV describes Dragonstone as a grim and lonely citadel (interesting choice of comparisons there), of Stannis as never learning to laugh, and of losing his pride in the maester's chain that is now cold and heavy on his skin.

This chapter is also a prologue chapter and Cressen will attempt murder and then die at the end of it. As a prologue, it must be providing some guidance about what the reader can expect in ACoK and in the books going forward. Knowing that Cressen is our red shirt in this prologue away team (i.e., fated to die) we can also look for foreshadowing about his own death in his thoughts. He seems to be regretting his maester career and lamenting that he wasn't better at it.

Some of this maester regret also came across in some of Maester Luwin's conversations with Bran. There I felt that Luwin had really been interested in magic, but the maester training pounded that enthusiasm out of him. Luwin and Cressen both give the children inaccurate guidance about magic - Cressen says that dragons can't come to life and Luwin says that dreams can't predict the future or reflect distant events that are unknown to the dreamer. When Luwin dies, he deliberately crawls to the weirwood, which may show his true colors in spite of the maester training; it seems like a demonstration of faith in so-called magic - a wish to bleed out with the old gods. He allows himself to be mercifully killed by Osha, who seems to be of the mysterious, beyond-the-Wall, magic-believing realm. As if he is willing to become a human blood sacrifice to the old gods. Cressen will similarly sacrifice himself in this chapter, although his sacrifice may be entirely wasted, as his goal is to kill Melisandre, who seems unaffected by his poison.

It wouldn't surprise me if Patchface's role in the Cressen chapter is similar to Osha's role in the death of Luwin, even though Patchface doesn't slit Cressen's throat. The Fool is a messenger from the magic world who provides some cryptic thoughts about the underworld.

Ok. So let's look at the specifics of the line.

It's hard to google nennymoans now without just seeing this Patchface quote come up a million times, but there really does seem to be a blue flower that is called (or nicknamed) nennymoan. Hmm. Seems like I've seen blue flowers mentioned in this forum somewhere. Something to do with Lyanna and Jon Snow? How could that be relevant to a discussion of the arrival of winter? (I don't know if there has a been a discussio of the white ravens in the forum already, but it seems to me that there is a strong possibility of a Jon Snow symbol here, too. The fact that the white ravens are bred at the Citadel wouldn't be consistent with Jon symbolism, though. The white raven in this prologue refers to Shireen as "Lady," and that seems linked to the death of Sansa's direwolf, who was killed by order of King Robert for an offense she did not commit. Foreshadowing?)

If nennymoan is just a variation on the word anemone, why didn't GRRM just use the more familiar word anemone here? Maybe nennymoan just sounds sillier, and that is a good fit for a fool's silliness. But maybe he wanted the allusion to "moaning" in this imagery. In the series, moans are associated with having sex, with complaining and with the pain of death. In ACoK, however, we start to read about the moans of warhorns - there are several references. Maybe this is just coincidental, but maybe Patchface's "prophecy" has to do with the beginning of warfare.

Hair / heir - I believe references to hair are often (usually? always?) references to people's children. We know that Jon Arryn and Ned Stark had figured out that Cersei's children were not Robert's because of their hair color, and there are numerous other clues about heredity (hair-edity?) based on hair.

Weave - I like the comment from @LynnS about weaving representing magic. Good one.

Silver - Often associated with Targaryen or Valyrian hair color. But there was a rumor about Tywin buying silver to make swords to kill wargs and Sansa's hairnet was silver with amethysts. So there's a possibility that silver is associated with delivering death.

Wordplay - But here's another possibility: the search site tells me that this prologue contains two of only a few references to wyverns (two-legged dragons) in the whole book. Cressen says he originally feared the stone creatures on the walls of the castle at Dragonstone, but now they are old friends. He specifically refers to a hellhound and a wyvern - the hellhound almost certainly alludes to a direwolf and the wyvern to a dragon. So why didn't GRRM use the word dragon here, and save us having to look up the meaning of wyvern? Maybe because he wants us to look at "merwives wear nennymoans" as an anagram. The phrase contains all of the letters for wyvern and what else - omen? insane? nonsense? semen? In his thoughts, Cressen speaks of omens and recalls that "the fisherfolk liked to say that a mermaid had taught [Patchface] to breathe water in return for his seed."

Just yesterday, I enjoyed reading a thread about Davos and his possible ties to the Targaryens. I acknowledged that the OP seemed correct in linking Davos to Patchface, and noted that Davos has also been associated with a stone gargoyle (that he considers to be an old friend) and that there is semen and impregnation imagery with Davos smuggling the onions into Storm's End. So this Cressen prologue shares a lot of elements with that Davos analysis, and could be giving us indirect hints about Davos. Like Cressen, we know that Davos also wants to kill Melisandre at one point. Davos also has a bond with Shireen. Cressen and Davos share a genuine devotion to Stannis, who they believe to be a good and just man. I believe that Cressen is a symbolic Davos stand-in for the early part of this chapter. When Cressen dies, it will represent the death of some aspect of Davos or foreshadow something that will come later in his storyline. Don't trust Melisandre? Don't mess with Melisandre? Don't be trapped on Dragonstone? I'll have to think about this.

Anagrams can be a bottomless pit because you can get carried away looking for them everywhere and because they sometimes yield so many possibilities that you can rationalize almost any connection you are predisposed to find. But another potential anagram in this sentence really gives me pause for thought: silver seaweed = wise red leaves. In the Puns and Wordplay thread, there is a post about deserter = red trees. I suspect that GRRM is finding ways to bring the weirwood network, with its white wood and red leaves, into story lines that otherwise appear to be unrelated to the gods wood and to Bran's ability to see things. Essentially, the red trees are everywhere, and the fools, such as Patchface, know this and drop their cryptic hints for the rest of us, if only we knew how to understand them.

I honestly hadn't considered the anagram angle- fascinating stuff to ponder.

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35 minutes ago, LynnS said:

I'm thinking that fish are prey and starfish are those who follow the faith of the seven; fish could be anyone who isn't iron born.

Under the sea, men marry fishes (salt wives).

Oh wow!  Very interesting.  The crab part has me stumped, unless it refers to the ironborn as from the sea, but not fishes.  Crabs are hard on the outside and they pick off the remains of the dead (paying the iron price).  I like your idea! 

 I've also heard some people say the starfish could resemble the Bolton flayed man if you think about a 5-armed starfish, but how the crabs connect to that one either unless it refers to some northerners serving up some vengeance.  The marriage could refer to Ramsey and "Arya."

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Ok, I will just add this here to see what others think of this. I have been doing a lot of reading and writing on another subject where Patchface has some play into the possible prophecy of events and this is what I came up with. I hope it makes sense here, out of the context of the other thread which connects several links to the Rhoynar of Nymeria and history to events at Castle Black with the wildlings "today".

Sorry for the length but I am pasting two posts into one for here:

See how Jon describes the land north of the wall while he is just left eh Fist of the First Men and before he discovers the wildlings:

  • A Clash of Kings - Jon IV

Closer at hand, it was the trees that ruled. To south and east the wood went on as far as Jon could see, a vast tangle of root and limb painted in a thousand shades of green, with here and there a patch of red where a weirwood shouldered through the pines and sentinels, or a blush of yellow where some broadleafs had begun to turn. When the wind blew, he could hear the creak and groan of branches older than he was. A thousand leaves fluttered, and for a moment the forest seemed a deep green sea, storm-tossed and heaving, eternal and unknowable.
Ghost was not like to be alone down there, he thought. Anything could be moving under that sea, creeping toward the ringfort through the dark of the wood, concealed beneath those trees. Anything. How would they ever know? He stood there for a long time, until the sun vanished behind the saw-toothed mountains and darkness began to creep through the forest.
Under the sea the old fish eat the young fish. Up here the young fish teach the old fish.[1]

- Patchface to Davos Seaworth

 

In the dark the dead are dancing. I know, I know, oh oh oh.[6]

- Patchface at Castle Black

 

Under the sea the mermen feast on starfish soup, and all the serving men are crabs.[7]

- Patchface at Castle Black

 

Could Patchface be talking about this??? Myrmen, not mermen. Starfish soup = Melisandre. Serving Men = Stannis' or Selyse's men in their armour?

This could also lead back to the fact that the Thenns are considered more advanced by wildling standards.

  • The World of Ice and Fire - The Free Cities: The Quarrelsome Daughters: Myr, Lys, and Tyrosh

    The origins of Myr are murkier. The Myrmen are believed by certain maesters to be akin to the Rhoynar, as many of them share the same olive skin and dark hair as the river people, but this supposed link is likely spurious. There are certain signs that a city stood where Myr now stands even during the Dawn Age and the Long Night, raised by some ancient, vanished people, but the Myr we know was founded by a group of Valyrian merchant adventurers on the site of a walled Andal town whose inhabitants they butchered or enslaved. Trade has been the life of Myr ever since, and Myrish ships have plied the waters of the narrow sea for centuries. The artisans of Myr, many of slave birth, are also greatly renowned; Myrish lace and Myrish tapestries are said to be worth their weight in gold and spice, and Myrish lenses have no equal in all the world.
  • The Thenns are savage fighters, but because of their belief in the Magnar as their god they are absolutely obedient and more disciplined than other free folk. They are often better equipped than most free folk, with bronze helms, axes of bronze and a few of chipped stone, short stabbing spears with leaf-shaped heads, shirts sewn with bronze discs, and plain unadorned shields of black boiled leather with bronze rims and bosses.

More with Patchface, my favorite jingler, this time with turtles and crabs:

We see the parallel use of the turtle theme with the Rhoynar and the Wildlings at the wall. Well, we also have the Old Man of the RIver, who happens to be a giant turtle that fought the Crab King.

The Old Man of the River is a lesser god of the Rhoynar. He is the son of Mother Rhoyne, and his form is that of a giant turtle. According to Rhoynar beliefs, the Old Man of the River fought the Crab King for dominion of all life below the flowing water.[1]

The giant turtles of the Rhoyne, the Old Men of the River, are named after him.[2]

So Patchface says:

Under the sea the mermen feast on starfish soup, and all the serving men are crabs.[7]

- Patchface at Castle Black

and I posted upthread one or two back that:

  • The World of Ice and Fire - The Free Cities: The Quarrelsome Daughters: Myr, Lys, and Tyrosh

The origins of Myr are murkier. The Myrmen are believed by certain maesters to be akin to the Rhoynar,
 
In summary, the mermen (myrmen) are the wildlings that are fighting the Crab King (Stannis's men in armor) for life below the flowing water (the wall). I think the starfish in the soup is Melisandre and or Selyse. I think the new fish from the previous riddle is Val/Morna, while the old fish is definitely Mel in terms of magic. I think Mel will mess something up real bad (burn Shireen?) and whatever is left of Stannis and Selyse's men will reconvert back to their own religion and kill Melisandre for using Shireen without Stannis' permission. This was also mentioned in the Nymeria story above using Druselka.
 
and before you say the wall is ice and not flowing, get a load of these:
  • A Game of Thrones - Jon IX

    "Why? Why? Why?" the raven called.
    "All I know is that the blood of the First Men flows in the veins of the Starks. The First Men built the Wall, and it's said they remember things otherwise forgotten. And that beast of yours … he led us to the wights, warned you of the dead man on the steps. Ser Jaremy would doubtless call that happenstance, yet Ser Jaremy is dead and I'm not." Lord Mormont stabbed a chunk of ham with the point of his dagger. "I think you were meant to be here, and I want you and that wolf of yours with us when we go beyond the Wall."
  • A Game of Thrones - Jon VI

     The day was warm and sunny. Rivulets of water trickled down the sides of the Wall, so the ice seemed to sparkle and shine.
  • A Clash of Kings - Jon III

    A blowing rain lashed at Jon's face as he spurred his horse across the swollen stream. Beside him, Lord Commander Mormont gave the hood of his cloak a tug, muttering curses on the weather. His raven sat on his shoulder, feathers ruffled, as soaked and grumpy as the Old Bear himself. A gust of wind sent wet leaves flapping round them like a flock of dead birds. The haunted forest, Jon thought ruefully. The drowned forest, more like it.
    He hoped Sam was holding up, back down the column. He was not a good rider even in fair weather, and six days of rain had made the ground treacherous, all soft mud and hidden rocks. When the wind blew, it drove the water right into their eyes. The Wall would be flowing off to the south, the melting ice mingling with warm rain to wash down in sheets and rivers.
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Going full crackpot here:

Patchface is a real oddity in the series, for sure. Out of all his ramblings, only one seems to have been an actual prophecy - the RW. That, very oddly, was about a massacre, but didn't include an "under the sea" qualifier. 

Could all his "under the sea" statements refer to the Deep Ones? TWOIAF  and

Spoiler

The recent sample chapter of Aeron 1

 gives us some hints that the Deep Ones (or underwater forces and magic in general) are going to become more prominent. 

Plus Patchface's survival story - "he gave his seed to some mermaids", sounds like the stories of the Deep Ones mating with humans.

We also have Cotter Pyke's chilling "dead things in the water" at Hardhome...

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Under the sea the old fish eat the young fish. The drowning of boys by priests of the drowned god?  Up here the young fish teach the old fish Shireen teaching Davos to read?

2 hours ago, Little Scribe of Naath said:

Plus Patchface's survival story - "he gave his seed to some mermaids", sounds like the stories of the Deep Ones mating with humans.

This could be a reference to the Grey King:

Unlike most great houses of the Iron Islands, the Goodbrothers claim descent from the Grey King's loyal eldest brother.[5]

When the kingsmoot was used to choose the High King of the Iron Islands, only House Greyiron had more kings chosen than the Goodbrothers.[6][7] Urrathon IV Goodbrother was a high king known as "Badbrother" during the Age of Heroes

but he is alternatively said to have worn a driftwood crown[1]'s teeth,Nagga and a tall pale crown made from He supposedly wore robes of woven seaweed [3]The Grey King is so named because his hair, beard, and eyes were grey as the winter sea, and at the end of his life even his skin had turned grey.


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3 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

See how Jon describes the land north of the wall while he is just left eh Fist of the First Men and before he discovers the wildlings:

  • A Clash of Kings - Jon IV

Closer at hand, it was the trees that ruled. To south and east the wood went on as far as Jon could see, a vast tangle of root and limb painted in a thousand shades of green, with here and there a patch of red where a weirwood shouldered through the pines and sentinels, or a blush of yellow where some broadleafs had begun to turn. When the wind blew, he could hear the creak and groan of branches older than he was. A thousand leaves fluttered, and for a moment the forest seemed a deep green sea, storm-tossed and heaving, eternal and unknowable.
Ghost was not like to be alone down there, he thought. Anything could be moving under that sea, creeping toward the ringfort through the dark of the wood, concealed beneath those trees. Anything. How would they ever know? He stood there for a long time, until the sun vanished behind the saw-toothed mountains and darkness began to creep through the forest.
Under the sea the old fish eat the young fish. Up here the young fish teach the old fish.[1]

- Patchface to Davos Seaworth

 

In the dark the dead are dancing. I know, I know, oh oh oh.[6]

- Patchface at Castle Black

 

Under the sea the mermen feast on starfish soup, and all the serving men are crabs.[7]

- Patchface at Castle Black

 

Could Patchface be talking about this??? Myrmen, not mermen. Starfish soup = Melisandre. Serving Men = Stannis' or Selyse's men in their armour?

 

I just wandered through that passage in my most re-read of ACoK and it caught my attention as well. I'm going to be thinking about your interpretation for a while. I've got zilch myself so far for the starfish so far, so.... yeah. My mind is way open.

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3 hours ago, Little Scribe of Naath said:

Going full crackpot here:

Patchface is a real oddity in the series, for sure. Out of all his ramblings, only one seems to have been an actual prophecy - the RW. That, very oddly, was about a massacre, but didn't include an "under the sea" qualifier. 

Could all his "under the sea" statements refer to the Deep Ones? TWOIAF  and

  Reveal hidden contents

The recent sample chapter of Aeron 1

 gives us some hints that the Deep Ones (or underwater forces and magic in general) are going to become more prominent. 

Plus Patchface's survival story - "he gave his seed to some mermaids", sounds like the stories of the Deep Ones mating with humans.

We also have Cotter Pyke's chilling "dead things in the water" at Hardhome...

Quite possibly. I believe the Deep Ones are the remnants of a land-dwelling race driven into the sea by the CotF in an ancient war but I'm not clear on whether they themselves are the merlings, or if the merlings are Children who were changed when their weirwood groves were drowned. Either way, I believe it is at one these groves that Patchface became... whatever he is. The anti-Ariel. The voice of the hungry ocean. Creepy as hell.

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